Bandits No More

We saw great natural beauty on our trip. For me, the highlight of the trip wasn’t seeing nature – or going to Disneyland. Rather, it was seeing fruit. I led the youth of Fountain Valley First United Methodist Church for four years. It was a great blessing to see so many of them still walking with Jesus. Perhaps the biggest blessing was hearing Geoff Wilson preach. Go Geoff!

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Originally uploaded by rheyduck.

While on our California trip, we stayed with some friends in Tiburon. We’d gotten the idea the community was an expensive place to live (real estate prices average well over a million – and this is for small houses on small lots). We learned, however, that Tiburon was originally for the families of laborers, while Belvedere was where the wealthy had their homes. As far as I could tell, except for the lower income set aside apartments, no one in my social class or below live here any more (I was told the longshoreman who live in the area make $120k a year). Our friends told us that the two questions asked when you meet someone are:
1. Where do you live?
2. Do you have a view?

They take views mighty seriously. (Here’s a link to their View Ordinance as it relates to trees.) Our friends told us that views are so important that you have to get your neighbor’s permission to do anything to your house – including changing from single pane to double pane windows. I asked if the views were valued primarily for the sake of the view or for that American god “property value.” Take your guess what the answer was.

Tiburon was a very nice place to visit, but I don’t think I’d fit in as a resident.

Donald Sensing comments on the recent Supreme Court Kelo ruling on government seizure of private property for the benefit of others. I haven’t read the ruling, but from what little I’ve heard it sounds horrible.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to further discussion at Christianity Today.

Blogging has been slow because of my vacation to California. Just ran through a theological test though. Here are my results. Nothing shocking.

The irony overwhelms me. “Scientists” or “experts” or whoever comes up with these things have an astounding new discovery. Behavioral therapy can significantly reduce the need for medication for ADHD

Haven’t parents known for years that behavioral therapy has great affects on the behavior of kids?

For too many years we have been rolling headlong toward popping pills for just about everything. Perhaps this will herald a new day in medicine… a day when we don’t reach for the pill bottle first thing every morning and last thing at night.

We had a guest preacher lead our morning Bible Studies at Annual Conference this year. While she did a good job, I couldn’t help but think that she was increasing her visibility toward a run at the the episcopacy in 08.

But how does one get such gigs? Does one approach one’s bishop and say, “Bishop, I would like a shot at the episcopacy at the next Jurisdictional Conference, could you contact some of your bishop friends and get them to invite me to lead a bible study at other annual conferences in our jurisdiction?”

“Here we are, entertain us,” wrote Kurt Cobain, claiming to identify the shallowness being bred into the young among us as our media culture thrived in the early 1990s.

This is being written in Hamburg, Arkansas. I am one of approximately 2400 senior high youth and adults who have traveled from central Texas to Arkansas this week for the Central Texas Conference Youth in Mission trip (CTCYM). In July we will have some 700 junior high youth and adults doing very similar things within central Texas.

I’ve got good news. We are spending our nights on the floors of churches and community centers around the state and our days helping people. We are building wheelchair ramps, replacing floors, painting houses, and much more. We are touching lives.

We are doing these things because we serve a God who loved us enough to come to us. One of the ways we thank God for finding us and loving us and inviting us into a relationship with Him is to spread the word; To share the love.

There is more than enough bad news these days, and more than a fair share of it is about “the youth of today.” According to some, young people are growing more detached from society all the time. Many people my age and older are too busy looking down our noses at youth and their music and hair and clothing styles we don’t give them a chance.

If you have any concern about “today’s youth,” this week should give you encouragement. Not only did all these young people pay to get to go and do sweaty work for a week, they are willing waking up at 6:30 each morning and eagerly getting back out to the worksites.

The theory on mission trips in youth ministry used to be that the kids would do a half day of work if they were offered an exciting diversion or entertainment in the afternoon. I am happy to tell you that theory is outdated; since CTCYM was founded in 1994, youth have been working hard from 8 to 4 to bring hope and comfort to people they have never met before.

We hear two critical reactions to these trips. First, some tell us that charity starts at home and that we ought not have to travel to do mission work. The first of these trips I took the youth of one church on so inspired a couple of them that when they got home that summer they planned a similar time of service in their own community. The truth is these mission trips and others like them change those who go, making them better neighbors at home.

The other criticism is that many of the people we are offered help don’t deserve it. Some of them have made poor choices that have brought them to the place they are now. In support of this point, many of our clients are able, or have family who are able, to be doing the things we are doing, but doing them for themselves.

I am fraid people who offer this criticism have missed the whole point of the Gospel. Every since the first sin we have been trying to take care of our own problems and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Knowing that we couldn’t do it on our own, Jesus came to bridge the gap between God and humanity that we could not bridge on our own.

This is precisely what makes the Gospel good news; that God loved us all enough to invite us back, not because we could or should do it anything ourselves, but simply because He loves us.

We help others, whether or not they deserve it because we serve a God who stepped in to help us even though we could not deserve it.

Go thou and do likewise.

I tell my kids to try to learn from experience. I also tell them it’s usually cheaper to learn from someone else’s experience than from your own. In this piece, Tarek Heggy lists some weaknesses of the Arab Mind. Being neither an Arab nor the son of an Arab, I think the weaknesses he lists are worth examining ourselves for. When you pray for the Arabs to be delivered from these weaknesses (surely it would be good for the world for Arabs to be a healthy, strong set of cultures?), you can then pray for your own deliverance.

The Times of London talks about the financial crisis in the Church of England. According to their figures, the biggest single expense – 4 times larger than the second largest – is clergy pensions.

I understand the idea of taking care of retired clergy. But that’s not the mission of the church. Some how, they, like us, need to figure out how to move from maintenance to mission. They don’t need just any mission, but they need to figure out how to live the Christian life in such a compelling way they can re-evangelize their country.

Tod Bolsinger has a good discussion of people who claim they “worship” on the golf course, at the beach, or in the mountains. He says these folks are confusing worship with inspiration. Both are good, both are useful. But inspiration is direxted at us – what we get out of it. Worship, on the other hand, is about what we give God.