Dave Bloom has been a friend of mine since college, and during a few years he and I were serving together with Rob Randazzo and Chad Clarkson as Elders together at Two Rivers Church. Dave’s wife, Katie (Chad’s sister), is a wonderful woman who has helped me in real estate, and whose girl Taylor used to come to our place and my wife Jen would watch her. Katie was always an athlete in college with my sister in-law Jessica Russell, and their friendship has lasted very closely ever since college.

Katie was completely healthy until last Wednesday and Thursday, when she suffered a cerebral aneurism: something that happens more in women than men, and mostly in people aged 30-60 years, but only about 10 in every 100,000 people suffer from this injury according to this site.

How can you help?

1. Check every couple hours at the website: Katie’s progress is noted on Katie’s Progress, a mutual and old friend Meredith Sterk put online.
2. Pray for Katie and Dave and their family.
3. Comment and encourage on Meredith’s blog.
4. Ask your church to pray for Katie’s restoration and for her families and friends to turn to Jesus Christ, our savior who also suffered once for our sins.

When tragedy hits, Jesus in Luke 13 asked us to reflect on the fact that just because the pain is huge it does not mean that there was something specific that caused the issue. He makes it very clear that we all are going to suffer not just because of our sins but also because of our sinful parents and grandparents and ultimately Adam’s sin in the garden! - and then Jesus went and suffered (as a perfect person with no sin to blame it on except our own!).

It is important to note: Katie is not suffering because of something that she did. That’s not the point of suffering. But as long as we do have suffering we need to know *why* we are suffering, don’t we? That is a tough question.

The quickest, most religious-sounding answer - and the *short-sighted* answer is: “We suffer for our sin.” That is *not* the full answer. In fact, we are *not suffering for our sin* - for if we suffered for our sin, we would have no life at all. The very fact that we are still breathing is evidence that for some reason we have life, and evidence that if we are suffering for our sins, our sins must not be that bad. But truly our sins are bad (murder? rape? theft? child abuse? adultery?) and they somehow will be punished.

The good news is that punishment will be made but perhaps it already has been paid! At least, Jesus Christ is a person who was also God who was the only one fit to take that payment and he did take it, by suffering! He didn’t push a button; he suffered. And he taught us how to suffer in the face of injustice because he suffered unjustly.

So when Katie is in and out of consciousness and her husband weeps over her in this recovery state, and when her three children cannot fathom what has happened, this is all not a payment for someone’s wrongdoing; but it is a trial which seems unjust and that this world is just upside down. We are right to feel that way, if we believe we have an example in Jesus’ suffering to look at and say, “That is how to suffer unjust hardship.”

In the midst of her suffering she and her family are bearing witness to the world of *how to suffer*.

Look and live.

You know, when I deal with my wife Jen I find myself often in decision-making saying, “Wow, I really cannot see how Jennifer’s idea on this is right, but wow, I really cannot see how Jesus would cave in to me and die for me when I was wrong.” But then I realize Jesus died not because of whether or not his Wife was wrong or right, but because of His love for His Wife.

That’s a part of the gospel. And when I continually and voluntarily repeat the gospel to myself and get it banged into my head (it’s in there, it just needs repetitive banging on the side to get the coins to drop like the soda machine Tim Keller’s wife described), I then feel OK with making decisions which do not reflect my own will but Jennifer’s. I am becoming more-and-more “fine” with making a decision which even seems quite not-preferable, knowing in the end my assignment is to reflect God’s love for me, reflect that in my love toward my wife.

I just don’t think it’s quite obvious yet that many husbands do that for their wives. In my talks with men who are good, solid, strong-willed bold and confident men (real men), they rarely seem to make decisions that seem not-preferable to them but preferable to their wives. Wives don’t usually come off displaying that their husbands killed themselves for their wives. It usually appears that women are frustrated, ready to spill the truth over coffee with another hurting woman, which tells me that husbands just plain love themselves and truly have convinced themselves that they are somehow loving their wives.

This is a disastrous, adulterous affair in comparison to Christ’s love for his Wife.

Take the Type-A Male Husbands’ misuse of money, for example.

If you are reading this and thinking that you are not a Type-A Male then you probably are a Type-A Male. Wives are smart enough to know how to budget, to spend well, etc.; men have of course a similar aptitude potential for proper handling of finances. Say, for example, a wife wanted a certain lovely dining room table that the husband seems to disagree with, then it would be WONDERFUL to have him even make a sacrifice not of money, but of a crucifixion of personal choice and individual desire, and should buy the table she wants.

How do you know you are listening to your wife?

When blood shoots from the veins of your will.

When your hands are not tied but nailed to the wood and unable to fight for your wants.

When you faint from lack of breathing your words of logical courtroom presentations.

When she stares you down and knows that truly you love her and have no more conjunctive loopholes to your offering to listen to her opinion. (I love you. But can we please do what I want?)

When “final decision-maker” is speared in the side and water and blood gushes out its side.

When his list of sacrifices for her is properly buried in a grave, never to raise its proud head again.

A mentor’s question

My mentor and friend Kurt Vanderwiel met with me a few months back and asked me, “Are you dying for your wife?” I immediately felt, “Yeah, look at me, I am dying for her, look what I did here and there and everywhere to die for her.” But that was actually compounding the problem, we concluded - it made me the proud producer of actions and thereby the truly loved one, not Jen.

So he asked again in a different way, “OK, maybe, not are you dying for her, but are you *really, really, LIVING for her*?”

Now that is what Christ did and that’s my blessed mission: to live for her in such a way that it *really, really* shows that I’m alive not for myself but for Jen. Every decision will and should reflect the cross where Christ ultimately gave up his personal desire for the object of his affection: His Wife.

Somehow wives should communicate this theory to their husbands (or point them to this blog, *plug*) and pray that they don’t put up his dukes as it were and retaliate with self-loving, proudly listed history of their sacrifices for their wives.

Take, for example, our table story. If the wife wanted that table, and most likely she did not get it but he got her the cheaper, “better-for-the-family” option, then God is teaching her this lesson by not getting it: the lesson that somehow her husband has not breathed the air of the gospel; and therefore to “save” him her job is to communicate this fact with grace to him. Deep down, the husband would admit that he truly believes something other than the Christ-love which puts itself on the line even during the temptations of his pressing opinion. He truly still thinks that it is his job to not give her what she wants but to give her what *he believes* is in her best interest.

But that is not how Christ loved us; he gave us our ultimate deep down desire and he gave himself hell for it.

Wives, has your husband put himself “through hellish sacrifices” so you could have heavenly life experiences? In some ways I know he has, but still, in larger life decisions I witness with many stories of marriages that is not yet true. It’s usually “What do you want to do?” then the wife says what she wants, then the husband knocks it down a few notches, a few more, rationalizes, and in the end a decision is made in favor of what he really wants for her, not what she wants for her.

I suppose one could say, “Brooks, Christ gave us not what we wanted but what He wanted for us. So as a good wife I should look for what my husband wants for me and do what he wants.” But the reason you say that is because that’s the version of the gospel that you have been taught by your man, the man whom you seem to follow and are built to follow. The only time that rationalization works is when the husband is truly holy and practically perfect.

On this earth, only the wife knows ultimately what you as a wife want; and that is why it is for your husband’s sanctification to learn that the sacrifice is embodied in trusting what YOU want and going for that. That’s his difficulty - to allow the household to even make a mistake as it were, (an “unwise, feminine decision! the horror!") – and then to ultimately bear responsibility for it!

Wow, to think that I could “allow” Jennifer to blow up our house-buying process and say “no” to a house that I think will be perfect! But I guess Christ is teaching me that in many ways I guess that’s why Eve was created: to help Adam figure out the best thing to do, and to understand the depth of personal-desire-dying to myself; to watch her personal desires shine!

If I allow Jen to have a choice, to make it all her choice, and all my responsibility to “clean up if it all goes bad,” then truly I am starting to understand it’s not about wise decisions (from the view at Mt. Imperfect Marriage, the cross hardly seems a wise act, to lose it all in flesh and fluids on the somber, sandy soil below), but about love decisions (for Jesus’ Wife, the Church, the cross seems like a very loving thing).

Wives, you should always get your choice. You don’t, however always get your choice. It is not because your husband believes you don’t know what you’re talking about when you voice your opinions during conflict; but truly it is because your husband does not understand how much Christ loves His Wife the Church.

When husbands imitate God’s love for people, the result is exemplification of a dangerous, risky, not-sure-if-this-is-wise-but-I’ll-pay-the-difference type of love.

The most savvy businessmen are quick in the board room and, unfortunately, quicker in the bedroom.

show me your cash and I’ll show you your lover
–Matthew 6:21

This is all the rage: a church struggles and then decides it needs to fix something that’s broken.

But the solution to fixing a problem in church is *very rarely* to add a program.

1. The local church grows a bit
2. Church leadership hears complaints that people are “losing touch with one another.”
3. Said leadership decides they should be “biblical” and so instead of just pushing people around they come up with a biblical-sounding solution.
4. Said leadership announce campaigns such as:

“We’re getting back to the New Testament Church”

or

“We’re going to become an Acts 2:42 Church”

or

“We’re going to be a large group of small groups.”

5. People in the church discuss and think this is a credible, biblical solution.
6. Prima facie, it “works” for a while.
7. People start complaining or discovering at the very root level that church is about programs and doing, doing doing.
8. The theoretical gospel is lived out in a practical moralistic religiosity where if you do not attend your Small Group you are scorned.
9. Small groups take a lot of effort and so those who burn out fade out, and those who do not take pride in their efforts (see step 8 ).
10. The church becomes a business organization where those who attend and pay get their way and said leadership does not lead but manages the people and the products they provide (teaching and small groups) and placates the laity, instead of leading with fire, Christ-centered love and truth, and preaching the gospel with confident humility.

Churches who easily teach that Acts 2:42 was a solution that the early church did to fix their problem are giving their people a confused hermeneutic.

The early church did not sit around contemplating their solution to chaos and thousands of conversions. Rather, their chaos and conversions were caused by the Spirit (yes, people following Jesus often breeds chaos in one’s life) and meeting in smaller groups was just what they did to cope.

The problem with programs as a prescription for pain

Small groups are not prescriptions for failing churches; instead, they are descriptive of successful churches.

When you cram people into someone’s house that they do not know, the results can be devastating. Instead, the leader of the small group should be a person that the person either invited to church or invited to the group. While sign-up sheets are not the devil, they are a sign of something gone awry when people look at the formed groups and complain about what group they are put into, or what people are in the group for which they signed up to be part.

Our job is not to build machines but to plant churches. You must evaluate your church’s situation and go deeper than just adding another program, even if it seems the program will pacify the complainers. The complainers are either not allowing church authority (the Elders/Pastors) to do their job or they are not willing to come under another type of authority; or, it could be that their complaints are symptoms of a true sign that frankly, no one is available to meet with them and disciple them.

Leaders in churches, in order to biblically solve your churches problems, you must examine yourselves first and decide whether you are admitting or abdicating your own responsibility to lead your people into a grace-based relationship with God, afforded by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Most likely, ailing church members are not hungry for a new program or campaign; they are hurting from a lack of powerful preaching that demonstrates conspicuous application of the good news that Jesus Christ alone can fix their hurts; and that alone by faith in God’s power to do so and through constant repentance toward Him. Only by teaching in this vein will people see that they are alone “fixed” by God, and that his point in all of eternity is not to attend to them but to make His power and work most glorified.

My friend at work, Ryan is an Aplington-Parkersburg alum. He’s sat under coach Ed Thomas and sometimes Ryan brings up coach Thomas while we’re at work programming web applications and websites at T8.

I came across this video (I’m sure there are a few more out there like it) but it highlighted the destruction, the hope, and the heart of Aplington and Parkersburg.

Here’s the video, highlighting a few of the NFL players who have come from this town of 1900 residents. Please pray that God would continue to point the way for these friendly people as you watch the video.

A few months ago we discussed at Grab a Brew Share Your View the idea of censorship. John Bailey brought up the topic and it was perhaps one of our most involved evenings of discussion.

At times the topic revolved around protecting children: we want obscenity laws and censorship to protect not only us but usually we just want to protect our children.

This morning I read about a Florida condominium project prepping to suggest to its association that one of their pools be clothing optional.

I am not against clothing-optional bathing, for one; my shower and tub in my house is clothing-optional. If you need to take a shower, come on over, we even recommend you shed your clothes before you do it.

However, we also hope you lock the door.

One bad experience was when a distant family member who will remain unnamed did not close the door, and I walked by a bit startled, my walking gait quickening.

I’m playing around a bit here. My intention is, of course, to point out that there is a big difference between private nakedness and public nakedness.

About Children and clothing-optional.

Back to the article… In it, a woman says that every day the school bus shows up to pick up 10-15 children for school. She says she will be moving. She indicated that the clothing-optional “lifestyle” is not for children.

My question is: If we had no children, would you really want this proposed “Eden” (using the label the development company is using)?

1. If we had no children, we would all get super old and no one new and physically beautiful would be around to gaze upon.
2. If we had no one new around, more than likely as older people, we might prefer to keep our clothes on.
3. If you are old and/or chubby please always keep your clothes on. If you are hot and young, you will soon cease to be one if you undress for everyone and cease to be two if you wait long enough.

If the idea of public nudity tends to highlight youth and non-wrinkledness and non-fat-rolls and non-pot-bellies and non-thunder-thighs, then WHO WANTS TO BE NUDE?

I honestly believe this proposed highly-chlorinated pool of Eden is trying to lure in these types of people:

1. The young man who wants to see naked women for free without his imagined burdens of actually providing for and protecting and molding a life around that naked woman, and
2. A woman who is so confident in her body being unattractive that she knows the man in #1 above will have no desire to bother her in the pool.

I suppose there could be a third kind of person here:

3. The guy or girl (all over 18 of course) who for whatever reason tries it out (it’s a liberating lifestyle, after all!), finds out it’s not what they were looking for after one dip in the pool, and, realizing he’s not looking at Eve or she’s not looking at Adam, turns their head and walks out, filing a false advertisement and bait-and-switch lawsuit against their own association.

I would suppose that many people reading this might ask, “Brooks, come on, this pool is about just feeling free and losing that burdensome clothing we weren’t meant to wear anyway.”

My answer is, “If it’s so good, why would you ever not want to share that with your children?”

After all, whether you believe in God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or if you are not a person of faith, we all know that the nudist colonies are already in our midst: they are the children!

Children pee off the porch. Adults get fined.

Kids bare their parts on the side of the road when you aren’t near a gas station. Their parents hold it and risk kidney infection. (I can hear it now: “Oh if we could all be like children again and just feel no inhibitions!” I promise, if you lose your inhibitions like that, your friends might just leave you on the side of that road with your deposit.")

Toddlers run around naked on purpose in the unfenced yard. Adults get gawked at and warned by other parents with children, and other normal people.

Babies celebrate the most defining moment by getting naked and shedding a few tears of emotion (birth). Adults celebrate their most defining moment by getting drunk and/or eating ice cream.

My point: children are naked all the time and do not have any inhibitions. Therefore, why the hubbub about not allowing children under 18 into this proposed pool?

The answer at Grab a Brew would have been: to protect the children.

Children are allowed in a regular pool; they’re allowed even in a pool where the most baring of bikinis are allowed; and they’re allowed in - even selling popsicles nearby - pools where fat men wearing speedos are also allowed.

(Like the guy I saw yesterday walking with shorts, sandals, and nothing else, except a gut that you and I would both agree that needed to be medically - not publicly - examined.)

OK, so the “Eden” pool does not allow teens or kids under 18 because they’re trying to protect the children - from *what*?

From adults who don’t know how to behave when they’re naked.

From adults who can’t control themselves just because they have no clothes on.

From other kids who have not had an adult in their life to tell them that adults are often child-hurters.

From men and women who should probably not be naked in a pool.

In other words, by not allowing children, you are excluding perverts who are child molesters, you are excluding adults who have young children, and you are welcoming only men and women who are either blind; or believing America == Hollywood without HD makeup; or young men who want to pick up an older woman; or older women who have nothing worth hiding.

Some day, I want to interview the association members of Eden and find out if my predictions come true.

(Either that or I will get a libel suit slapped on me.)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369103,00.html

It appears that many teens in a certain Gloucester, Mass. high school made a pact to get pregnant. The result: a high school facing a fourfold increase in pregnancy rates in one year. Fourteen teenage girls in particular are labeled as having sworn to this group pact.

This article is interesting.

It claims two prima facie fallacies:

1. “The Gloucester baby boom is forcing this city of 30,000 to grapple with the question of providing easier access to birth control, something this largely Catholic enclave is slow to embrace, the site said.”

This is false logic. Why would access to birth control reduce the pregnancy rate among teens signing a pact to attempt to get pregnant?

The answer is not contraceptive methods. The answer is to reduce the girls’ desire to be pregnant at an age and stage where she or the father is not able to best care for a baby.

Publicly provided birth control does not reduce pregnancy rates among teens who are trying to get pregnant.

2. “‘We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,’ Sullivan told Time.com.”

One of the most famous sources for birth control devices is also the ubiquitous provider for abortions. Planned Parenthood, here since the early 1900’s, promotes contraceptives such as pre- and post-pregnancy contraceptive and abortive devices and techniques.

The interesting thing about #1 above (making the assumption that birth control is the solution to stopping teens wanting to get pregnant) compared to #2 above is the proximity of abortive theory† and a statement assuming “fatherhood” of the child.

It seems that our cultural contradictions should be clarified: if you believe that abortion is an option then you on a trajectory to believing the statement, “Human life does not begin at conception but somewhere between the conception and the birth of a child.”

When this is stated correctly, then, any woman receiving an ultrasound in the first trimester would appropriately say, “I am receiving an ultrasound to detect the mass of flesh.” I believe that pro-choice people would not say this simply because it is awkward and uncommon. I am not stating that all people should always say exactly what they mean, by any means.

What I am pointing out, rather, is the inconsistent behavior of many of us, including the writer of this article, who let a quote slip by about “one of the fathers.” Perhaps it did not slip by the author; perhaps it was inserted by a provocative author to get people like you and me to think about this inconsistency.

† Abortion assumes that the embryo and often the fetus are not a baby but rather a fleshy sort of mass which means it is not killed but simply removed before it becomes human.
“Whether or not abortion should be legal turns on the answer to the question of whether and at what point a fetus is a person. This is a question that cannot be answered logically or empirically. The concept of personhood is neither logical nor empirical: It is essentially a religious, or quasi-religious idea, based on one’s fundamental (and therefore unverifiable) assumptions about the nature of the world.” Paul Campos, professor of law at the University of Colorado. “Opinions: PAUL CAMPOS: Abortion and the rule of law ,” Scripps Howard News Service, 2002-JAN

For those of you who are following Grab a Brew Share Your View, we finally have (OK, Kaio Church hosts it) an official podcast!

It’s definitely a step up in content, though the quality of the recording leaves you desiring a bit. The discussion was just simple, off-the-cuff, with little preparation on the part of anyone, and overall, part 3 really shows just how daringly open we have become with each other at this event.

Enjoy!

find it in iTunes by searching “kaio church”

-or -

Direct links:
Part 1
Part 2, ending
Part 3 (post-game discussions peek)

For those of you who are following Grab a Brew Share Your View, we finally have (OK, Kaio Church hosts it) an official podcast!

It’s definitely a step up in content, though the quality of the recording leaves you desiring a bit. The discussion was just simple, off-the-cuff, with little preparation on the part of anyone, and overall, part 3 really shows just how daringly open we have become with each other at this event.

Enjoy!

find it in iTunes by searching “kaio church”

-or -

Direct links:
Part 1
Part 2, ending
Part 3 (post-game discussions peek)

If Jesus was actually in His grave, he would be rolling over in it.

And if he were, we also wouldn’t have these being sold in a store near you.

It’s late and I just got done reading through John 5 with my friend who does not believe the Bible is true. Doing that puts me in the mood to dissect Christian subculture, much like my former post about Christian radio.

The problems with these easter eggs is that companies are responding to the demand by making a supply - and a profit - on plastic eggs, symbols of Spring coming, not symbols of the Resurrection. It’s like a Jew celebrating Christmas by selling a nativity set in which the cradle holds a dreidel.

What, you say, Christian bookstores also sell Bibles, and we wouldn’t want to shut that down? My answer to that is that if Bibles were really the point of a Christian bookstore, we probably would shut them down because no one buys Bibles anymore.

How do I know that? Ha ha, I got ya! We know they can’t and don’t sell Bibles, well, because they need to sell plastic egg-shaped containers stuffed with holy hardware to celebrate the Resurrection.

The least they could do with these Easter eggs is make them empty, like the tomb.

It amazes me: our ability to keep Christian bookstores (I use that conjunction loosely) in business. They seem to be all over the place. And many times it irks me so much simply because, well, I am and have been one of the people that miss the point of being a Christian: to know the one Person who died yet is not in a tomb anymore.

This is what makes my job as a planting pastor so difficult.

(OK, this and Bible Man.)

I know, I know, these eggs are for teaching children what happened on Passion Week, etc. But you only need these things if you cannot read your Bible or explain to your children what the Bible says.

In conclusion…

…is that really a rock in egg mold Row 1 Column 6?