God opens AND closes the womb

Obviously infertility is not an issue I have had to deal with. We could hardly stop getting pregnant! For many in the church though it is a very real and very heart-breaking topic and it is one that doesn’t get a lot of conversation in the church because it is so hard to talk about in a culture that by and large gushes over the blessings of children. Especially for people like myself and others who have and embrace large families, talking about infertility is something that is often easier to just not do. So I appreciated reading an interview by a sister in Christ with a large family, speaking to another sister who has struggled with infertility: Viewing the Quiverfull World Through the Lense of Infertility, Part 1.

The interview is excellent, open and honest in a way that is kind of rare in the church. I would encourage you to read it especially if you are someone who is a “big family” person or someone who is or has struggled with infertility (or know someone who is).

Book Review: Family Shepherds

One of the greatest threats to the church is found right in the homes of many Christians in the form of fathers who are either not equipped or not inclined to lead their families. As befits the seriousness of the issue, there are many books being published calling on men to step up in their homes. Voddie Baucham’s latest book, Family Shepherds, is the latest entry and comes with Voddie’s particular brand of hard hitting teaching. Like other books he was written, Family Driven Faith and What He Must Be…If He Wants to Marry My Daughter, Family Shepherds comes at this issue from a decidedly old school and counter-cultural approach. Voddie makes no apology for highlighting the unique calling of men as leaders in the home, a stance that is drawn directly from the Bible although it is also rarely addressed even in the church. Family Shepherds is a solid addition to this conversation and comes at the issue with more emphasis on the writings of Paul than the pontifications of Dr. Spock.

This is a very good book, especially for those who are less familiar with the topic and haven’t read much of Voddie’s prior writing. Some of the material will be repetitive if you are familiar with his prior writings and the positions of the Family Integrated Church movement. In places the material felt vaguely like something I have read from him several times over and it takes some patience and time to get to the point of the book because the background material takes so long. Again, if this is your first exposure to this information it may not seem as tedious and the information certainly is valuable but I could have stood to have less background information and more of the meat that is found in the second half of the book. Once I got to the second half of the book, the information became more applicable and the reading more enjoyable.

As with all books, there are weak spots and the most glaring is in Voddie’s reliance on the institutionalized church model. Reading chapter 13, Church Membership, was almost physically painful. When he states (on the opening line of the chapter and elsewhere): “Church membership is the most important aspect of lifestyle evaluation”, that strikes me as an entirely unserious and counter-productive statement. Of all the lifestyle qualifiers of a man, whether he is a “member” of a local church (a “healthy” church of course which means a church that is doctrinally compatible with what Voddie holds to) is one of the least important. A man who is a member of a church is not more likely to be a family shepherd than one who is not and since church membership as we understand doesn't appear in the Bible, it is hardly appropriate in a book calling on a return to a Biblical understanding of fatherhood. In other places Voddie inserts other cultural understandings of leadership in the church (like assuming that Acts 6 is speaking of deacons). When he focuses on the home and the unique, irreplaceable role of fathers the book is very strong but in places where he strays into ecclesiology his arguments lose a lot of their strength.

All in all this is an important and valuable addition to the conversation regarding fathers as the spiritual head of their households. If you are familiar with the literature in this genre, I doubt you will find much that is innovative but Voddie as always delivers his message forcefully, persuasively and unapologetically. Virtually every man in the church that I know needs a spiritual swift kick in the pants and that sort of jarring is Voddie’s forte. This is a book that fathers, elders, new husbands and young men considering marriage would all benefit from.

(This was also the first book I purchased for and read in its entirety on my Kindle Fire and I enjoyed the experience, esp. the ability to book mark and highlight sections with ease!)

Speaking of mission reports

As an addendum to my prior post on Kevin Brown's mission report from Ethiopia, I saw a link to his daughter Katy's report as well and it is also well worth your time to read: The Adventure to Africa.

Old Dudes In Seminary

CNN reports that older students are the fastest growing group of incoming seminarians, Baby boomers heading back to seminary.

According to a decade-long study of enrollment by the Association of Theological Schools released in 2009, the fastest-growing group of seminarians include those older than 50. In 1995, baby boomers made up 12% of seminarians, while today they are 20%.

I am of two minds here, setting aside my concerns about professional training for what should be voluntary ministry. On one hand I have to wonder if men in the latter part of their careers have lost their jobs and see seminary and vocation ministry as a "safe" alternative to fill out their reminaing working years. On the other hand, I would rather see men who have families and life experience outside of Bible college and youth groups leading in the church.

What do you think? Is this a positive in the church?

Mission Report

I really loved this report from D. Kevin Brown who just got back from Ethiopia where he was ministering along with two of his children, Where To Begin. I especially appreciated this:

I will try to write over the next week or so about the experiences of the journey and the things the Lord has taught me and given to me and my family in this process. In doing so, perhaps vicariously you can somehow get a taste of the work. But, I must tell you that I have another motive. It is to place a seed of desire within you for mission work to reach beyond the comfort, security and pleasure of our own homes and even our own borders to reach the world with the Gospel. I hope the Spirit of God will place a desire in your heart to do “hard things.” I pray some parents will see that it is just as important to send your child on mission adventures as it is sports camps/weeks, summer camps or academic exploits.

I so get that and it is my desire to take my oldest daughters with me next year to Haiti, not to give them a cool experience and some pictures to post on Facebook but to give them that sort of spiritual awakening that comes from seeing the enormity of the work and our utter dependence on God for the task. It takes a certain level of trust in God to take your children from the comfortable world of middle America and show them how the rest of the world lives. It is far easier to talk about missions from the safety and comfort of the youth room at church but the mission field is out there waiting and God has called us all, without exception, as His workers in the harvest.

I am looking forward to the rest of Kevin's posts and encourage you to read his first entry and the subsequent entries.

Marketing With Jesus

Will Rochow takes on the notion that we can "Christianize" something by adding the word "Christian" to something, in this case a "Christian" credit union: Christian Money?. Christian books, Christian music, Christian this and Christian that. Makes me wonder...

Should we be using the name of Jesus as a marketing tool?

Sacred Space Became Obsolete With The New Covenant

Jon at Profane+Faith has an interesting post this morning: There is no sacred place. He says:

Here is what I wanted to write down. There is no sacred place. You can not somehow channel God's Spirit through a certain scale of things, a certain size of building, a certain type of design, or even a certain type of activity there. I believe God is just as up to something in the sub shop, in the mechanic's garage, in the retail outlet, at the editor's desk as he is in a church building. Maybe more so.

I believe you can obliterate every churchy building there is, and the church of Jesus Christ will not be tarnished in the least. When no place is sacred, our faith becomes a profane faith. It is lived out everyday. And the renewing hand of God can be seen in the restaurant, the car dealership, the school.

If our faith is such that a fancy building we visit once a week is letting us off the hook or immunizing us from living out faith where the rubber meets the road, we have yet to come into life-changing contact with the good news of Jesus Christ. Because he is good news in real life, not just for one hour one day a week. And so there is no sacred place.

I agree. We just can't seem to get the difference between the Old and New Covenant. That is a real tragedy because they New is infinitely better than the Old but when we try to function as New Covenant people of God as if we were still under the Old Covenant, we miss a big part of the joy of the new and better covenant God instituted with the blood of His Son. There are so many ways we try to force the Old Covenant practices into our church traditions: a set apart priestly class, ritualism, infant baptism, sacred places and sacred times. These don't bring us closer to God but further away from the glorious life in Christ that is ours by faith.

God is working all around us and it often seems that He is working the most in the places that we recognize the least. Neighbors helping one another, a mother comforting a hurting child, Christians sharing a time of warm fellowship over a cup of coffee. We don't see those things as nearly as important as "church" but I think God is far more glorified in simple acts of fellowship and love than He is in our vain attempts at "worship". There is absolutely a place for intentional gatherings of the church but they should be a part of our everyday lives, not an event to be attended. Check out the rest of Jon's thoughts and leave a comment or three!

Return on Investment

Nothing about church this morning. Yesterday we brought home the first of two cows we are buying. The other cow is still at the farm we are buying her from, she seems to be in season and she and the bull seem to be...getting along. So we will get her and her calf from earlier this year later in the week (hopefully she will be "with calf" at that time). We brought this mama cow home yesterday because we knew she was ready to calve at any time.

Well, we were certainly right about that! Last night at around 1 AM one of my daughters woke us up, she had been out in the barn and thought the cow was in labor. Like I did whenever my wife was in early stages of labor, I rolled over and went back to sleep while she got up to investigate. Sure enough, she was in labor and had a little calf (we think it is a bull calf, which means he is destined for the freezer) early this morning.

He(?) seems pretty healthy this morning, all dried and cleaned up. I am glad we got him yesterday, otherwise he would have been delivered in the pasture. These are Dexter cattle, which is a smaller and quite hearty dual-purpose (good for milk and meat) heritage breed so a pasture delivery would have been fine but still I think delivery in a warm barn on clean straw beats outside any day of the week!

So we have a cow for less than 24 hours and double our herd. The world hasn't seen a spectacular return on cattle investment like this since Hillary Clinton turned $1000 into $100,000 in 10 months! Maybe I have a career in politics after all....

Love your children by making your marriage a priority

This is an excerpt from Voddie Bauchman's new book, Family Shepherds, on why husbands should prioritize their marriage over their children: 3 Reasons to Prioritize Your Marriage Over Your Children

What defines you?

When you are talking with other Christians, what defines you?

Is it where, when and how you "go to church"?


Is it the creed or confession you subscribe to?


Is it the famous preachers and sermonizers you listen to?


Is it how you educate your kids?

Is it your choice for President in 2012?

Or...

Is it how you love the Lord your God? How you love others? How you serve them?

I admit that the first list has been what defines me for a long time. I think that is true for a lot of us and it is something that poisons our relationship with other Christians and damages our witness to the world. We do a pretty poor job loving and serving all of our brothers and sisters but if we focus on that, I think that first list will become less and less important to us.

The assumption of disunity

Trevin Wax has posted a series of reviews derived from a book, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism that are worth reading. The book features four representative figures from the world of evangelicalsm:

1. Kevin Bauder (Fundamentalist)
2. Al Mohler (Confessional Evangelical)
3. John Stackhouse (Generic Evangelical)
4. Roger Olson (Postconservative Evangelical)

All three speak to their understanding of what it means to be an evangelical and they also respond to what has been posted by the other authors. It is an important conversation. The term “evangelicalism” is so misused and confused that while it gets thrown about a lot, almost no one knows what it means. Within the church it means one thing within Christianity, it means something entirely different to those outside of the faith (and it means something generally negative, associated mainly with politics, militancy, money grubbing televangelists, etc.). Even within the church, there are camps that use "evangelical" as a pejorative, from being too conservative (mainline denominations) to being too liberal (White Horse Inn types).

Here are his four posts...

What Is an Evangelical? 1: The Fundamentalist View

What Is an Evangelical? 2: The Confessional Evangelical View

What Is an Evangelical? 3: The Generic Evangelical View

What Is an Evangelical? 4: The Postconservative View

The reviews are interesting and I think all four men have important points they have made (at least based on Trevin’s review). All that being said, something troubling runs through the four views: a common theme of assumed disunity. All of these conversations invariably work within a framework where the church has just decided to shrug our collective shoulders, throw up our collective hands and just accept disunity and assume it is normal and unavoidable. While the conversations revolve around defining evangelicalism, one of the key ways evangelicalism is defined is by determining who is and who is not part of this sub-group in the church.

I am not naïve. Certainly there is plenty of evidence for this being “the way it is”. The church has created all sorts of structures and traditions to exclude some Christians from full fellowship in a local body: formal church membership, denominations, closed communion. I also realize that for the vast majority of the church, this is not only just the way it is, it is perfectly acceptable or even celebrated. As the years turn into centuries and roll on by the church becomes more and more disunfied and the most common reaction is a shrug and “What are you going to do?” dismissal.

I reject this. I don’t reject it because I think it is not the reality on the ground and has been for centuries. I reject assumed disunity because it is something that the Gospel simply demands that we reject and overcome. There is simply no way to read the New Testament and come away with practices that lead to a disunified church made of up thousands of competing local churches. The New Testament spends a ton of time breaking down the walls between believers and we have promptly spent the last two thousand years building them right back up in new, innovative ways.

“Evangelical” is just another label, another divisive subgroup that distinguishes whether a fellow believer is the right sort or the wrong sort of Christian. I am not an Evangelical. Nor am I an Anabaptist. Or Reformed. Certainly I am not Emergent. I am just a Christian and I am just seeking others who have been sought out by Christ and are following Him.

For sale: $73,000 in video equipment

So I see that Desiring God is selling off some of their old video equipment. Just for kicks, I totaled up the asking price of all of the equipment as of around 3:00. Total bill is $73,100.

No wonder the video material from Desiring God looks so nice.