GLENN'S PODCASTS!

CHRIST FOLLOWERS?

More and more, I have received emails and shared face-to-face conversations with people who have come to walk with Jesus as their personal Savior in the past 5-8 years who refer to themselves not as "Christians" or "believers" or Baptists, Presbyterians, Charismatics or whatever, but simply as "Christ followers". I LOVE this!

Years ago I stopped asking people "Are you saved", or "born again" or "How long have you been a Christian" or the like. Why?

Often they'd respond with an emphatic "Yes"! So the next question I'd ask is "How long have you been truly FOLLOWING Jesus" and they'd give me a different time-line!

In a large church I recently had a quick chat with a lady who said "I've been a Christ-follower for five or six years now", smiling. I smiled too. I LIKE this phrase.

Jesus indeed said "Come, follow Me". I think this is in very short, the most revealing matter of whether a person is seeking God with the intent and will to find Him. It's not informational, it's transformational to follow Jesus Christ.

When I am a follower, I go where He leads, walk as He walks, I'm concerned with being WITH Him and not only knowing Him from afar or knowing ABOUT Him. What a difference spiritual intimacy makes. What a difference between the "convert" and the "disciple".

Some years ago I was a bit amazed (a hard thing for people to do to me these days...) by a bro. in Christian leadership. We met at a large gathering, and in small-talk, I merely asked him what was a key thing I could pray for regarding he and his large, evangelical church. He immediately said "That our people would understand, really get a clue on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ"!

I then asked him how long he had been in leadership there, to which he replied "Three years".

My own internal thinking was- how could you be leading/preaching/teaching folks for that long and not really hit that issue in a local church... followed by another question: I asked, "Are most of your congregation highly-paid, stressed professionals"? He said they were.

I then thought, "Whew, we've got it easy in Chicago with a lot of truly poor, messed-up, sin-right-on-the-table" sort of folks to serve"!

But for both of us, the issue is the same. God calls US to be Christ-followers, and all whom we influence in our local congregations to BE... Christ Followers. If we are, more will come to follow Him in part, due to our own loving obedience in following Him.

Jesus said, "Come, follow Me and I will make you fishers of men". Let's go followin'... then go fishin'!

SEXUAL ABUSE ISSUES

One of the things that often surfaces in today's society as well as in today's Christian work is the issue of sexual abuse. What to do and how to help both the victim AND the perpetrator, who to contact and for that matter, how to actually get true, verifiable information as to whether either "side" is telling the truth... that's another kettle of fish, and not so easy to deal with.

I'm afraid it's the "getting verifiable truth/evidence" so that what you (as third party) believe to be true is in fact true... whew... that's often rarely mentioned in abuse articles or discussions. To be frank, my own experiences lead me to believe that in our day, people speak quicker, more are truly being abused, and more are indeed lying (on both sides of allegations...) about what happened/is happening, as well as incidents of mental/emotional illness being more rampant. All of this clouds and confuses the issues. These things are plainly unhelpful with regard to formulating a genuinely biblical Christian response.

If more in our society/church societies lived lives of clearly consistent (albeit, imperfect) integrity, figuring out what really happened/did not happen would be an easier task. Sadly, there are many reasons why this is often the most difficult aspect of respnoding to -any- allegation.

Having proved the accused truly guilty, what to do?

There are of course laws, federal, state and local that in the U.S. can and must be responded to.

There are a number of good, proven agencies and Christian ministries on the Web that offer a long list of "now what you can do to get and stay on a path of real healing". Most all U.S. cities of any size have local agencies and Christian ministries who can help you or those you are caring for regarding such matters.

But the truth is that when one has either been violated or been the violator, there are no easy, short, painless answers or methods where the matter can be quickly taken care of.

Further, in both victim's and perpetrator's lives there are often if not always a long list of contributing factors as to -why- such abuse occured. Again, anyone reading this who wishes to do so can find a huge amount of helpful information on the Web. But it is the long term application of the "helps" and the hard, troubling work that must be done by all involved that I'm wanting to bring to light here.

In two completely separate groups (both largely Christian leader's gatherings) I recently heard many stories of childhood sexual abuse. In the vast majority of those situations, it was indeed a family member or relative who was the abuser, whether hetero or homosexual, and in most of those situations it was the older person abusing the younger with this going on for several years. In a very few of these cases the people involved were supposedly Christians, but in most of them this was not the case. Nearly none of these reports "came to light" through the often discounted (and rightly so in my view) "repressed memory syndrome" paradigm. Rather, leaders in discussions almost matter-of-factly mentioned that in ministering to others they addressed yet another layer of hurt/healing from their own past.

My wife was abused as a little girl by her "pastor" grandfather and young uncle. The grandfather never repented or apologized (though convicted and sent to prison due to another sexual child molestation case), the uncle, thankfully did confess and repent. Wendi has found incredible healing, we have very successful marriage in Christ, and she is a loving, brilliant woman who offers great help to others who have been down this horrible road.

As a pastor and simply a brother in Christ, I just wanted to put these thoughts in my blog today because on the one hand, there are more and more people talking (as they should) about what has happened to them, more too who are trying to find healing and deliverance from their own sexual predator sins, and Christians trying to figure out what to do.

This is one area, only one, that Christians in ministry must face, in their own lives as well as in the lives of others who come for help. But we must help based on reality, not unsupported stories, raw emotions, advocacy only for those who speak to us first. We must be people of prayer, the Word of God, caution, and in fact networking with -trustworthy- professionals who do more than simply make a living on the basis of the claims. We must not take the position that this is the only (or sometimes, the most important matter) in a person's life. At the same time, we must gain ont only God's love but God's wisdom -and- grace for both parties' ultimate reconciliation to God and the church.

Finally, justice is not about vengeance or playing loosely with what GOD would say is "fact". I can accuse anyone of anything, and Lord knows that is just too obvious. Some folks are great actors and liars, and God only knows the motives for such actions! On the other hand, real people have been really sinned against and need help and healing. It's the hard, ofen very difficult work of discerning who's who, what's what and how to help as opposed to add misery to an already miserable world in need of Jesus Christ and Truth, beyond all else!

HEALTHY CHURCHES, PARADIGMS, ISSUES

Here is something I recently posted in an e-group online re. the
subject of the above title:

It seems to me that smaller -or- larger, contemporary -or- more
traditional local churches have similar -and- unique challenges
regarding spiritual health.

I don't equate numbers with what is commonly called "growth". I.e.,
numbers of humans "served" (ala MacDonald's hamburger signage) in any
real way equaling "healthy"? In fact, that's a whole matter that we
could preach on re. "health", 'eh??! But I digress...

I've long said- in public mind you- God being ultimately wise, isn't
going to suddenly move a huge group of people to follow Jesus as
"new converts" in a geographical area where the local Christians are
unwilling to pay the price of truly taking them in, loving and
discipling them and care for them. The backsliding and error rate in
such cases is historic and sad.

Without intentional willingness to accept the real pain of
interacting with them re. their besetting sins, struggles and need
to grow, discipling becomes a bit like 3 flats, no spare and no cell
phone in the middle of Montana, ya know?

Frankly, evangelism is a piece of cake compared to the matter of
biblical discipleship/spiritual formation. Read that sentence again-
I'm dead serious. The cross of Christ is as simple as it is
profound, and the cross we must daily bear to grow and be more like
Jesus... that's not so plain and it's a great deal more -personally-
costly.

The real pain for most Christians isn't leading someone to Christ
(as amazing and rare as that may be for many), it's rather in
loving, forgiving, being patient and sacrificial in walking
alongside them in the Spirit, being a consistent example to them of
humility, integrity and of course, actually involving oneself in
real work right alongside them.

Many in the younger gens. have little work ethic, and many older,
otherwise mature Christians either don't know how to disciple a new
believer, or are so slam worn out just surviving their day job,
family life and basic living commitments that they're plain tired
out and thankful/hopeful/figuring someone else in the church will do
it for them -or instead of them. The staff is the staff is the
staff... but we're all a kingdom of priests... right?? This, in my
view, is the issue, not size of congregation nor model nor style.

It seems to me one way to look at the issues we all face re.
spiritual health get down to core people who are willing to love,
forgive, sacrifice and take the "hits" that come from hurting
people... who invariably hurt others. Jesus did it perfectly and was
still hit, to say the least!! Some loved Him and some hated Him, and
He was perfect in all His ways, quite unlike me...

So how to "do healthy church"?

My own view is that the small group done -right-, done with biblical
integrity and application, done consistently (though never perfectly
of course) creates a place of connection, koinonia and shared
connectivity and even "stewardship" of one another, not only one
another's gifts. Weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those
who rejoice (guess which is more difficult) and forgiving one
another over and over... seems to me it's in the closest connections
that's best done, and most needed really. Some sort of small group
done rightly is the ballpark answer, and in my view, historically,
is about as close as I can figure. Not foolproof, but as healthy as
I currently know.

I think spiritual health isn't all that difficult to fathom. It's
just costly to the old nature, the selfish attitudes that still
smolder within me/us. And I have witnessed the most spiritual (if
not always numerical) growth, health, and willingness WITH growth to
pay the price of growing in human numbers... where there are core
groups of sacrificial people willing to pay the price... which in a
phrase, might best be called "death to self" for the sake of others.

LINUX LOVER WITHIN...

So, some of you geeks out there may wonder what I'm into re. the Linux Operating System these days.

Here's the long list- and I might add that all but 3 of these machines are pretty old junkers put together with cannibalized parts, various (lacking) bits of old ram memory, rather outdated motherboards and so forth. Some of them have trashed usb ports or whatever, but all of them are good, basic working machines. I use several of them for specific tasks, back up files on several of them for multiple storage, and play with some for the learning/challenge/fun of it. All are useful and all but 3 of them would be in the dumpster of the average computer user if I didn't love 'em and with help from Jon Trott in most cases, get 'em up and running.

We get old junk donated and I get to play with a little of it, trying to for hobby's sake as well as eventual use in various areas of ministry and at Cstone Farm, to build cool Linux boxes that one can at least write, do simple games and a bit of Web work on.

The current list:

I LOVE Puppy Linux, a new version is just out, and Barry (the good man who started that particular flavor) has with good helpers, produced a number of great releases of this distro as well as a do-it-yourself version which I'll have a go at one of these days. That particular offering after download, allows you to basically create your own Puppy, including/leaving out programs as you wish, then compiling and burning a live cd of Puppy exactly as you wish, with no actual tech. knowledge on your part. It's a great approach to customizing.

I have about 4 or 5 versions of Puppy that all work really well, some with Mozilla, Moz. Firefox and one with Opera browser. VERY cool Linux distro indeed!

Puppy is always loaded "live" in one of my work boxes.

I have a release of Mandrake Linux actually sitting on that hard drive, and occasionally I load and run it. I think that particular Mandrake release is like, 9.0 or something near that. Nice, simple, works well. But that machine is usually running Puppy... I think I mostly use a Firefox version of Puppy on it, but sometimes load one of the others, in the 9.x release catagory.

I have Suse 9.1 on my main laptop, a 6 year old Sony Vaio, humming along quite well.

Suse 9.2 is loaded on another work box that I share with another friend of mine. For me, this is a backup/storage box at work.

I have another machine with a very basic Linux on it called (honest) Basic Linux. That box is a (ready...?) 486 with 16 whopping megs of ram in it, heh! Haven't gotten the nic going on that one yet, but eventually I'll get to that. It requires a very old, specific network interface card. Very cool little machine with a gui and everything in that stipped-down version of Linux.

I just got given another old pentium that was discarded. Most of these pc's I'm writing about are pentiums ( as in, pentium 1, and one of them a p-3) machines by the way. Anyhow, this last one I may try to put Audacity on with an older r/w cdrom, not bother with a nic for Web stuff, just put in a sound card and have a Linux box with nothing at all on it but a basic system and only what I need for song writing, as in, recording, playback and burning cds of music demos on it. That could be fun for something that otherwise would have ended up in the trash!

Oh yes, once in a great while I fire up an ancient IBM Thinkpad. Check this out- it has 8 megs of ram... HAA!! It's got a stripped-down version of Suse Linux on it (6.1) with a 500 meg hard drive! It has nothing but a pcmcia port with a pcmcia nic (wired of course, not wireless) and after a friend of mine set it up for himself, it had all of about 5 megs left available. But it DOES connect to the Web and seeing there are no programs on it to produce pics (no gui at all, this is text-only, black and white little screen), I use Pine for email and Lynx as a non-graphical Web browser on it.

That little piece of junk really zips due to no photos or anything. And of course, heh, ain't no pop-ups cuz there ain't any possibility of a picture of any kind on this little laptop! I do love it. In fact, I get a huge amount of pure reading and writing done, all online (no room on the drive...) whenever I fire this thing up.

Finally, a JPUSA buddy of mine upgraded to a newer Linux palmtop and sold me his old Sharp Zaurus sl5500 Linux palmtop cheap. It is MUCHO cool and syncs with my Linux laptops, so I'm officially done with Palms and anything other than Linux.

The same bro's wife wanted him to ditch some of several machines he'd had sitting around. One of them is the laptop I'm now writing this on! It had a fried hard drive, and I had an old 6 meg drive that fit it perfectly. It's a Toshiba Portege with a cdrom you gotta tape shut to get to work :) Right up my alley, heh! Anyhow, it's running Ubuntu Linux, a very cool open source distro based on Debian/Gnome Linux, with Mozilla Firefox browser and a lot of nice stuff in it. I don't have the sound working in it yet, but eventually!

So you see, for very little money, if you're a bit crazy and willing to learn, play and have a few friends who are quite gifted geeks who can (thanks Jon!) bail you out, you can really make use of stuff that others think is useless. "Like wow man... this thing don't run XP so like, what's it worth Dude?!!"

That all depends on what you want/need to do with it!

A long time ago I realized that basic writing, spell checking, email, basic Web work and of course, a little gaming now and then were really all I wanted or needed. Wi-fi is cool, and sometimes digital pics and even music work come into play, but I don't need those or the distractions of them all the time. So the cool thing is that there are so many free and truly useful versions of an operating system that have made other folks' "boat anchors" truly fruitful tools and sometimes toys for a character like me.

Ahhh, the wonder of technology!

YARDSALES, BASEBALLS, THANK YOU DADDY

Every so often someone asks me one-on-one or in an interview if I ever get tired. They usually follow it up with a comment about the sparks, the intensity they see in me.

Hey, there are days I'm BONE tired, and at this point have my share of aches and pains like all old people, HA! By the way, Wendi finally saw a cool cross tatoo she digs... I'm trying to decide on the verse overlay on it... and I think we're gonna have one of our good friends do her incredible work on it. So yeah... I get tired, but I have fun too... even in my old age :)

Last week Wendi and I celebrated her birthday by doing a bunch of yard work at Cstone Farm. Planted a LOT of flowers. I did manage to fish a little, and took a lot of cool pics with the digital camera. We watched some fun movies, enjoyed each other, and then I had to get home to... to rest!! I mean, I was so sore from all the doin' that I needed to get more sleep when I got home. Ever happen to you? I'm sure most of you can relate.

So on the way home from Bushnell, I took a road on the western side of the Illinois River, and as it was Friday, the yard sales were thick. We hit about 15 of 'em and loaded the van with cheap, fun stuff. Little money, lots of fun, cool enough!

One thing I needed was a fifty-cent speaker (a made-in-Japan wallhanger with a 4x6 speaker inside). Tonight I got out the soldering iron and installed a jack in it, hooked it up to my practice amp (a Smokey) and blew out the laundry room with some rehearsing while the dryers spun.

See, Wendi has asthma and so I figure it's best for me to do stuff like laundry. So anyhow, it was fun.

Everyone needs some rest. We all need hobbies and we need, certainly now and then- to take roads that are often neglected. Why? If your eyes are open you see things that just might help you relax, enjoy life, bring glory to God, even have opportunities to witness to others as you witness His love and kindness.

A friend here at JPUSA is maybe our most intense Chicago Cubs fan. We're only a mile or so away from Wrigley Field.

So Mike is walking alongside Wrigley, listening to the game going on inside the park. On occasion he takes these walks, but never on the street he chose to take a couple days ago. Pretty afternoon. Cubs on in his earphones as well as right over the wall next to him. He gets to the corner, and decides to take the street he normaly doesn't walk down.

A few seconds later the crowd gets noisy, a ball flies over the wall (foul) right into the street Mike is walking down, and bounces off the sidewalk as he sticks out his hand and makes a perfect catch not even breaking his stride and keeps walking! People in the street smile and yell "Nice catch"! Just like that!!

He was so blown away when he came near my desk that afternoon, just lit up with a real Major League baseball in his hand... how cool was that?!!

I just had to say "Dude, what are the odds of that?!! I'm not reaching here... Jesus wanted to bless you, simple as that". I truly believe it.

It does seem a little strange to think the God of the universe would put a foul ball right in one of the most loyal Cub fans hands around... but then again, if I'm his Daddy and had the power, I'd do it. Love is like that.

My daughter Ami refers to stuff like that as kisses from God. I completely agree. The gold finches, sunset on Lake Wildwood, the Illinois River, a little funky speaker/box, a pro. baseball from the home team, certainly those sweet looks from my Wendi!

See, you never know what you'll find if you just keep your eyes open. His are. And those eyes are on us.