"The Secret"

Australian author Rhonda Byrne has written a blockbuster bestseller book entitled The Secret. (Atria Books/Beyond Words, 2006). Byrne says that this secret has been known by great people throughout history, like Beethoven and Abraham Lincoln, the secret to getting what you want (although I’m not sure if we want to be deaf like Beethoven or assassinated like Lincoln, but I digress.) Popularized by people like Oprah Winfrey, The Secret teaches a New Age philosophy called “the law of attraction,” which is basically another way of talking about the power of positive thinking.
But before you rush out and buy Byrne’s book or watch her film, let me share the real secret with you. You can open your Bible to Philippians 4:12 and find that the secret has already been revealed.
In this verse, the apostle Paul says, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.” Aha! Here’s the secret. And it’s not in New Age philosophy, it’s in the Bible. What is the secret?

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What to do when your cell phone goes off in church

A man told me he was visiting another church, and a cell phone started ringing during the sermon. It rang several times, and finally a person answered the phone and proceeded to carry on a conversation while the pastor was trying to preach!
It reminded me of the time I was attending a Baptist convention, when a cell phone went off during a sermon. A convention-goer answered the phone and headed toward the door to talk outside. As he was exiting, the man behind the pulpit said, "Tell them I'm not through with my sermon!"
Most of us have cell phones, and sometimes we forget to turn them off or put them on vibration. So what do you do when your cell phone starts ringing in church? Here are three bad suggestions:
1. When the cell phone goes off, stare at the person next to you and shake your head in disgust, as if the ring is coming from him or her. After a while your phone will quit ringing, and everybody will think the other person was the guilty culprit.
2. If everybody knows that you are the cell phone's owner, answer it quickly and pretend that it is an emergency. You can say, "Really? Did you call an ambulance?" or "Is she alive?" Then run out of the church, and remove yourself from the embarrassing situation altogether.
3. If none of the above will work, you can stand up and announce, "It's God calling. He says keep up the good work and be faithful." After all, didn't God say in Jeremiah 33:3, "Call to Me and I will answer you..."?
The only problem with all of the suggestions above is that they break the Ninth Commandment (you know, the one about lying). So here's another suggestion: If you're in the choir or somewhere else near the baptistry, toss the phone in the water. Or if you're not near the baptistry, just confess your sin and turn the thing off. Either way, the congregation will appreciate you, your conscience will be clear, and best of all, your phone won't interrupt your worship again during the service.

And the Shofar Blew

I just finished reading And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers.
In the Old Testament, the prophets called people to repentance by blowing the shofar, or ram's horn, and calling for a sacred assembly. In Rivers's novel, the shofar is the horn on a semi truck that almost hits a man head-on, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
All Christians can fall into the ways of the world, and in this story, it's a pastor of a fast-growing church who falls into the ways of the world, blinded by ambition, and eventually he...well, I'll let you read the book and find out. The book was written in 2004, before the famous fall of Ted Haggard, yet in some ways reminds me of Haggard. In other ways, the pastor reminds me of the watered-down Christianity of Joel Osteen, although Osteen has not fallen as far as the Pastor Paul Hudson, the main character in the book.
Interestingly, a pastor named "David" has an adulterous affair, and a pastor named "Paul" has a Damascus Road experience, and a church elder named "Samuel" tries to warn him before his fall, and a faithful church member named "Steven" is hurt and in affect martyred because of the pastor's ambition. Francine Rivers knows how to use Biblical names with great symbolism in her novels. It reminds me of her use of Hosea in her novel, Redeeming Love.
This book is truly a wake-up call for pastors and church leaders. I'm glad I read it. I'm glad my wife, who had already read the book, said to me, "You're not like that jerk." But I'm still glad I read the book as a reminder of the pitfalls to avoid.

The SBC in Indy

We are attending the Southern Baptist Convention at Indianapolis. They had expected 10,000 messengers, but there are only 7,250 here. I imagine the gas prices and the location being north of the Mason-Dixon line hurt the attendance. The crowd looks good, though, since the size of the convention hall is just right for the size crowd. The facilities are very nice. The weather temperatures are mild, in the 70's and 80's.

The convention elected Johnny Hunt, pastor of FBC Woodstock, Georgia, as convention president. He got about 3,100 votes, followed by Frank Cox of Lawrenceville, Georgia with about 1,286 votes, then Avery Willis (former missionary and author of MasterLife) who got 962 votes, then 255 for Bill Wagner, 188 for Les Puryear, and 45 for Wiley Drake (the man who got Southern Baptists to Boycott Disney-- I guess voters were punishing him).

For first V.P, Bill Henard, former president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, got 1,748 votes, then John Connell of Calvary in Savannah got 377 votes, then Chris Camden got 224 votes, so Henard was elected. I did not hear the election results yet for 2nd V.P.

We heard the Gaither vocal band Tuesday morning, and Tuesday night we heard Mark Harris, former lead singer of 4HIM. The music was wonderful. The North American Mission Board report Tuesday night was very inspiring. They are introducing a new National Evangelism Initiative called GPS (God's Plan for Sharing) that will last until the year 2020 and focuses on getting people to pray for the lost, then engage the lost, then sow down the nation with the gospel, then harvest souls. They have a really good TV spot available to churches for free. You can see it at www.wearesouthernbaptists.org.
We saw a lot of old friends in the exhibit area and around the convention, including friends we knew from our days at Mississippi College: Robin Jumper who teaches at the Baptist College of Florida, and Nathan Cothen who is pastor of Calvary Baptist in Beaumont, Texas. I saw several friends from around the country who serve with the North American Mission Board, and a few Georgia pastors. We had interesting conversations with fellow Baptists that we met, including a young couple planting a new church in Virginia and a young couple planting a new church in Florida. We enjoyed meeting Tommy Fountain from north Georgia, who told us he knows our minister of music.
It has been a very enjoyable convention. While we are far from perfect, it is great to see all of the ministry done by Southern Baptists, and to see old friends and make new ones.

Dads, Dead Squirrels and Teachable Moments

A father and son were riding home from church, and the boy was filling out a crossword puzzle. The boy said, "How do you spell God?" The father was excited to help in his spiritual development, and gladly replied: "G-O-D," and asked, "Anything else?" The boy said, "Yes, how do you spell "Zilla?"
Brian Harbour tells about a little boy who told his dad that he saw a squirrel flattened in the road. The father saw it as a teachable moment about safety, and said, "That's what can happen to you when you play in the road."
Later, the boy was playing with his friends, and he said, "My Dad told me what happens to you when you die." His friends got wide-eyed, and asked, "What?" He answered: "You become a squirrel."
Sometimes our kids don't understand us, but we fathers have an awesome opportunity to influence the values of our children. Research shows that fathers have more influence than mothers in values development of children, especially spiritual values. A recent study found that when Mom attends but Dad does not, only 2 percent of the children grow up to be regular churchgoers. But if Dad attends and Mom does not, 44 percent of the children grow up to attend church regularly!
No wonder the Bible specifically tells fathers to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Hey men, this Father's Day, set the spiritual tone in your household, and take your family to church with you. You'll be glad you did!