The unintended consequences of such social trends have not only resulted in a bounty of unmarried men.  According to The Economist, “The crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios, with stories abounding of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution. A study into whether these things were connected concluded that they were, and that higher sex ratios accounted for about one-seventh of the rise in crime. In India, too, there is a correlation between provincial crime rates and sex ratios.” [See article here]

This article sent me through a whirlwind of emotions.  At first I resonated with the fury of the commenter who pointed out the hypocrisy of promoting a woman’s “right to choose” then showing moral outrage at the choices women have made.  Knowing this is logical yet too simplistic, I then moved to the overwhelming intellectual task of processing all the accompanying social, economic, and cultural issues in these nations that drive families to such decisions.  Once my mental engine was flooded, it seemed that the only remaining options were to despair or ignore the issue altogether.

Into this confusion came the words of Jesus that speak of how we as members of the kingdom of God are to live in this present sin-soaked age.  We call them the beatitudes.  Consider with me how some of these kingdom mindsets affect how we respond to issues like Gendercide.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit…”
Is my first reaction to lash out at others or to consider my own moral bankruptcy apart from the grace of God?  When Jesus was told about the Galileans who Pilate killed while they were offering sacrifices, his response to them was not to riot against “those people.”  Rather, he said, “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).  Are there areas of my life where I need to repent?  Even if I have not condoned an abortion, am I guilty of a similar sin of ruling my own life in rebellion to God’s rule?

“Blessed are those who mourn…”
Do I embrace this as another opportunity to engage the sorrow of living in an age when God’s kingship is rejected?  Do I weep for the babies whose lives were snuffed out before (or at times as soon as) they saw daylight?  Do I groan for the mothers who are carrying around guilt and pain for aborting their daughters, many of whom perhaps had no choice in the matter?  Do I grieve for the broader societal issues that create an environment where such decisions are made?  Does my heart lean forward to God’s perfected kingdom and cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus!”?

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”
With brokenness and mourning as my posture, will I seek to be a voice for the voiceless?  Will I speak against the horror of this mass slaughter of daughters?  Will I channel my energies and resources toward engaging issues like Gendercide?  Will I be willing to open my eyes to gender bias in my world and embrace how the devaluation of females can lead to such injustice?

May we learn from Jesus how to confront the issues of our day with minds and hearts fixed under his rule and with voices confessing in all areas of life, “Jesus is Lord!”

Pastor Chris

This ceremony must have accentuated the holiness with which the Israelites were dealing.  This God was not to be approached blithely or casually.  He was to be approached through priests, who were required to undergo this week’s worth of consecration requiring the death of animals to even be in such a position.  And when Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, offered “unauthorized fire before the LORD” (Leviticus 10:1), they were immediately killed by God’s fire.  The verdict was simple: “This is what the LORD has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified’” (Leviticus 10:3).  Such transcendence, such holiness demands stunned silence, as the rest of the verse implies: “And Aaron held his peace.”

Our age does not condition us for this sacred hush.  It is not natural in our culture to practice Psalm 46:10-”Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”  Furthermore, the New Covenant does not involve the sacrificing of bulls and rams, high priests in special garments, or a holiest place that can only be entered by one person once a year.  With these factors in view, how is it that we can pursue the sacred hush that our holy God deserves?

We experience holy silence the same way our forebears in the faith did: in the presence of the high priest who alone can present us acceptable before God; in the presence of the sacrifice in which blood was spilled for our holy standing; in the presence of God’s great prophet who communicates God’s word.  And ours is the advantage here, for we have the final and true expression of all these realities in the person of Jesus Christ.

In other words, we reclaim the sacred hush when we hold fast to the gospel, when we dig deep into what it means that Christ died for our sins.  And though Jesus’ death has made God’s presence more accessible than it was for the children of Israel, it has not made it any less holy or transcendent.  So let us daily press into the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice for us, and let us be awed that his work brings us into God’s holy presence.  The veil has been torn; we do not need to travel to Jerusalem to experience God’s special presence.  But as we do commune with our God, let us proceed with a sacred hush.

Pastor Chris

———-

What we have seen in 1 Corinthians 12-14 is a vision of the Spirit’s Christ-centered, gospel-focused work in our midst to build up the church by empowering spiritual gifts in every one of us.  As we look to the year ahead, this vision should cause us to ask some big questions about how we are living out this vision.  Here are some big questions related to the “reaching in” and “reaching out” portions of our mission statement.

Reaching In

We should be asking: are we pursuing the type of fellowship where interdependent exercising of spiritual gifts and upbuilding in the gospel is a reality?  To individualize it, am I intentionally and consistently in a context where there are people I am relying on to experience the fullness of the gospel and there are people depending on me to experience the fullness of the gospel?

Reaching Out

In a few weeks we will see that Paul envisions the Christian community not only as the context in which building up takes place for believers but where non-believers are introduced to the gospel (1 Corinthians 14:24-25).  By this I do not simply mean that we should have a “bring a friend to church” Sunday where they hear the pastor talk about the gospel, but that we should be strategic and creative about bringing non-believers around Christian fellowship as we experience life in Christ together.

In our core values we specify that our “reaching out with the gospel of Jesus Christ” takes place both through proclaiming that gospel and through portraying that gospel.  As we move into 2010, a question that burns on my heart for us is this: how will we portray the gospel to nonbelievers as a community?  How will they not only hear the word “grace” as it relates to Christ’s work for them; how will they also experience grace in our relationships?  How will they not only hear words about the gospel’s power to save, but witness the gospel’s saving power in our lives?

I believe grace and power and a dozen other gospel realities are existent in our church family.  But the question before us is this: how do we effectively, proactively, strategically, and consistently bring non-believers into our community to both experience those realities and to hear about the work of Christ that makes them possible?

———-

May God help us wrestle with these questions as we walk through a new year together.

Pastor Chris

1.  Remembering the year behind

Our annual meeting is a key opportunity to reflect on the previous year and recall God’s faithfulness, remember what we have invested in for the spread of the Kingdom, grieve over losses, learn from mistakes, and celebrate a year of life together in Christ.  This is meant to sober us, encourage us, reinvigorate us, and humble us.

2.  Dealing with current situations

Clearly items of voting such as the church budget and the confirmation of elders are significant to the current functioning of our church.  Along with these, we occasionally have issues regarding church members that need to be addressed.

This year we need to address two situations involving divorce in which members who now live in different cities do not seem to be walking in Christian obedience.  This is a sobering issue to discuss, but one that we must take seriously if we take the gospel and church membership seriously.  While these members are being taken off the membership role by the sheer nature of their being absent from our fellowship, we feel the need to share our communication to them with the broader body for the sake of your prayers and potential involvement.

3.  Looking to the year ahead

As we walk through 1 Corinthians 12-14 on Sunday mornings, a number of questions beg to be answered about how we live out the vision of body life that Paul paints.  More broadly speaking, another year of awaiting Jesus’ return demands that we assess how we are fulfilling the central mission he left us: make disciples of all nations.  We hope the annual meeting will afford us an opportunity to look forward together to how 2010 might be a year of glorifying God by reaching up, in, and out together.

My prayer is that you will make attending Thursday’s meeting at 7:00 p.m. in the Fireside Room a priority and that God would be honored by our time together.

In Christ with you,

Pastor Chris

God used my children this week to remind me of how compelling this familial love can be.  Early in the week I was outside with the children when Sophia let out a cry of such dramatic proportions that you would have thought she broke a limb.  In fact, she had dropped her plastic cup full of popcorn and stood next to her fallen snack with tears streaming down her face.  Working under the age-old assumption that “dirt don’t hurt,” I picked up the least soiled pieces of popcorn, put them back into the cup, and returned it to Sophia.

Of course, within about 42 seconds Sophia had dropped her cup again, and Act II of the Shakespearean tragedy began.  I repeated the selective scooping of popcorn, and as I prepared my stern “be careful” speech, out of the corner of my eye I saw Marcus bolting for the patio.  Curious about his intent, I followed and found him frantically looking for something on a table.  He emerged with his cup of popcorn, which was still quite full, and made a simple request: “Give Phia my popcorn?”

I pause over this moment again in hopes of absorbing the profundity of what I saw in my son who is not yet 3 years-old.  Sophia (or “Phia,” as the boys call her) was grieved over her loss of popcorn.  Marcus had popcorn at his disposal.  Marcus took the initiative to meet Sophia’s need with what he had been given.  (If I may brag on both my boys, Stephan extended a similar generosity the next day at lunch when he offered Sophia his pickles once she had finished hers.)

Perhaps this simple story offers us a sense of what Paul meant when he called love “a more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31).  In the example of my children, the love displayed among them was more important then the actual gift given-popcorn, pickles, toys, etc.  Likewise, in the family of God, the precise gift we use to build one another up is secondary to the mutual care, concern for the common good, the sacrificial love being displayed.  Because what is ultimately on display in these acts is God’s own love, which is the pinnacle of his excellencies.

You are a church family where this love already exists.  I can think of a handful of stories off the top of my head where one member of our body has lovingly, sacrificially served another member.  As we continue our study in 1 Corinthians 12-14, may God transform us to become even more loving, more concerned, more sacrificial in serving one another with the gifts the Spirit empowers.  For this is a key way in which we fulfill our ultimate mission-to glorify God-as we place his love on display.

Pastor Chris

Yet despite YHWH’s displays of indisputable supremacy over Egypt’s gods, the people of Israel still chased after other gods, even blatantly requesting Aaron to “make us gods who shall go before us” (Exodus 32:1).  This idolatry continued even after Israel took possession of the Promised Land, as summarized toward the beginning of Judges: “And they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them” (Judges 2:12).

Though it has taken much more sophisticated and respectable forms, idolatry is still a snare to God’s people today, drawing us away from pure worship of the one true God.  This is an especially pressing issue for us men to confront head-on as spiritual leaders in our homes and in the church.  If we are not smashing the idols in our own lives, we will be in no position to lead God’s people in our mission of glorifying God, and our mission to reach up, in, and out will be compromised at every level.

For this reason our next Men’s Leadership Series will be a study on idolatry and how the gospel keeps us from it.  We will look to a brother in Christ, Tim Keller, to walk us through this issue as we read his book, “Counterfeit Gods: The empty promises of money, sex, and power, and the only hope that matters.”

Men, I challenge you to be part of this study.  This is an issue we need to address personally with other brothers who will encourage us, support us, and hold us accountable.  Our plan is to begin this 10-week study during the third week of February.  We will have a Saturday morning group and can add another group if some brothers cannot make that time.  Please e-mail me at chris@whittonavenue.org with questions or to sign up for the study.

May God use this time to purify our lives from idolatry and increase our joy in belonging wholly to him.

Pastor Chris

At one level this should allow us to relax when we read lists of spiritual gifts like miracles and healing and prophecy (12:8-10) because we know that there is no “next stage” of the Christian life beyond the Spirit’s work of uniting us to Christ by faith.  This gives us a sense of bearing, knowing that whatever gifts the Spirit empowers will ultimately be focused on the gospel and will build up Christ’s body.  With Christ at the center, we can open ourselves up to the Spirit’s activity without worrying about bizarre excesses we have observed in some Christian circles.

At another level, however, the Christ-centeredness of the Spirit’s work-much more than removing potential discomfort we might anticipate-actually reinforces how uneasy things could get when we experience God’s powerful working in our midst.  In other words, for all our concerns over how unwieldy the Spirit’s activity might be, we forget how unnerving Jesus’ ministry was to those around him.

For instance, in our Bible reading we recently saw the disciples’ reaction to Jesus calming the storm: “they were filled with great fear” (Mark 4:41).  Likewise, after Jesus cast out the legion of demons from the Gerasene demoniac, the people from the town “came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid” (Mark 5:15).

From the comfort of our living rooms it may be easy to read these stories and question why such wonderful displays of power would be so unsettling to those around Jesus.  We tend to forget how disruptive these acts were to what was expected.  Storms do not simply cease because a fisherman waves his hands.  Unruly maniacs do not return to their right mind because a teacher from the backwoods tells the demons to go jump in a lake.  These things do not belong to our common experiences, not to mention resurrection, which caused Jesus’ followers to flee “from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

The consistent witness of the gospels is that Jesus’ ministry made people uncomfortable, afraid, astonished, taken aback.  If the Spirit’s ministry of equipping the saints to build each other up in love is a Christ-centered ministry, we should anticipate that the same flavor that characterized Jesus’ ministry will characterize the Spirit’s ministry through us.  While it will not be bizarre or absurd, neither will it be domesticated or predictable.

As we continue through 1 Corinthians 12-14, may God keep our bearings first and foremost on himself and the good news of what his Son has accomplished for us.  In that context, may we open our hearts to whatever his Spirit wants to do through us to build one another up in love so that all who come into this community “will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:25).

Willing to be unsettled,

Pastor Chris

As extreme as this story is (and it is regretfully true!), it reminds us of why structures like by-laws and annual business meetings are significant, especially when it comes to church leadership.  When Paul gave a charge to the elders of the church in Ephesus, he  made plain the seriousness of church leadership: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).  As it does for all aspects of the Christian life, the gospel establishes the tone for approaching church leadership, and the sober caution of shepherding God’s flock is set by the weight of Jesus’ own blood, shed to purchase his people to belong to God.

Thus it is with much prayer and thought and discussion that we present Peter Kinkel as an elder candidate, to be voted on at the annual business meeting on Thursday February 18th.  Peter has been a member of Whitton Avenue for all of his adult life and has served faithfully for the past 20 years in various age levels of student ministry.  Peter has also been a vital component of the administration team for many years and has personally discipled numerous young men in our body.

Hopefully this thumbnail sketch of Peter’s ministry at Whitton reinforces our broader conviction about adding elders at Whitton Avenue: in the body of Christ, elders are recognized, not created.  We never appoint men that could be “made” into elders; we look for men who are already doing the work of an elder in their families and in the church, and we ask for the congregation to affirm this recognition.  (For a fuller explanation of our approach to church leadership, go to this site [http://www.whittonavenue.org/about-us/our-leadership/] and click on “A Vision of Biblical Eldership at Whitton Avenue Bible Church.”)

In view of the vote on February 18th, we will have a brief meeting after church next Sunday, January 24th, to give Peter an opportunity to share his testimony and to give you an opportunity to ask him any questions you may have.  Of course, you can always direct any questions you have for me by writing me at chris@whittonavenue.org.

Two final notes concerning leadership.  First, per our bylaws, Mike Rehm will be rotating off the elder board in May 2010 and will be eligible for a new term the following year.  Second, our vote to add Don Vander Giessen as an elder at last year’s meeting was only for a 1-year term because of a technicality in the bylaws.  So in February we will vote again to confirm Don for the final 2 years of his 3-year term (elders are allow 2 consecutive 3-year terms before taking a minimum of a 1-year leave of absence).

Please pray with us that God would continue to develop leaders in our church who will care for the church of God which he obtained with his blood.

Pastor Chris

Just as our pursuit of a biblical worldview is articulated in our core value about being “shaped,” so is our pursuit of a relationship with God.  Our first core value is, “We prayerfully seek to be awed by the glory of God and the mercy of the gospel.”

In other words, when we read the creation account in Genesis 1-2, our worldview is not the only thing that should be affected.  Our hearts should be as well.  We are not only to think well about our times because we see God’s sovereignty, ownership, and purpose in creating the cosmos.  We also are to feel the weight of God’s creativity, power, wisdom, and care in crafting his world, and this should lead us to expressions of worship, gratitude, and adoration.

Identifying God’s praiseworthy attributes and actions in the opening pages of the Bible should not be challenging.  But what about the gospel?  How are we to be “awed by…the mercy of the gospel” when we are reading of times thousands of years before Jesus’ birth?  The answer should become apparent when we remember what exactly the gospel is

The gospel is the news of what God has done through Jesus Christ to bring sinners into a relationship with himself, as central to his redemption of all creation.  In its most fully developed expression, this was accomplished through Jesus’ perfect life, his death on the cross, his resurrection, and his return to rule as King forever.  Even though these events are still millennia away as we read of Eden and the Flood and Abraham, we see God working to bring sinners into relationship with himself from the moment his people became sinners in the Garden of Eden.  And God’s redemptive, reconciling activity centers on promises regarding the woman’s seed, traced carefully through the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and on down through King David.

In other words, the fully-revealed gospel we know is anticipated from the moment God promises that Eve’s descendant will crush the head of the serpent.  Knowing this allows us to appreciate the expressions of the gospel throughout the Old Testament.  We read of the LORD shutting the door of the ark before the flood waters came and are awed at his mercy to Noah in doing what Noah could not do for himself.  We read the promises God gave to Abram of land and descendants and his own presence and are stunned by the riches of his undeserved grace.  We read of God opening Sarah’s womb and are amazed by his kind faithfulness to always keep his promises.  While these are not “the gospel” in its narrowest sense, they are aspects of God’s proactive grace to bring his people into closer communion with himself.

Pray with me that we might remain in awe of God’s undeserved kindness toward us and joyfully worship him as we see pieces of the gospel throughout the pages of Scripture.

Pastor Chris

Thus God’s story begins with these words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).  We see God setting the pieces in place for his story to unravel: a good creation, humans who are created in his image and given purpose, a pattern of rest, and a tree to test whether his people will fully trust him.  Then God’s people rebel and bring the conflict into the story that sets up the need for redemption, which God hints will come through a descendant of Adam and Eve.

This has huge implications for our emphasis on reading the Bible.  Why do we read the Bible?  Why should you consider beginning today in Genesis 1-2 and Psalm 1 so you can read the Bible through in one year?  We have attempted to answer that question through one of our core values: “We prayerfully seek to be shaped in our priorities and affections by the Christ-centered story line of the Bible rather than the values and assumptions of this passing age.”

Among the numerous reasons why we read the Bible, this is central: to be shaped by God’s story.  Take today’s reading for example.  When we see God introduced as the main character of his story, it shapes our understanding of life being about God, not me.  When we read that God created the heavens and earth, it shapes how we view and treat trees, mountains, animals, and land.  When we read that God created Adam and Eve in his image and commanded them to fill the earth and subdue it, it shapes our sense of purpose in this world.  When we read that this first couple was naked and not ashamed, it shapes the type of intimacy we pursue in marriage (not to mention the nature of marriage as a man and a woman).  The list goes on.

I encourage you to begin today with some plan to make it through the whole of God’s story in 2010.  We will provide guides on Sunday for you to keep in your Bible, or you can follow the plan as we post it on the left sidebar of this e-mail each week.  As we read, ask God to shape your life, your view of the world, your priorities, and even your desires by the grand story that he is telling.

Seeking to be shaped with you,

Pastor Chris

First, what do the shepherds remind us about Jesus as God’s prophet?  They remind us that we should listen to what God says to us through Jesus.  The shepherds modeled this on a very simple level in that the angels announced to them that God’s Messiah had been born in Bethlehem, and the shepherds listened to that message and responded by leaving their sheep and going to see the baby.  And because they listened to what God was saying, they left the manger scene “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them” (Luke 2:20).

But God’s communication to us through his son only began with Jesus’ birth announcement.  In fact, as Jesus grew and began his ministry, it became evident that God was communicating to us through the very words of Jesus, the mighty deeds of Jesus, and the tenderness, the faithfulness, the sufferings, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.  Through Jesus’ entire life God was speaking to us his final, full word, telling us “This is who I am!  This is how I have come to save you!”  If we will hear and believe what God is saying to us through Jesus we, like the shepherds, will be filled with great joy.

Second, what do the animals remind us about Jesus as God’s priest?  Perhaps we could start by asking why the animals were there in the first place?  Why did families in Israel keep animals?  Certainly for food and transportation and labor, but there was another reason.  Animals also served as sacrifices to God that could cover the sins of God’s people.  Lambs and bulls and goats and even birds were sacrificed so that God’s people could be made clean when they broke his law.

These animals in the stable remind us that Jesus came as a priest to offer his own body as a sacrifice for our sins.  It was never enough that the blood of animals were shed for our sins; only the blood of God’s perfect Son could forever remove our guilt before God and make us right with him.

Third, what do the wise men remind us about Jesus as God’s king?  They remind us that, as a king, Jesus is to be worshipped.  When the wise men finally arrived to see the child Jesus, their purpose was clear.  They asked around Jerusalem, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2).  When they finally found Jesus, Matthew writes, “they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11).

What we learn from these wise men is reverence.  They had a deep enough reverence for this child king that they travelled for many months, brought valuable gifts, and bowed before Jesus the king.  Jesus is not only a word to be listened to and a sacrifice to be trusted in, he is a king to be reverenced.  So come let us adore this Jesus and give to him afresh all that is most valuable to us, even our entire lives.

Pastor Chris

Even as a baby Jesus’ entrance into the world demanded that people rearrange their lives around him.  Joseph rearranged his understanding of the righteous thing to do with a pregnant fiance, based on the angel’s message that “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20).  The Magi, who likely came to worship Jesus from Persia or Babylon (read: Iran or Iraq), drastically rearranged their schedules, since the journey to Bethlehem could have taken 40 days one way.  Herod, in his typical paranoia, rearranged his focus of maintaining political power, ruthlessly slaughtering the baby boys of Bethlehem.

The necessity of adjustment around Jesus only intensified as he began his public ministry.  His forerunner, John the Baptist, preached the coming of the Lord in such dramatic fashion that people from commoners to tax collectors to soldiers asked, “what then shall we do?” (Luke 3:10, 12, 14).  The Pharisees were repeatedly forced to reassess their understanding of the Law and true righteousness.  Even in Jesus’ humanly weakest hour, he left Pilate to rearrange his philosophical assumptions around the question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38).

Jesus never fits into our agenda.  He cannot be caged by our categories, explained by our empiricism, or dismissed by our difficulties in believing him.  Jesus demands that we rearrange our lives around him and his mission.

I for one am seeking to understand what this means for my life.  It is one thing to read of the radical change Jesus demanded in his day from the safety of cultural, geographical, and chronological distance.  But what does this mean in the fresh air of December 2009?  How does this change how I view hot-topic issues of our culture, how I invest my time, what relationships I pursue, how I spend my money?  Am I in any tangible, concrete way arranging my life around Jesus and his agenda?

Let this be a burning question on our hearts as we close the books on 2009 and look toward 2010.  May we not ignore the radical nature of Jesus call to follow him.  Let us approach the year ahead and open to him our day planner, our checkbook, our relationships, our habits, even our assumptions, and let Jesus as Lord take center stage of our lives.

Pastor Chris

The Times was curiously silent about the implications of this phrase, “attempted abortion.”  I have searched the internet in vain to find any legal explanations of this crime and its consequences, but at the surface level it seems straightforward.  A person cannot force another person to have an abortion.  A woman has a legal right to attempt an abortion herself through a licensed doctor, but another person cannot attempt the abortion without her consent.

Of course, this type of logic works in other situations as well.  For instance, I have the full legal right to purchase a baseball bat, enter my house with it, and proceed to demolish my desktop computer.  However, no one else has the legal right to do the same; they could be prosecuted for destruction of property.

Herein lies the problem with the legality of abortion and the illegality of attempted abortion.  The current law of the land situates an unborn baby as property, not a person.  For born children, the identity of one who would harm them makes no difference-mother or not.  But for unborn children, the status of motherhood grants the legal power to fatally harm her child.  Quite apart from Biblical truth, this is simply illogical and immoral.

My prayer is that God would use this recent case of “attempted abortion” to help those who pursue justice for the unborn to raise a red flag, citing this gaping chasm between what is legal and what is ethical in our society.  I do not pretend that the broader social and economic issues surrounding abortion are simple and easily solvable.  But this point is clear: if it is illegal for a person to kill an unborn child without the mother’s consent, it should be illegal for a person to kill an unborn child with the mother’s consent.

Pastor Chris

On the other hand, because the world is currently corrupted by rebellion against God, we as God’s children can not feel at home in the current state of affairs.  The New Testament authors speak of Christians as “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11) whose “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20) such that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).  Hence the follower of Jesus must walk somewhat of a fine line.  We appreciate the physical creation that God is redeeming while not allowing our hearts to feel at home in the world as it is.

Shirley Novkov, who left for the place of her true citizenship on Monday morning, helped me tremendously by reinforcing the sojourning, exile nature of our relationship with this world.  She experienced the brokenness of this world both relationally, as she lost her husband Milt more than 5 years ago, and physically, as she suffered intensely from Parkinson’s disease.  This positioning made Shirley quite eager for her lasting city.  I spoke to her at length a few times over the last 6 months, and she had a striking poise about her as she embraced her own mortality and set her sights on a world defined by resurrection.

Perhaps you are in a similar stage of life, where the loss of loved ones and the declining health of your body position you to lean into the life to come with diminishing regrets for leaving this life.  Or perhaps you are young, full of vigor, and excitedly engaged in the affairs of work, family, society, entertainment, politics, and all that makes up life on this earth.  If I learned nothing else from Shirley, I learned that we need each other in the body of Christ.  We who think toward the end of our lives in months or years need reminders from the young that this world is a place God is redeeming, not merely a sinking ship to be abandoned.  Even more significantly, we who are young and entrenched in this life need those who are finishing the race to remind us that “the present form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31) and not to get too settled in.

May God continue to help us appreciate and bless one another across generational lines as we seek to live as God’s people in this world together.  I know that I am thankful for the way in which Shirley impacted me, and look forward to being with her again in that lasting city.

Pastor Chris

1. I am thankful to God for Aaron Dotterer’s leadership and the direction of the House ministry

Last week Aaron wrote an article that introduced us to the way the student ministry is “reformatting for the future” (if you have not read the article I encourage you to do so).  This transition emerges from a long season of prayer and planning, and Aaron has done a tremendous job of leading the students into a new format-Missional Communities-that should be sustainable for their upcoming phases of life.  The more I hear Aaron and others talk about this way of living “in Christ together,” the more I am excited about this direction.

One a broader scale, I am thankful for how I see the formation of these Missional Communities putting hands and feet on what we learned this year in 1 Corinthians-primarily the centrality of the gospel to our relationships and the imperative of giving ourselves wholly to Jesus’ mission of making disciples.  I anticipate hearing stories in the months to come of what God continues to do in our students’ lives and want to learn from them as they hold fast to the gospel in community.

2.  I am thankful to God for his redeeming work in our neighborhood

God’s work in our neighborhood continues to grow in fruitfulness and intensity.  Recently a few of the young ladies in our church began a Bible study with some of the pre-teen girls in the neighborhood called “Lies Young Women Believe.”  This could not be a more crucial topic at a more crucial time for these girls who are facing very adult realities and decisions though they are not yet teenagers.

Another cause for great thanksgiving is a young man from our neighborhood who professed faith in Christ on Sunday.  I will let him share his own story in the weeks to come, but this is further evidence that God’s kingdom is spreading in our neighborhood.

At the same time, the Tuesday night workers need our continuing prayers as the challenges of loving neighbors from broken communities and broken families intensify.    Pray for wisdom, protection, and the triumph of God’s love in the gospel as our brothers and sisters reach out to those God has called us to serve.

3.  I am thankful to God for Jesus, the Prophet, Priest, and King.

Each advent we use different portions of scripture to reenter Israel’s anticipation for her Messiah which found its fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth.  The previous four years we have used the opening portion of the four gospels toward this end, and this year we are going to depart from that pattern by looking at the three great offices in Israel’s life that begged for fulfillment: prophet, priest, and king.  Jesus transcended all expectation for what the greatest prophet, the greatest priest, and the greatest king might look like, and my hope is that we can use these weeks to enter into the ancient yearnings for this fulfillment and rejoice together in all that Jesus is.

Thankful to God for these and a multitude of blessings,

Pastor Chris