Weekly Meanderings 28 April 2018

A busy week for me with a speaking event in Atlanta, but here are some meanderings for your Saturday coffee or tea.

The recent Wheaton Conference, written up by a few and very disappointing in lack of resolution, included this fantastic speech by Mark Labberton from Fuller and here’s the opening:

What draws us together here—and in hope—is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  God’s great love and mercy poured out for the sake of the world is deeper, wider, stronger, and wiser than any possible threat or danger, competition or distraction.  Our common confession that “Jesus is Lord” names the central testimony of our faith, even as it also names that to which no one and nothing else compares: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.

What also draws us here is our deep affection and gratitude for our evangelical family.  As one who was converted to Christ as an adult, my cradle identity was not evangelicalism.  But as one born into Christ, the thoughtful, faithful, humble evangelicalism I stumbled into has been and is my heartland.  It is where I grew up in faith and where I have found a capaciousness of mind and spirit, and a zeal for mission that tells me I am home.

This gathering is not an occasion for celebration of evangelicalism, however. This gathering emerges instead from worry, sorrow, anger, and bewilderment—whether we are Democrats or Republicans.  Christians in both parties found the others’ candidate patently unacceptable, leading to fierce division. Many felt cornered without a genuine choice when the issues represented are complex and fear is justified. This is not the first or last time the body of Christ has gathered in lament.  When evangelical leaders like us gather, it is often with a spirit of optimistic hope, known for “pressing on” in the work of the gospel. For me, this is not a time of pressing on. I feel a personal urgency to stop, to pray, to listen, to confess, and to repent and want to call us to do the same.

Only the Spirit “who is in the world to convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8) can bring us to clarity about the crisis we face.  As I have sought that conviction, here is what I have come to believe: The central crisis facing us is that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been betrayed and shamed by an evangelicalism that has violated its own moral and spiritual integrity.

Not a nice Saturday AM meandering topic, but it’s worth reading: murder rates in the USA. St Louis at the top, Chicago not as bad as many say, and LA is doing very well.

The U.S. murder rate is often regarded as one of our country’s vital signs: Are Americans more or less safe than last year, when it comes to their odds of meeting a violent end?

But misinformation abounds. Is the murder rate really “the highest it’s been in 45 years,” as claimed by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump? (No.) Is Chicago America’s murder capital? (Also no.)

Because the vast majority of American homicides are committed with guns, both the national murder rate and the more relevant citywide and neighborhood murder rates — about which, more below — frequently figure into our reporting at The Trace. In this guide, we’ve collected the most up-to-date statistics on murders in America, as well as the critical context that often gets missed.

Long-term murder rates are down, despite recent increases

The data is clear: America is a much less murderous place than it once was.

Lisa Whittle’s advice for how to treat pastors, especially “celebrity” pastors:

I don’t want us to lose any more pastors. I don’t suggest we can prevent every pastor from his own demise. But I do believe we can help them in ways we might not even know we’re currently hindering.

STOP BEING IMPRESSED

Maybe the best thing we can do to help our pastors is to stop being so impressed by them. They take the stage, preach the Word of God, and shepherd people. It’s a position that deserves honor and respect.

But save the awe for God.

STOP WANTING THEIR LIGHT

A lot of our “pastor worship” isn’t about the pastor at all. It’s about our desire to get near someone who stands in the spotlight. We want to be near someone who others want to know. But we do this at the pastor’s expense.

They sense the motive while longing for true relationship. And we don’t need the light of another to affirm our significance.

STOP DITCHING THEM THE MOMENT THEY DISAPPOINT YOU

One the cruelest realities for pastors is how quickly they can be loved, then left. It plays into every insecurity, fear, and pressure to perform.

In the face of their humanity and struggle, those who once sang their praises now curse their name. Pastors live with this constant awareness, and it deepens their daily pressure.

STOP PRETENDING THEY NEVER MEANT ANYTHING TO YOU

I will never understand what often happens when pastors leave a pulpit in scandal and disgrace: The people left behind pretend they never existed.

No matter what happened with your pastor, don’t downplay the way they ministered to you and your family, gave wise counsel, or prayed over you.

Those investments mattered. God can use any of us. If sinlessness were a qualification prior to usability, none of us would be used. God can still use truth of the Word despite the vessel bringing it.

STOP LETTING THEM ALTER YOUR BELIEFS ABOUT GOD

No pastor is your God.

They are human, flesh, fallible, and can get entangled in sin—just like you and me. Believe the best about your pastor, but also understand he is capable of fleshly things.

A pastor’s failure can’t change what you know to be true about the truth, goodness, holiness and character of God and His sovereign ordination of the Church, which does not change despite human lapse.

It’s been 24 years since my father lost his church. I’ve seen many more pastors fall since. And if humanity keeps up, there will be more.

But God can help us.

With this, as with all matters, may we look to Him. [HT: JS]

The numbers here are mind-boggling.

Go Todd!

Meet Todd Walker, a father of two who just celebrated 30 years with his employer, and who flies as often as four times a month from Kansas City to North Carolina for work.

He’d boarded an American Airlines flight recently on that route, getting seat 33A toward the back of the plane, only to find that the passengers sitting next to him were a mom named Jessica Rudeen, and her two kids: four-month-old Alexander on her lap, and three-year-old Caroline.

After some chaos in the boarding area, Rudeen hadn’t had a chance to feed the four-month-old–and he started reacting the way hungry four-year-olds are known to do. Then, her three-year-old daughter changed her mind about the whole idea of flying.

That meant Walker was about to get what we might call, “whole toddler experience.” I’ll let Rudeen herself describe the maelstrom, as she did in a post (embedded at the end of this article):

My 3 year old, who was excited before boarding the plane, lost her nerve and began screaming and kicking, ‘I want to get off the plane! I don’t want to go!’ I honestly thought we’d get kicked off the plane. So with two kids losing their minds, I was desperately trying to calm the situation.

Walker responded in a way that seemed completely unremarkable to him, he told me in a phone conversation this weekend. He just decided to help. As Rudeen explained further, Walker…

reached for the baby and held him while I forced a seatbelt on Caroline, got her tablet and started her movie. Once she was settled and relatively calmed, he distracted her so that I could feed Alexander. Finally, while we were taxiing, the back of the plane no longer had screams. During the flight, he colored and watched a movie with Caroline, he engaged in conversation and showed her all the things outside.

By the end of the flight, he was Caroline’s best friend. I’m not sure if he caught the kiss she landed on his shoulder while they were looking out the window.

Walker also was on the same connecting flight in Charlotte that Rudeen planned to take. He walked her daughter through the terminal to the new gate, and then asked to have his seat reassigned to he could sit next to the family and help out on the second flight, too.

I talked with both Walker and Rudeen this weekend, after Rudeen’s Instagram/Facebook post–which she originally put up because she hadn’t gotten Walker’s last name or contact information, and wanted to connect with him again–got so much traction. As of this writing it has more than 5,000 shares, and it’s been featured in media around the world.