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I believe with all my heart that the trip to the Amazon has little to do with digging wells. In the story of the multiplication of the fishes and the loaves found in the gospels is the story primarily about 5 loaves and two fishes? Or does it have more to do with the provision of God, and the capability of Jesus to take a small offering and do great and wondrous things with it?
From the very beginning of our trip, again and again we heard prayers, and declarations that we wanted more than just to do ‘humanitarian’ work. We wanted not just physical thirst, but that the Lord would quench the deepest longings of the heart - the thirst for God.
But that is a spiritual matter, not one that we in our humanity can impact apart from the work of God in the soul of a man. We wanted out modest offering of fresh water to be multiplied and to become in the Satare people a well spring of ‘Living Water’. Many times through the days on the river we prayed and trusted that Jesus could take this small work and have it touch the people in a way that would open their hearts to salvation. (more…)
Posted by Scott on August 15th, 2008 in Lamb of God, Uncategorized, missions | 1 Comment »
This past week ‘The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life‘ published the results of a survey on the ‘U.S. Religious Landscape.’ The results illustate some of the reasons why Western Evangelical Christianity is in such a state of decline.
Let me share some of those statistics, then make a comment on their meaning and conclude by talking about some of the things Lamb of God intends for the fall (There is a connection).
I mentioned a few posts ago that I had been praying and seeking to gain an understanding of where we as a congregation should be going in the future(read the May 29th post on Black Dwarf). Out of that effort came a set of ideas which I have presented to the elders and will make public at our upcoming Community Meeting on Monday, July 7th. This meeting will not cover everything that I believe God has been showing me. The presentation of all those items will come at a later Community Meeting in the Fall.
The material from the Pew Forum’s survey only emphasizes how profoundly in trouble the Western church is and why we need to take seriously the issues which are revealed by this study. The vision, which I believe God has given for the future will no doubt be modified and adapted per the needs, availablity, resources and the on-going promptings of the Holy Spirit. However I do have strong convictions about these matters! (more…)
Posted by Scott on June 29th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
I feel incredibly blessed by having the opportunity to sit with, and learn from the group of senior pastors who make up the churches of the ARC, both domestic and international. Today (Thursday, 10th), we are together as each man shares his experiences of the past year. We are asked by Ned Berube, our president to share our the one thing that the Holy Spirit has done in the past year that has really blessed us, and the thing that has been our biggest challenge. I sat and listened as senior pastor after senior pastor shared really wonderful stories of God working in their lives, in their churches, and in their families. Not every story was one of victory. Some were tales of heartache, disappointment and tragedy. Yet in everything was the word of Christ, beaming out, lighting the way, illumining the stories of fellow pastors who were still, after many years in the pursuit of Jesus. (more…)
Posted by Scott on April 16th, 2008 in Uncategorized | No Comments »
After months and months of careful work I am so pleased to announce that Lamb of God’s very first worship album is completed.
Very big thanks and cudos to our own Ben Stamper. He is a true utility man. He wrote 9 of the 11 songs. He played and sang on every song, he produced, engineered and like a father nursed this project from the earliest idea to hand delivering it to the disc maker last week. I can’t tell you how many hours he put in on it, but the number is crazy. I know for a fact during the last week of mixdown and mastering he spent at least one all-nighter working on bringing the project in on time. Ben, I love you man, great, great work.
There are many others to thank. Of course the worship team, and all the guests players and a huge contribution from Vesper in terms of vocals and vocal arrangements. Thanks Vesper!
The brilliant multi-instrumentalist Jake Armerding laid down some really tasty fiddle and mandolin. The guy is a real genius on his instruments. Bill Stauffer (West Essex Baptist) did some sweet piano work, and Milton Hobbs (New Covenant Church) played some great Hammond B-3 on the recording. Jenny Shannon turned in a steller performance on Page Malbrough’s song ‘Wave after Wave’ - thanks Jenny! I’m not going to mention every single person who contributed (they are credited on the CD), but it was a team effort, for sure. (more…)
Posted by Scott on April 4th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Charles Colson has a new book out called ‘The Faith - given once, for all.’ It is a primer on orthodoxy, brief but powerful. One of its central premises is that their is a staggering decline in Biblical literacy among Christians. There is statistical evidence that as many as 60% of ‘born-again’ Christians do not believe in the concept of ‘absolute truth.’
In the book, Colson tells a story of a course that was being taught in a public high school (after school, in compliance with Equal Access laws) on Christian Worldview. When it came to the 10 lesson in the course on comparing Islam, Buddhism and Christianity the teacher reported that the kids in the class ‘went nuts’ over the claim that Christianity was true. Seven of the eight ’serious’ Christians students chosen as group leaders refused to teach it. When they met again some days later in preparation for the next week’s session, all eight leaders informed the teacher that they had consulted with their parents and some of their youth leaders. They were concerned that they might offend other children. The argument was so fierce that in the end they decided to cancel the lesson. Colson wonders -’is this any indication of the state of the Church?’ (more…)
Posted by Scott on March 14th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
One of the bed rock ideas which have been somewhat sacred to the Alliance for Renewal Churches has been the idea that covenant is a meaningful way to talk about and to frame local church membership. Back in the day (30 or so years ago) many of the founders of our group of churches observed that some of the things which help to bind a body of Christians together in a local church were disappearing. The ‘natural’ community of neighborhoods was slowly giving way to people living pretty much seperate from their so-called neighbors. When I was a kid I remember knowing the names of every family on my street. Those days have past.
Also the idea of a ‘parish’ where members of a church lived close enough to one another to see each other in more ordinary circumstances was giving way to an increasing tendency to see fellow church members only at proscribed meeting times. I believe (as did the guys that planted the first ARC churches) that this lack of community was doing great harm to the church. Forming more intentional commimtents to a local body of Christians was a an effort to try and recover this very essential element of the New Covenant communites which emerged from Pentecost (see for example the summary of church life in Acts 2:42-45) It is from this mindset that the notion of written membership covenants emerged as a part of Alliance for Renewal Churches. However, I see some troubling signs that make me wonder - is it worth doing? (more…)
Posted by Scott on March 14th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
One of my greatest desires as a pastor is to see balance in the life of the church. When a congregation matures to the point that they are able to take risks, experiment and still land squarely in a place of balance I think they have achieved something rare.
This value drives my heart when we come to the topic of spiritual gifts. I very much want to encourage and challenge everyone to pursuit spiritual gifts, just as the scriptures exhort us. I Cor. 14:12 So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church. And at the same time I want to see the church approach spiritual gifts with a desire to arrive at balance. Does that seem like a difficult thing to achieve in your mind? It certainly does in mine. Almost by the nature of certain spiritual gifts we are pushed toward excess or extremes. Gifts like tongues, healing, and prophecy don’t really come with the kind of detailed precise instructions that would make it all a lot easier. The truth is we have no choice but to experiment, take a bit of a leap and act in faith. The results can be weird, slightly wacky at times and even downright wrong. The alternative is to me, unacceptable. Tighten things up, over scrutinize and keep things under control at all times sounds like a total bummer to me. Worse than a bummer - I think it is not being faithful to the testimony of the Bible. The N.T. church was highly experimental and had lots of examples of things getting a bit weird and out of control (I mean really read 1 Corinthians, its full of crazy stuff in terms of what church services were like at 1 Corithians Baptist).
(more…)
Posted by Scott on February 29th, 2008 in Uncategorized | No Comments »
I want to be part of a church which cherishes the presence of spiritual gifts. I want to be a person who “eagerly desires” spiritual gifts and I want to eagerly desire them because they are manifestations of God’s presence in the midst of His people. I know that this is the proper way to think about these things. I have to say that it has taken many years for me to arrive at this understanding, coming from where I come from. As I have made public in my past two sermons I was poorly taught concerning spiritual gifts in my early years as a believer. I was taught to approach anything that might appear overtly “supernatural” with great suspicion. I would say that I took approximately 10 years to move from a person who was skeptical to becoming a person who is was open to the idea of “signs and wonders.” I would add on to that another number of years to go from being open to the idea to being willing to attempt to exercise these gifts. I hope that doesn’t sound to pathetic. When I read it back to myself I feel rather foolish that all those years were spent nursing an overly rationalistic Christianity. (more…)
Posted by Scott on January 29th, 2008 in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
This is Veronica Batista Mason and her husband Ronald. They are missionaries in Brazil. Ronald is from California and he and Veronica met in YWAM and married a few years ago. I met Veronica several years ago and felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to help her. Subsequently Lamb of God covered her expenses related to training in Costa Rica. I actually met up again with Veronica and her new husband Ronald last summer. They are a wonderful couple with a great heart for ministry. At the moment they are trying to aquire a visa for Veronica so that they can come to the U.S. I have included Ronald’s latest note to give you an idea of what they face as missionaries in the Brazilian Ghetto’s of Belo Horizonte. (more…)
Posted by Scott on January 14th, 2008 in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Milk or Meat Christian?
Hebrews 5: (11) About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. (12) For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, (13) for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. (14) But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
The picture on the left is kind of creepy. But nowhere near as creepy as Christians who after years in the faith continue to be bottle-fed, unable to digest the solid food which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes. Note, at least in this passage, the things, which characterize the milk-fed: Dullness of hearing. They just don’t listen. They still don’t get the basic revelations, and need them explained again. They have been in the faith long enough to be teachers of it, but they still need milk. They have long enough history with the Word to be able to handle it, but they remain “unskilled” in the Word. They lack discernment when it comes to distinguishing between right and wrong. How this plays out in practice is churches filled with people who do not look substantially different than those who don’t know Christ. This is in fact what study after study has shown us about the nature of the church right now. Listen to the great Dallas Willard: “Multitudes are now turning to Christ in all parts of the world. How unbearably tragic it would be, though, if the millions from Asia, South America and Africa were lead to believe that the best we could hope for from the way of Christ is the level of Christianity visible in Europe and America today.” Now the question I wonder is this - how true of Lamb of God is what Dallas ponders about the church in the U.S.? (more…)
Posted by Scott on December 15th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
