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When we read the prophets we tend to put ourselves in their place.  We read them as if we are Jeremiah, Isaiah or Haggai.  We read them as if we see things clearly and shake our heads at the people who are living in rebellion to God.  Yet, the reality is we are most often the people not the prophet.  We are being assimilated into the sinful ways of our world not rising above the world and speaking truth.  As we studied Haggai God spoke powerfully to me about what had happened to the returning people of God.  They called to rebuild the temple yet they left the project and took care of their own homes.  Even as God punished through a lack of crops and blessing they continued not even realizing God was punishing them.  Enter Haggai.  Haggai like the other prophets doesn’t beat around the bush he speaks straight to the issue.  It is time for you to live in paneled houses while the Lord’s House is in ruins?  How could they (after exile) so quickly forget their purpose?  The church today has done the same thing we have lost our purpose- Worshiping God by reaching the lost and teaching them to obey ALL He has commanded. 

The people’s response was refreshing.  They repented and the Bible says God stirred their hearts to complete the project!  That is my daily prayer for our church now.  I pray God will help us to repent and finish the project we were born to complete- reaching every person for Christ.  To do that we need a stirring of the Spirit!  Pray with me that God will stir us.

Eddie

Jn 3:30

By loss I just mean for now.  In the middle of losing Larry it’s hard not to encounter our Savior.  Loss drives us to the cross.  The cross is the place where we can relate our pain to God’s.  If we are willing we can lay aside our loss and dwell for a time on His loss.  We are able to empathize with a God willing to suffer.  By the very nature of God it seems impossible that He should suffer.  Our wonderful creator who loved us so, why should He suffer?  The cross puts all of life in proper perspective.  God can comfort us because He understands through experience what it is to suffer loss.  Though Christ was restored after three days we should never trivialize those three days.  One second is far too long for the Wonderful One to have to suffer.  In losing Larry we find Jesus.  In fact it’s hard for me not to think of Jesus when I think of Larry.  Every their personalities seems similar in so many ways.  Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and I will give you rest for your souls. 

                There are many people who are more like Christ because God used Larry to show us what Jesus looked like.  Every time I was around him I was blessed.  I wish he were here so I could hug him and tell Him how much he means to me and my family.  We will always be different because of Larry and I am certain we look more like our Savior.  I wish I could call and ask for the thousandth favor or see his truck pull up outside the office one more time.  I can’t help but wonder in all this why God would take someone who looked so much like His Son and then I remember He let His Son leave Heaven so we could have His presence.  He knows how we feel.  He is a good and compassionate God.  May His compassion be felt by all as we wait for His return…

Father,

Thank you for putting Larry into our lives.  Thank you for the days we spent together dreaming about your Kingdom.  Thank you for the beautiful picture he is of a son, husband and father.  We praise you for his never ending energy and love.  We are eager to see him again and serve you together once again.  Father thank you for your sacrifice and suffering we would be hopeless without you.

Love Eddie

Many people have a hard time understanding why we approach evangelism the way we do at BRBC.  I mean what right do we have to send people ½ way around the world when there are lost people right here on our street?  Further, why spend so much to go so far?  Let me 1^st say I have just as great a passion to go down the street to see someone saved as I do to see people saved in India but there is a big difference.  If the person down the street wants to hear the Gospel told correctly he/she has only to choose one of hundreds of churches they drive by or sleep through every Sunday.  The same is not true of the places the believers we train in India will go.  Still there’s even a greater reason I believe we should be in every school and every square and every country- it’s Jesus’ command.  Go make disciples!  Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth are the places we are to GO.  People talk about our Jerusalem but that’s not the point.   Jerusalem was and is Jerusalem not Greenville or wherever you’re from.  We are the ends of the earth.  We are the Gentiles and we have an obligation to finish the job and make the Jews jealous just as Paul says in Romans. 

So what exactly is our strategy?  First, every believer must share their faith every day no matter where we are.  Next, as a body, we need to ensure that the Gospel is clearly preached and the cross presented in the pulpit.  This doesn’t mean shallow preaching but Christ centered preaching.  Next, we need to aggressively pursue every chance we have to take the Gospel into the lost world.  I believe the schools are some of our best opportunities here but there are thousands of other venues.  Currently we use Child Evangelism Fellowship at two of the local elementary schools.  At a local middle school we are trying a Saturday basketball program and hope to help with Release Time where students are allowed to leave school for one class to study the Bible.  The Youth House (a house In front of a local high school) we’ve turned into a coffee house is a great example of going to the world.  In this ministry we are ministering students of all backgrounds with one thing in common; they will come to “The House” but would never come to our church.  This is a bridge ministry.  Students feel the love of God through our workers and slowly build trust.  Next they come to our Wednesday night youth service also there at “The House”, then you look up from the pulpit and see them on Sunday- How Awesome! 

So what about India?  Why go there with so much to do here?  There are more reasons than I can name here but let me give a few.  Our “missionaries” are outnumbered.  People are lost by the millions around the world and we need to be reminded that our mission is more than our community, we are about the Kingdom.  Jesus is ruler of the entire cosmos not just Greenville.  We need to have impact not just here but everywhere.  We need to be reminded that there are people who Jesus loves that are very different from us.  The believers we train are our brothers and they are facing insurmountable odds.  One last reason (again I could give hundreds).  Why wouldn’t we go?  If we have the chance to have impact in one of the darkest regions in the world who wants to stay home?  Personally I want to be part of the world wide advancement of the Gospel.  I want to see with my eyes what God is doing in every region on every mountain and in every valley.  I pray that one day I will have been to every country and seen God’s work in the lives of every people and nation.  Our God is the God.  He is the God of every nation and He deserves praise from all peoples. 

Are leadership books worth reading?  I think so.  Lots of pastors look down on any reading that’s not biblical- theological.  I’ve found great insights from many of the books I’ve read on leadership.  Most recently I’ve read the Next Generation Leader.  The focus of the book is around five issues: competence, courage, clarity, coaching and character.  Of these five issues the most helpful for me were clarity and character.  By Clarity Stanley means that we don’t always need to know what the “right” answer is, but we must be clear about what we are asking others to do.  Vagueness in leadership can be paralyzing.  This challenged me as a leader to be clear as I lead with the staff, leadership and the entire church.  I’ve already been praying about just what I can do to be clear in my leadership.  The second chapter that struck me was the chapter on character.  Interestingly, Stanley points out that often a leader’s ability will take him past his character.  He notes that many times we have the ability to bring success to an organization without being biblical.  (By the way the first chapter of Deep Change another popular leadership book by Robert Quinn, inadvertently points out the same thing when he notes that the majority of businesses with deep change couldn’t be used as examples because they actually had to break state laws to institute the change). We expect pastors to lead with principle but even pastors are tempted to take short-cuts.  These can be short-cuts in dealing with relationships or short-cuts in handling meetings to bigger issues of finances etc. Regardless, what a leader must decide is what success really looks like.  Usually, as Stanley points out, to maintain character a leader must slow down and take a much more complicated path than someone willing to do whatever it takes to “get ahead”.  This issue matters to me.  My character matters.  By character I mean who I am before God.  I care about pleasing God and so in all I do, with every decision I make, I want God to say “good job”.  Stanley helped remind me to review everything I do and who I am because my goal is to not only grow the Kingdom but to allow God to grow and impact my life.  The Next Generation Leader is a great, easy read for anyone who wants to grow as a leader.     

Eddie

Jn 3:30

What I love about Dan Zimmerley and the group that came from Nashville is their passion for Jesus.  The first time we invited Dan I expected him to come and teach us how to witness.  You know I was expecting method and technique.  Instead what we got was a weekend of passionate teaching about God and His Son Jesus.  This time Dan brought six men, one of them was my dad.  They are all walking with Christ.  Each of them are growing and in love with God.  Over the weekend we broke into small groups and went through six sessions.  Overall I got one thing out of the weekend.  The key to outreach in the church is being in love with Jesus- Period.  We will share when we love Him.  We’ll know what to share when we love Him.  We will have the leading of the Spirit when we love Him.  We will have the power of the Spirit when we love Him.  When we don’t worship through witnessing it’s because we don’t love Him.  We don’t need more programs or more teaching we need more love for our Savior.  The bottom line is the church acts like a teen afraid to be seen with their parents- it’s pure immaturity.  We need to grow up and all the programs in the world and all the training in the world can’t replace or even begin to compare with people who truly love Jesus.  As a pastor I realize I don’t love Him with the passion I should and the result is I’m not sharing like I once did.  My goal is simple- to fall back in Love with my Savior!     

Sorry, it has taken a while for me to get back to the blog.  Chris wrote about authenticity and the desire we all have to know and live truth.  In a world full of fakes we can sometimes feel pressure to equal their fakeness and so before we know what we’ve done we create a community of fakes.  The church should be just the opposite we all know that.  The church should be a place where we can share and struggle and grow together in Christ.  But let me ask you a question.  Wouldn’t it be great if when we looked into our hearts we loved what we saw and who we are?  But, what if when we look at who we really are we don’t like that person?  What if when we search our hearts what we find is an insecure sinner in need of growth and change?  How do you handle the reality that even in Christ or maybe I should say especially in Christ we find we are in need of being transformed?  Instead of trying to give a trite answer I will give you a word of comfort- Christ loves you and He knows you better than you know yourself. He loves you as you are.  So be real, not fake, but know you’ll never be more real than being who you are in Christ as He transforms your life.  The more real we are the more it frees those around us to be real.  The reality is we are all sinners who struggle. God bless you as you struggle to be real in Christ.

Eddie 

What I love about interacting with college students is that they are growing and changing and learning.  We are blessed this semester to have the chance to have several college students around BRBC.  I’m encouraged as I spend time with them and see their desire to know and please God.  I’m also grateful to pastor a church where all ages genuinely enjoy and appreciate the other generations.  It’s going to be fun to see what God does with our developing college ministry.  We don’t want to manufacture a college ministry but to let God shape the ministry and use the personalities of the students He’s brought to make our college ministry what He wants it to be.  

If you’re a student and would like to let me know what a pastor/church can do to make a real difference please let me know- I’d love your input.

Today was my fifth year anniversary at BRBC.  I can still remember vividly my first few weeks at BRBC.  I remember my first meetings with different leaders.  I remember how Allen Dorr personally took me around to meet many of our members and show me where they live.  When I think back I have fond memories of those days.  I remember clearly when my office was in the music office and God leading me to Jeremiah 17:7-8.  That picture of living a life completely confident in the Lord is still my vision for the church five years later.  I have learned so much over these years and I hope and pray they have been a blessing to the members of BRBC.  What I hope for our church today is really no different than five years ago.  I trust and believe that God is at work and that His Spirit will move among us this fall in an awesome way. For every member I hope you will join me in making this the best year we have ever had.  I hope you will share your passion for the Lord and worship Him as you’ve never done before.  I love each of you and thank you for allowing me to serve as your pastor.

Eddie    

One of the greatest things in the world is to watch your little girl sing praises to God.  That’s what I’ve gotten to do all week at our Vacation Bible School (VBS).  In our VBS, “Jerusalem Market Place”, the focus was on the last week of Jesus’ life.  The children pretend they are alive in Jesus’ day.  They even dress in costumes that fit the time period.  We talked about Jesus as King, His love, the garden arrest and His death and resurrection.  On the night I told Emma’s class about Jesus death she kept asking me “is Jesus dead”?  We were supposed to build suspense until the next night- but the answer was clear- no, Jesus is not dead, though He was dead.  I don’t think the reality of His death was ever so strong.  For my little girl it was as if Jesus was dead and she was very confused because mom and dad have always told her about Jesus as if He were alive. I have never had the reality of those three days made so powerful; what it must have been like to be a disciple and have to utter the words “Jesus is dead”.  I told Emma Jesus is alive now but He was dead.  She was and still is quite concerned about Jesus’ death.  Just to show one more example of Christianity through a three year olds eyes after it was all over last night I asked what she learned this week.  She told me that Jesus’ died to take away her sins.  Wow!  I thought that was incredible.  I told her how proud I was of her.  Then she paused and said something I wouldn’t have expected in a million years- “That wasn’t very nice”.  It took me a second but I realized anytime she takes something away from someone or someone else takes something from someone else it’s always bad.  Jesus had taken her sins and that was clearly not nice.   I explained that sin is very bad (like bugs) so Jesus taking it away was a great thing (don’t worry I explained more than the bugs thing…).  She thought for a moment then decided she agreed and begin to sip on her strawberry milkshake. 

Since the beginning of time children have sung songs to our Creator.  Nothing thrills the Heart of God any more than a child calling out in simple faith to their true Father.  Jesus warns anyone who would lead a little one astray that there are dire consequences.  On the other hand, we know that those who play a role in leading a little one to their Father will receive great blessings.  There are few areas as important today in our churches than those that teach children to know and love God.  It’s a joy as a pastor to watch the whole church come together and serve God by serving children especially when one of the children is yours.  To everyone who worked so hard this week and in the months leading up to this week- thank you and God bless.  To all those who give so we can have an outstanding children’s leader (Amber) and department- thank you.  Most of all thank you Father for entrusting us with these children and Kelly and me with Emma Grace and thank you for the blessing of serving You and Your Kingdom!

I couldn’t sleep and so I was getting a little reading done when something triggered this in my mind…

Every asked the question why?  If you ask Emma Grace “why did you do that”, she will often reply, “Because I did.” I love it; none of this philosophical mumbo jumbo, no excuses to hide her motives, just a three year old who steps back with authority and takes credit for her action.  Notice she takes credit.  Now, parents we rarely ever ask why our children did something when they are behaving.  I.e. we never ask why did you paint that beautiful picture on the proper piece of paper?  However, we do ask “why did you scribble on the wall”.  To that Emma Grace says “because I did”.  (Realize this is cutter depending on my mood and the cost of what has just been destroyed).  I think God often does the same.  He never skirts responsibility.  He never says I just wasn’t able to get there on time or I got stuck in traffic.  Instead, when we ask Him why, He often seems to say “because I did.”

As I read the Scriptures I feel like God often speaks more clearly than I can bear at times.  In fact, the more I read the word and meditate and dwell on the words of God the more I am amazed at what our Creator has taken the time over thousands of years to reveal to us.  He is an awesome God.  Yet, we often ask specific why questions and in those cases God seems to reply, “Because I did.”  Now this is not a callous, careless response but a response that says without the answer to why, will you still trust me.  Will you believe in my character with or without seeing all the whys?  God says that His words and His grace are sufficient.  That means they are not just adequate but completely adequate to meet all our needs. 

Why doesn’t God answer all our whys; because He doesn’t, not because He doesn’t love us and not because He doesn’t care.  Maybe one other way of getting at it is to say He has answered every question in His word that we will ever need to know.  We can guess at the “how is this ultimately good” till were exhausted but in the end we will have to either trust He is good or rebel and determine because we can’t find the answer He must not be good.

When we are faced with why questions I believe we should stop and ask who.  Who is God?  What do I know of Him?  Can I trust him?  Is He faithful?  Is He powerful?  Is He in control?  In the Bible’s answer to these questions the whys begin to fade and faith begins to form.  We stop trying to understand our circumstances and we begin to understand our God.  As we see Him we are able to make sense of how to deal with the why moments in our lives and move beyond them to Him.

Pastor Eddie