Evangelistic Connect Group

We had our first Connect Group on Friday. It was good. Most of those that showed up were neighbors. We talked about the reliability of Scripture and is the bible really true. In brief, it went something like this...

There are 2 billion people on earth today that "claim" that they believe the bible to be true. Are there really so many people who are so weak that they need some book to prop them up and make them feel better? That they just need some crutch to believe in, to help them deal with life? That the bible makes for an easy scapegoat to pawn things off on and have an excuse to remain ignorant? When talking to someone who isn’t even sure if the bible has any truth at all in it, I will not be using scripture to back my thoughts. That would be ridiculous, right?

Let’s take a brief cross section of the Roman history documentation of the same era. We have a couple of popular documents that are repeatedly quoted and are viewed as completely true. The Roman Empire was huge, had great power, they had vaults to hold their historical manuscripts. The writings were about Emperors and Leaders and wars and lineage, etc. I will do my best from memory (hang with me) to give a couple of details on 2 accounts:

- The Gallic Wars
There are 10 copies, the first manuscript we have dates to 900AD (the others come after), written by an employee of Caesar about Caesar’s exploits.
- Writings of Tacitus
2 copies (contains half of the original 30 volumes ordinarily written about Roman history), the manuscript dates at 900AD as well (the 2nd at 1100AD), and also written by a guy who was a Roman Empire employee who was to write about Roman history.

On the contrary … The 4 gospels are from the same era. We have hundreds of manuscripts, Fragments of John were found as early as 135AD in Egypt (great distribution for the early document) and all four gospels are found just like we have them now that are dated 250AD, they are written by 4 ordinary men about a three years span on one Jewish carpenters life (He was not a king or warring with other nations, etc) and there was no motivation. Jesus was already gone and 3 of the writers were killed because of their faith and John was boiled in water but they didn’t succeed in killing him (see the writings of Josephus – a Jewish historian who again has no motive, a Jew he didn’t care to prop up Christian doctrine but to only portray history).

Question: So why is the account where there are only a few documents, dated at 900AD, written by a guy who was an employee of the empire accepted as truth, but the account where there are hundreds of ancient manuscripts, dating as early as 135AD and written by people who were killed for their belief in the truth in their writings is not as accepted?? Some historians would argue that the bible has more documentation and truth about the life of Jesus Christ that all of Roman history of the same era. It boils down to the use of the supernatural. John’s writings can’t be true because they contain elements of the supernatural throughout them. People want to impose thier 21st Century experience on ancient history.

Let me expound … it goes something like this.
I don’t believe that the Holocaust happened!
Really?
Really!
Why is that?
Well, because for that to have happened, then there would have to exist a prejudice and hatred so deep as to want to exterminate a whole race of people. It would have to be so powerful as to convince a whole nation of people to help kill off this race of people. Listen! I have never experienced that or felt that way … my mom said that she has never hated anyone that much or had been hated like that … I asked my friends and they never experienced it either … therefore that kind of hatred or prejudice could have never existed and the holocaust could’ve never happened.
Are you Serious?
Yeah. There is no doubt that something happened. Just give me a couple of days to figure it out and I will come back with my explanation of what I believe happened.

See… that just isn’t fair or logical or scientific or …Just because we have never seen God, doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. Just because we may not believe that the bible is true doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen the way it says that it did. We just need to give the bible the same opportunity.

Book of Hope

We had an incredible ministry (Rob Hoskins from http://www.bookofhope.net/) come in for our Wednesday night service. One definately worth mentioning. You need to check these guys out if you haven't already. They have experienced amazing favor in seemingly closed countries. They are changing generations of people.

Here is the down low from the ministry:
Missionary and evangelist Rob Hoskins founded Book of Hope in 1987 when he was asked by El Salvador’s Minister of Education to provide God’s Word to all of the country’s 986,000 school children.

The Book of Hope is a chronological and harmonized version of the four Gospels telling the story of the life of Jesus. It's the evangelistic tool we use in accomplishing our mission of reaching the youth of the world by giving Bibles for children.

To date, over 500 million copies of the Book of Hope have already been distributed to students in over 125 different countries.

In 2007, over 64 million children and youth received their copy of God's Word, the Book of Hope.

It only costs 33¢ to reach one needy child with the Book of Hope.

In communities where there is no established church, Book of Hope assists the local believers in planting a church.

Facebook ... need I say more.

Well we officially entered the facebook world a couple of weeks back. I have been resistant, mostly because of the possible time that it might suck up. While it has sucked up a considerable amount of time (you fellow facebookers know exactly what I mean) it has been totally worth it. We are back in contact with people we haven't heard from or seen in years ... in some cases nearly 20 years. It has been a really cool deal to chat with people who you thought you had lost forever. While we have tried to limit it, it is still a very addictive thing to stay away from, but as humans longing for connection ... I would think that there would be something wrong in me if I could easily stay away from the people that have been apart of my life through the years. God has created us to connect, to long for connection, to be there for each other, whether we are neighbors or a thousand miles away.

6th Street ... 'The Afters' Concert

We went down for a rare small venue event. Had a load of fun. Here are a couple of pics:

Video Venue - one little thing

So there was like 200 people already gathered in the Video Venue. It was going to be a good Sunday ... I could already feel it. We had about 5 minutes before the count down. Someone walked up from the media booth and let me know that we didn't have any audio or video feed from the Heroes building where Pastor Joe is. We delayed as long as we could, but we had to shut the 9:30 service down and send everyone over to the other sanctuary. No one could figure out what could have happened until half way through the service. The A/V Company came out to the church and we figured our that it was one ethernet cable that was in the right spot, but about a millimeter away from being plugged all the way in. When it was pushed the rest of the way in all of the sudden we had audio and video on all of the outside screens and the big 20 foot HD screen in the Video Venue. Wow! One little ethernet cable that was just a tiny bit dislodged and that was it.

Crazy though, many times it is just a little tweak and all is fixed. All can seem completely out of wack. We can be doing everything in our power to right the wrong ... to fix the problem. It can be frustrating and it can completely alter how things are supposed to work and displace all normality. When we shut up and listen, God can show us one little thing and when we plug it in to our lives, Blamm-O! Things start turning around immediately. One little thing. Isn't it funny how it is always the little things that, in the end, make the biggest differences. The apology, the right decision when no one is looking, the extra time in the word or just listening to God, the cutting off, keeping the emotions in check, the love given, the kind word, you know what I am saying. It is the little things that shape our lives and those around us.

flat tire, motorcycle cops and lessons learned

So I walked outside and saw that my tires treads were wearing thin. I got in the car to go to work and prayed. "I don't wanna pay the $250 for a new tire right now and don't feel like messing with it ... Please make this tire supernaturally last for another couple of weeks. Amen" Well, 5 minutes later I felt the vibration and it wasn't going away, so I pulled over on the highway. Yep, you guessed it, my tire was completely blown out. Arrgggg. Come on God ... I just prayed 5 minutes ago, did you hear me? You can't be serious.

Well, I started getting the "tire changing paraphenalia" out and a motorcycle cop pulled up. I was surprised that he actually ended up just about changing my tire for me. It was a good surprise. We got it all done in like 10 minutes and I was back on the road, which was good because I was already running a little late. Usually they hard nose you and make you roll on your rims to get off of the highway. Maybe Motorcycle cops have more compassion because they themselves are more vulnerable. Who knows.

When I got back in the car, I realized, that it is God that supplies our needs anyway. We honestly can't live or make it on our own without Him anyway. No matter what happens, we are in His hands, He is big enough to do it. He created all that is and sent His son to die in our place, so we could be with Him. He knew me before I was born and has gone before me and prepared a path for me. Nothing that happens shocks Him. I actually felt more secure and at peace by the time I got to work than I had been all week. God is good. It could have been a bad morning, but I was in an incredible mood when I got to work and no one could've guessed that it didn't go so well. Then again, maybe it did go well.

Garage Sales, Panda Bears and Church

So we had a garage sale Friday and Saturday. We stuck it on Craig's list and early Friday at 8:00 people were already outside, and I'm thinking you gotta be kidding, we didn't have any signs up or anything. This is like a religion for the faithful garage saler, be the first to get there and worship at the alters of other people's junk, give your offering then go to the next temple and worship some more. Like church hoppers on crack. Anyway, it was fun we met some great people, we had some ministry opportunities and met a couple of neighbors that I thought were vampires. One guy just 3 doors down lived in Cleveland for some time, he was walking by with an OSU sweatshirt and cap. We had a good conversation ... a lot better than "hey" ... "hey". So we got about $400 or so. Enough for a trip to Sam's ... woohoo.

So Saturday night after the sale we were all beat and went to Panda Express. It was good until about 2 hours later when the food poisoning set in. Faith, Me, Tim, Grace, Ian were all affected and let's just say the Alexander house got a little crazy.

Well the next morning was church and I had to do the transition between worship and offering as well as be nice, smile and make people feel welcome before service (between trips to visit my little porceline friend). In the transition I talked about God being greater than anything we could possibly be up against ... about magnifing God to make our opposition small. I don't know about anyone else, but it was what I needed to hear that morning. Overall I think people were blessed though all and the services went well in releasing the new "Heart for the House" campaign. Above all significant life change occured and many came to Christ ... what more could you want.