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I think the blog thing has run its course.

So long. email me or write me a letter.

Blessed

I got to teach the 3-5 grade Sunday School. I think I could really dig that! So much fun and such sweet faces and spirits!

John and Jospeh have been acoilytes lately. What a joy to see them coming into the service and to know we are doing it together!

Sweet, simple.

Blessings

I'm at a Bishop's meeting. Frank Wallace is here, father of a great pastor, Debbie Wallace Padgett.

He has been preaching 62 yrs. I am utterly humbled. I want his sanctity, his life of prayer, his scripture knowledge...

And I want 62 yrs of preaching, God willing!


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Blessing

Wednesday evenings have been awesome!

Great meals from Diamond Dave Sheffel, Brenda and Donna!

Two new youth tonight!

A number of new children!

Great Bible study from Romans 13! Heavy stuff! Flowing out of Romans 12, being "living sacrifices," blessing those who persecute and into submission to authorities. You have to hear Paul saying, we pray for even Pontius Pilate...

We are blessed with more and more Chinese visitors. I pray they may accept Christ! One man asked me tonight, "what will you talk about next week?" Romans 14. He said he was going to read it carefully, because "you go through it line by line." I will take that praise! He said he has been to a church in China one or two times. It's really been awesome to see new youth and even volunteers in the children's ministry coming from our Chinese friends!

I am praising God for a church that just wants to reach out! They have built for it! ANd their hearts are in it!!

Divine Appointments

The past few days there have been some divine appointments, some meetings that God provided that were just ordered for me to make contact with some folks I otherwise would not have.

And then, this morning, a really rare time, one of those that when I spent time in scripture and prayer with someone suffering, we found a "way into" the life of Jesus. That's a phrase I have been batting around for a bit, a phrase that is about something like breaking past sentimental notions of Jesus and into the real power. Sometimes it is about breaking through mechanical descriptions of doctrine.

Today, it was His words "greater love has no one than this, the he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13)

Growing up around airmen and soldiers, I know this is a favorite verse of those in the military. And so, it is doubly likely that I would see this as the ultimate, sacrifice, enduring the moment of death.

But today, we wondered if it does not also express a kind of continuous self-denial, a continuous suffering endured for the sake of loved ones?

Come, Lord Jesus.

Liberating ______ Theology

I picked up an interesting book, "Liberating Black Theology," by a guy I follow on Twitter, Dr. Anthony Bradley. He says something about black liberation theology that struck a chord in me:

"many [black liberation] theologians denied orthodox starting points such as the final authority of scripture, biblical definitions of sin and redemption, the doctrines of God and redemption by means of substitutionary atonement" p.28

What I found particularly interesting is that this same thing can be said about United Methodists. Our quadrennial General Conference is coming up in 2012, and we will again be torn apart over the issue of homosexuality. And yet, homosexuality is not the real issue. It is one of many, simply the one that is the flashpoint.

The issue really is the places in our church and theology where we depart from "orthodox starting points such as the final authority of scripture, biblical definitions of sin and redemption, the doctrines of God, and redemption by means of substitutionary atonement."

The issue of accepting homosexuality as a legitimate Christian lifestyle is merely one place where we deny the authority of Scripture and biblical definitions of sin. Other places are where we want to claim that Wesley did not teach "sola scriptura" but rather "prima scriptura" or maybe even "sorta scriptura." Or, when we claim that we are saved by faith AND works we also reject Scripture and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus' death on the Cross.

The real issue is, finally, scripture. Is it the final authority for us? Answer that question and you will see much more clearly what we are really fighting about.


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A Gospel Preached in Oakland Lives In Me

For a variety of reasons, I like Oakland, CA. Some of it is being a Raiders fan. Some of it is its contrast with San Francisco.

At any rate, Jessie, the boys and I went there about 3 years ago I guess it was. We were looking for some contacts we had, got lost, and ended up somewhere that was important to us for some personal reasons, we just did not know that's where we would end up: Tyrone Carney Park.

Tyrone Carney Park, I saw in a news report today, has been fenced off because of a gang that has taken over the park. There's a lot of sadness in that because of everything Tyrone Carney represents.

Tyrone was studying for the ministry. He was 20 years old. He volunteered to go to VietNam so that another young man would not have to go. He was "in country" just 6 weeks when he was killed in combat in the Quang Tri Valley.

Isn't it terrible that a man who made that sacrifice-- "greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends"-- the park in his name is a place of murder and destruction?

Tyrone's brother, Glandion Carney, is my spiritual director. Glandion said in those terrible days in 1968, he had to make a choice between joining anger and fighting back and following Christ.

We're going to DC over Spring Break. Panel 56W, line 012 will be our first stop.

China Pentecost

Friday evening, we had a dinner at our house for our church's missionary to Mexico. There are really amazing things afoot. It turned out that we had 7 Chinese folks come to the dinner as well. It struck me that we could not simply sit there and talk about missions in Mexico without explaining why we do missions and that means Jesus, so I took the opportunity to talk about salvation in Jesus' name twice that night, and it gave me a chance to pray with them about their needs.

It brought to mind the vision God has given me about Pentecost, about reaching people from all nations and languages. Jerusalem was full of people who heard the message in their own language. America is full of people from around the world, and if we can reach them-- in their own language, welcoming them into our church, into a relationship with the Lord-- when they call or write home, when they go home, they will share the gospel, perhaps seem will become pastors! We are in the midst of a new Pentecost that is crating a huge missionary explosion. There are so many "unreached people groups" in America! Will we reach them? Do you care?

We have a mission in Mexico because some years back Morehead UMC started an Hispanic ministry, ministered to a man from Oaxaca, who is on his way to being a pastor back home...
Will we be able to say the same for China?

Ting, who will be baptized on Easter, said last night at Wednesday Night Service, that she wants to teach a Chinese language Sunday School after she has learned more about the faith.

Let's pray and lift this up! What if one day we can say that we have a mission and have a relationship with a church--or more than one!-- in China that started because we were faithful to the mission field here?!

Snowpocalypse and You Might Be A Redneck If...

While everyone else is heading to the store to get milk and bread, I was getting cat litter. Why? Because I have been outflanked, out-strategeried by wife and kids.

They have been working me over about a cat or a dog. We have had two rabbits.

So Jessie comes into the office and tells how Kay Stiner is spoiling Nay and giving her anything she wants, and how Saundra Newton is not any better because The Nay was playing with a kitten and screamed when she had to leave, and Saundra just off-hand said, why don’t you take the kitten? so there’s a cat in the garage.

I was cooked, done. Like the dad in The Christmas Story. Jessie got the cat for Nadia so she could say that the boys need a dog to keep things fair. And needless to say we are already talking along those lines.

But at the end of the day, I love animals, I just am not sure the boys get the responsibility that will come with it. We have a cute black kitten.

A great scene unfolded in the Fuzzy Duck today. I got a book and Sara Peyton was ringing up the sale. One of the owners was telling me about how he got a job because he bought his boss some Coors when you could not get it, Smokey and the Bandit days, and all that. The other owner, his wife, thinks that she should tell him, “Hey wait, this is Aaron, Sara’s minister, be careful about a beer story, etc”

But she was unaware how it started. I was buying maybe my fifth copy of Wendell Berry’s What Are People For? I have given all the other ones away. It’s a huge book for me. Wendell Berry is horrified that it evangelized me. well, not horrified. But the way I came across the book as a young atheist was that a friend who lived out in the country asked me to pick up a case of beer on my way to his place. When I got there he did not have any money to pay me so he said I could have a book and I took What Are People For? and things have never been the same. So, I say “You might be a redneck if you ever traded a case of Natty Light for a Wendell Berry book.” True story.

That’s how it got started. So, instead of the preacher being embarrassed by a beer story, Sara was embarrassed by her pastor’s beer story.

My work here is done.

Jerusalem

I’m running a flickr slideshow of the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, a church built on Caiaphas’ house, where Jesus was taken after he was arrested in the Garden, and where Peter denied knowing Jesus. Thus, “in gallicantu,” which means “rooster’s crow.” [flickr is a web site that has all kinds of uploaded photos from users around the world]

I think I could go to Israel three times a year and not wear it out. I guess in some ways I want to become as familiar (and more) with Jerusalem than I am with some other big cities I know... San Francisco, Stuttgart, New Orleans...

Of course, there is so much more to Jerusalem. Somehow I feel like I live in its shadow, or maybe more properly under its blessing?

On the trip to Israel I took last year, thanks to the generous offer of Tom Smith, I was asked to pray on the bus ride into Jerusalem. Whoa... how did they choose that? How did they know I was committing Psalm 121 to memory in Hebrew?

And how did they know that Matisyahu’s “Jerusalem” was rolling through my mind?

I am sure they had no clue about all that, but it seemed stunning to me... one of the things I really wanted to see, to experience, was going up the hills into Jerusalem... to get to pray about it...

So when I got up to pray on the bus, climbing the steep hill, realizing, seeing what it means to come into the city set on 7 hills... I don’t remember what i said, babbling something about looking to the hills..

A few years back, I was in California at about the same time of two different summers. It was kind of cool, because i try to read 5 Psalms a Day, and was pretty regular about that for a few years. So regular that going to Cali, I was reading the Psalms of Ascents both times. I was looking at the Adelaida Mountains, thinking about how when I was a kid I would lift up my eyes to the hills... those hills seemed so solid... there was always some call they had on me. I wanted to go into and over them, to follow them north as they change to the Ventana Mountains and Santa Lucia mountains--the only place you’d see snow was on the peaks-- and go over them to the sea at Big Sur. Isn’t it weird? As a child I would think vaguely, one day I will go into those hills and disappear.

It has been a strange metaphor for my spiritual journey, disappearing from the world, to the place where I am known and fully known (I Corinthians 13:12)

I plan on going to Jerusalem a lot, Lord willing.

Awesome Outreach

My youngest son Joseph is 9, and he is a basketball fanatic. Morehead is a great place to be if you are a basketball fanatic. A group in our church had a dinner for the men's and women's basketball teams last night, and they invited our family to come. It was a great time for the athletes and the sponsors of the dinner.

And it was a great outreach. It was not just that we fed some kids who are away from home. It was not just that we invited them into the church. There was a lot of chance to talk, get to know people, and have some spiritual conversation. It started quickly. As soon as I said "Amen" to my prayer, a player came up and asked me about praying in Jesus' name. Is it the same as praying to God? We talked a few minutes and then I think we got to something... He is from a large city far away from here. And he is in Morehead, so there is some culture shock. Let us pray for spiritual openings and that they are filled with the good things of Christ!

My heart is warmed and I am encouraged to be among a group of believers who will do what it takes to reach others for Christ!

Simple as Prayer

When Nadia and go outside, the steps in the garage are a little tall for her. She just reaches up her hand, knowing my hand will be there.

Merry Christmas!

On this Christmas Eve, my family and I wish you a blessed, Merry Christmas! What a wonderful time of year when the blessings of the Lord (a warm, dry house; a chill in the air; time off from work) conspire with the meditating we do on the Second Person of the Trinity left the Glory of "Heaven's High-Councel Table" (as Milton said) to come into our "darksom House of Clay" (MIlton, "On The Morning of Christ's Nativity").

We have been blessed through and through this year. As hard as it was to leave the ministry at The Rock La Roca, and all the people who blessed us for 5 years, we are also blessed to serve in Morehead. It is a wonderful thing that across such different churches, the Methodist system takes care of the preacher and his family. Indeed, we are blessed.

John is 11 now. He likes to read and imagine and make vehicles that have never existed, such as strollers powered by the wind. He is very happy to be in Morehead, as the university environment fuels his curiosity, and he is close enough to the country to start on his plans of being a cattle baron.

Joseph is 9 and loves video games, reading, and sports, especially basketball. Morehead is basketball crazy, so Joseph is in his glory. He has his own dance for when he makes a good shot.

Nadia is 18 months and is such a joy! She sits with me in the La-Z-Boy after church and watches football. She loves her brothers and will sneak up into their room after bed time to sleep with them. She knows a lot of words and phrases. She is spoiled rotten, too. I try to be firm with her, but it just doesn't work. She says "Daddy..." and it's all over.

Jessie is the children's pastor at Morehead United Methodist and is bringing her knowledge and desire to share Jesus to children's ministry. She really looks forward to being able to spend more time on Cave Run lake and the trails around it.

I am blessed when my family is blessed, and there has been great freedom in preaching the gospel and that is all I need.

Rejoice with us in our Savior's birth and in the blessings He has poured out on us. He is faithful, always faithful!

New Year's Wish/Resolution

My resolution is also a hope for Christians at large:

That we will be as interested in letting people know about Jesus as we are about broadcasting our political/social/environmental views; as we are about our favorite bands and sports teams;

That we will focus first on Jesus: His death and resurrection; forgiveness of sins and new life found in His name;

That we would quit believing, teaching and preaching that if we do some good that's good enough;

That we would speak simply that we can be saved only by Jesus, by His grace, through faith.

And my deep prayer is that as we come to know Jesus--to really know Him, who He is, what He has done for us in His death and resurrection-- a life of discipleship will flow from us. I pray that we will accept no counterfeit thoughts and actions that spring form our will or our own sense of of our own righteousness.

Thinking Clearly About the Good News

Maybe I'm not so much thinking as remembering. Sometimes we have to go back to an experience to get to something deeper than the places the experiences we have had since then have brought us.

So, when I got saved, I was not so much overcome by the death and resurrection of Jesus. I was on the one hand angry that there were such things as miracles that I could now accept... more than accept, I believed. On the other hand, I was also very much relieved that my sins were forgiven, that I would escape wrath.

I sometimes wonder if we can only think about the gospel in terms of where we are right now. AS we have matured and learned more, we obviously have a deeper sense and appreciation for all that the gospel implies.

But at its heart is relief for the sinner because he has escaped the wrath of God. What if we quit talking about that because we already have it and have moved on to other things pertaining to a maturing Christian life? Is this why we have such little emphasis on evangelism? Have we forgotten that we had to simply plead the blood of Jesus for forgiveness of sins? Are we embarrassed that we were such beggars?

Let us not expect and therefore substitute mature discipleship for the basic milk of forgiveness of sins by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

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Getting Home

I went to pick up the boys. It is a bright, cold day. Sun is going down behind the hills. As I came back to the house, I saw smoke coming from the chimney; Ica started a fire. And when I came in there was the smell of onions cooking. It was a really nice sight and smell.

Last night I stopped by a parishioner's house to pray with the family before some medical procedures this week. You think you are going over to provide comfort and they send you home with a bucket of kindling and a bag of turnips.

Friday night, there was a dinner at the church that a Sunday School invited us to. Such good food and fellowship. We have been having Advent breakfasts and it feels like we have been living at the church... and that has felt like a very good thing. I remember Norbert Itoula, from the Republic of Congo, used to talk about how we should live in the Church, for worship and prayer and fellowship. It sure feels like we could do that; the Spirit of the Season is inhabiting us...

Worship was wonderful today. My best friend in seminary, David Crow, taught me an old Methodist phrase, "having great freedom in preaching;" I had that today for sure.

The Waning of the Reformation

Yesterday in a District Meeting, over a plate of ribs at The Ribber in Portsmouth, Ohio, Tami Coleman, the pastor at South Shore, said she heard a well-known speaker say that every 500 years the Church goes through a crisis. The last one was the Reformation, so we are due for another, and this time we are rejecting sola scriptura, the doctrine that scripture is the authority for Christian life and practice.

Now, Tami was not supporting this view, she was just passing it along as part of a larger discussion we were having.

We ARE rejecting sola scriptura.

But that is nothing new, not a recent trend, 500-yr cycles or otherwise. It is a constant temptation for the Church and individual believers. It has been a temptation from the beginning. It is a sad trick that the Roman Church rejected the doctrine, and then somehow claims that their medieval innovation is the apostolic tradition... And so the average Protestant seems to believe, even, that somehow the Reformation was/is a “recent” invention, and not the return to the sources of the Church it in fact, is.

We don’t have the space to rehearse it here, but a great source to find the proof of this is in excellent works like Thomas Oden’s “The Justification Reader,” and David King and William Webster, eds., “Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, vol. 3” Both of these show plainly and clearly that the Foundational Reformation principles of Justification and Scripture are not “simply” interpretive schemes of Scripture, but run throughout the Patristic literature.

So, sadly, the rejection of sola scripture is not as simple as thinking we are turning back a misguided Reformation, but is, rather, a rejection of the faith itself. It has been the constant temptation of the Church and individual believers because the Lordship of Christ means, simply, that we are not our own bosses, cannot do as we please, and this human beings have never been able to abide.

So sometimes we claim the Bible doesn't say what it clearly says.

Or sometimes we are bold and claim that the Bible is kinda like some suggestions or something.

Neither will hold up under scrutiny. But it is popular. If you and your church are more sold out to continuity, institutional survival, and being acceptable to the larger culture, I recommend you reject sola scriptura, too.

But if you are committed to Jesus and the Truth, stick with the Reformers and the Fathers and the Bible.

A Magnificent Night

We got to have our first Christmas Party/ Ladies Night Out with the United Methodist Men. It was a great evening with church family, and especially getting to sit with some folks I don't often get to spend time with.

There was, of course, good food and fellowship.

And we had a great reading of the Christmas story. J.D. Reeder read from John 1, Luke 4, Isaiah 9, and Luke 2, weaving it together. I was struck how much the Word authenticates itself. We know it is the Word of God.

And I was wondering, thinking back on something. When I was in grad school studying medieval literature, I used to wonder about the first Anglo-Saxons to accept Christ. How in their cold and war-like world, there must have been many who, to varying degrees and at different times wondered if things could be different, wanted them to be different. And perhaps after dinner, they may have heard:

"Every warriors boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. For unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end. He will reign upon David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness. The zeal of the Lord almighty will accomplish this" Isaiah 9:6-7.

Can it be?


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Car-Free Shopping

You can get $109 worth of groceries on your bike:



















Granted, you need an xtracycle (click here to see what it's all about).

Morehead is not as bike friendly as the Northside of Lexington. I will say that if you get south of Main in Lexington, it is not very bike friendly. At any rate, right there at St Claire Hospital a guy in a maroon truck honked pretty long at me. I waved--maybe he knows me? He must have! He waved back, and let me know he thought I was "Number One," holding up one finger at me.

And yes, that is a 48 pack of Waffles tied down with bungees. Don't you judge me. I rode my bike to Kroger and need to refuel. Don't you judge me.

Something about cold weather makes me want to bike more. Some of that, no doubt is that an idealistic streak in me sees a bike as an alternative to a car. I have always like riding bikes, from the time I was 6. I have only had 6 bikes, including the one I had when I was 6, and I have 2 now. My first long trip was when I was 12 and I talked my mom into letting me leave our village and ride to the big city, Homburg. Of course, in Germany, bikes were about as common as cars in those days, so it was safer than it sounds... I rode a bike for a year because i was in a feud with an insurance company over their drunk driver who totaled my car and I would not accept their pathetic settlement. So, yes, you can do a lot without a car. I used to ride to the District Office, but I am not sure Raceland is a feasible trip from Morehead...

It's not just about distance or our crazy ride to Annual Conference. It's also about seeing if I could get by without a car. And yes, I could. We have two, so if one dies, I probably won't replace it. If the second dies, well...

Bikes aren't toys. Not simply recreational or for exercise. They can and should be about daily tasks. The xtracycle has been awesome for me. Yesterday I had a bunch of chairs I needed to take to the church. It was cold. Why not load up the X?




















It only took me 17 minutes to get from Kroger back to the house. I won't lie, that hill is a killer, especially with 40 extra lbs.

I think I have the only xtracycle in Morehead, and yes, my vanity likes that! I had one of the first 3 or 4 in Lexington, and then hipsters started getting them and I had to leave town...

Sunday and Monday After

what a great day yesterday! wonderful worship across three services, Stephanie McNeill sang the Scripture for us (Matthew 1:1-17, who knew there was a song in that!), great freedom in preaching, holy communion, and we baptized Megan Alldredge! Praise God for His work among us!

Monday after Communion Sunday means communion service at Cave Run Manor, an assisted living facility. What a wonderful time with the people there! Something sweet happens in the small group that hears the Word and takes communion together. It is a special place, feels like a family there.

I fretted over how to put the Scripture together for Sunday's sermon, but glory to God, He worked it out in spite of me! This week, preaching on Joseph and already the Lord is throwing Scriptures at me, putting things together. I look forward to preaching on Joseph!

I am taking Nadia with me to have communion at Cave Run Manor... they won't let me in without her ever again. They're serious. She is such a joy. She will jump up and run to me when I come in the door. She will say "Da Da" over and over again. I am blessed by her cheerfulness... and even her mischief!