Local News

I am going to try subscribing to the newspaper. It's old fashioned. It's only on Sunday. But it's not too expensive and maybe I can stay on top of what's happening outside of church. It will start delivery tomorrow. And it gives me access to the digital format too.

My Thoughts Today

 Go into all the world and preach the gospel is a good motivator for church planting. We plant churches into unchurched areas with this command ringing in our ears. But at some point a young man must learn to be a pastor to those new people who know nothing about how to live a Christian life. Evangelism might get him there. But shepherding God's flock will keep him there.

Is it really necessary for some pastors to spend the best of their time traveling around the world to preach at conferences? Pastor Mitchell's place was unique in that there was no one else with his qualifications. But we have pastors and we have leaders now. Does our pastor really need to be somewhere besides home all of the time?

While pastor's vision is for the regions beyond, many in his church are just wondering how to pay the bills and how to stay afloat or how to survive. While pastor says go ye, some in his church are crying oh me!

Maturity comes from surviving the experiences of life. You learn that when the bottom falls out, there is still solid footing under you. People seem to mature to the level of their pastor. That's why the Prescott church is solid as a rock and mature beyond their years. They have survived things that would be the end for some people. Pastor Mitchell never treated us like children.

God bless us all.

TV Is Not Useful

 After living here for a while I noticed that things were happening locally and I would not find out about it until after it had happened. I do not listen to local radio and I do not subscribe to a local newspaper here. So I thought that I would buy a television and an antenna to see if I could tune in to local news and find our what's happening before it happened.

Well, after I got my smart tv all hooked up, I found out that even with an antenna, local television stations do no broadcast their stations over the airwaves anymore. I live in a big city and thought that with my antenna I could tune in to local news. I can't. Here's what I learned in my short time of having a TV in my house.

1. No local stations are available.

2. Network news is the same old same old every day.

3. I am not a big movie watcher so a bazillion movies to watch did nothing for me.

4. I would watch national news and I would not feel that I had learned anything useful.

So the television is packed away. I had no idea that you couldn't just watch tv anymore.

Will We Survive?

What's that sound? That's the sound of the biggest generation in US history passing from the scene. The baby boomers are retiring in droves now. Not in our Fellowship, but everywhere else. And the early part of the Boomers is starting to die off. In 20 years there will not be many of us left. We have already entered the realm of the unimportant and the irrelevant. We thought that we would be fresh and vital forever, but time is catching up with us.

In church, our cultural and spiritual wisdom is of little use to the generations coming after us. We sang hymns out of hymnals. We only clapped on the choruses. We only stood after the singing was finished. We did how we were taught. Now we seem old fashioned and out of touch. We still use the same method to teach adult Sunday School. We still try to have morning prayer like we were still teens. And like every generation that ever lived, we are fighting to not grow old.

I had determined that if pastor Mitchell keeled over dead while preaching, that I would not come back. That was too much for me to handle. Thankfully he didn't die in the pulpit. But he died nonetheless. Now we have preachers who are young and full of zeal and with big egos preaching to us. God help us.

Our Fellowship can deal with retirement of pastors, or they can just wait until they all die off and then see  what happens. Of course, my generation will not be around to direct the far off future of the Fellowship.

All of the great men of the Bible are long gone and dead. In a few more years, all of the great men of the first wave of our revival will also be gone, and dead. What then? Will we survive? Will we survive the Silver Tsunami that is rushing toward us with a steady roar.

Friday Ramblings

 Prescott Arizona is a nice mountain retirement town. You better have a big bank account if you are thinking about moving there. Rich retirees are not a great harvest field for the gospel.

AI is not the over-hyped savior that it's creators think it is. If it is working correctly, it works unnoticed. The experts are getting the dangers all wrong.

We do not need population control. We need more people. We need immigrants. We need less opinionating from experts who cannot grab their own butt with both hands and a mirror.

Partisan politics is too contentious and too divisive. It has no place in our local churches or our conferences.

Preaching is still the best method for dispensing truth. Street preaching is okay for outreach. But church preaching is a great idea that is time tested and time proven. It works!

God had one Son, and He made Him a preacher. Think about it.

What Will You Do?

 "Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, bring me another vessel. And he said unto her, there is not another vessel. So the oil ceased." 2Kings 4:6

The miracle of the multiplying of the widow's oil is a wonderful story of what God did through Elijah the prophet. And what God did for the widow woman, He can do for you!

What stood out to me in this story is the fact that nothing goes on or lasts forever. Oil is usually a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Pastor says that the vessels are the local church. In the beginning it is, hand me another vessel, and another vessel was quickly handed to her. There was a time when you thought that this will go on forever. But there came a time when they ran out of empty vessels.

Could it be that we have churches who are running low on empty vessels? Our pool of eligible workers, saved in our ministry, is growing smaller? We have the evidence of multitudes of full vessels to point to of what God used to do. But no more empty vessels to fill up.

No matter what the widow did or how hard she and her sons worked, or how fervently they prayed,  the oil stopped. Elijah had set the boundaries for the miracle. When they crossed the boundary, the miracle stopped. The problem was not with God. If they had found another vessel, the oil would have filled it too.

"...and he said, go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons live on the rest." 2Kings 4:7

For the widow, there was enough to meet her need and enough to live on. They went on living with not one more miracle to report. We have to continue on doing our job and being the people God wants us to be even if we have no more empty vessels to send out.

"...they... limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power:..." Psalm 78:41-42

Maybe it is time once again to ask the Lord of the harvest to give us laborers for our harvest before we run out of workers.

When your oil runs out, what will you do?

One Mouth, Two Ears

Some people are good talkers. Some people are good listeners. Good talkers think that everyone should talk more. Good listeners think that people should listen more. We all think people should be more like us. Some talkers talk just to hear themselves talking. Good listeners never hear themselves listening. Sometimes people do not talk because they have nothing to say. Some do not talk because they feel like no one will listen if they do talk.

God gave us two ears but only one mouth. We ought to listen twice as much as we talk. The problem with a big talker is, once you have heard him a few times,  you have heard all that he has to say.  Some people just talk, not because they have fresh ideas or new information, but because they need to talk. Consequentially, they repeat themselves. They say the same things over and over again.

Preaching is public speaking. There are things that work in public speaking and there are things that don't work in public speaking. A wise preacher will learn these lessons. It takes more than setting yourself on fire. 

I am a good listener. But when I have something to say, say it I will.