Hearing the Music

Reaching the Heart of America

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What would Gospel Saturation look like in a region?  Here is one view “by the numbers”:  

  • One church for every 50,000 people would have “presence”.  
  • One church for very 5,000 people would mean “influence”.  
  • One church for every 500 people would achieve “saturation”.

This past week in St. Louis I had the opportunity to be part of a group of leaders from the Midwest praying and talking about gospel saturation in our region. Our region, as defined by our denomination, includes 13 states totaling over 71 million people. Applying current demographics to that number means that in our region over 60 million people are not significantly connected to a gospel-preaching church. In terms of our Midwest efforts, there is 1 PCA church for every 300,000 people, that number being over 6 times larger than the number needed for mere “presence”. (By comparison, in the PCA Northeast 1 church exists per 175,000, while in the PCA South there is 1 church per 74,000.)  While it is true that we don’t assume that the PCA is the only “gospel preaching” option available, the level of need for people to be connected to a gospel work is staggering.

Our theme for our time together was Philippians 1:27–28, "Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents." It was truly an encouragement to stand in one spirit with these sisters and brothers from our region, to pray for the faith of the gospel, and to strategize and imagine people drawing draughts of Living Water and finding the very thing that their souls are longing for. We recognize that though enemies and obstacles are real, we are not frightened because surely He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (I John 4:4).

So let us be earnest in prayer and energetic in work here in our little corner of the Midwest, Grand Rapids. We have such a great gift to offer in the face of such great need. You are so generous already with your time, your talents, your finances, your struggles and pain. May the Holy Spirit increase our ability to steward all things well. And, may we not be frightened by our enemies for we do know that our God does all things well. My prayer is that this Sunday we will be encouraged as we encounter with Asaph in Psalm 73 the overwhelming sufficiency and power of a life with God.  

 

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

Last Stop in Egypt

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This Sunday we make our last stop in our current Exodus series. We actually arrive at Mt. Sinai, the same place where Moses started his journey. God was true to his word and brought the Israelites out to worship him on this particular mountain (Ex. 3:12). But, as we will see Sunday, Sinai is no closer to the promised land than Egypt is, in fact, it is farther away! What is God up to? 

What God is up to with the Israelites is the same thing that he is up to with you and me. He is leading us, not to a physical destination, but rather he is leading us to himself. Exodus 19 is full of God. He is proactive, holy, majestic, and merciful. What a reminder that God himself is our destination, and that he invite us, he wants to meet us in worship.

It was quite something for the Israelites to meet YHWH at Sinai. And while God has not changed our picture of him has enlarged. The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way: 

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12: 18-24)

What a story! The Israelites met God in thunder, lighting and a thick cloud. When we come to worship Sunday we come to Jesus our Mediator and the way is open!

 

Photo by Dyaa Eldin Moustafa on Unsplash

The Horror

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Welcome back — to me! It was great to get away for a couple of weeks, relax, spend time with family and friends and enjoy our beautiful state. But it is also good to be back among friends and colleagues walking through the ups and downs of life together. 

As we have opportunity from time to time to break away for vacation, we are often reminded upon return that the world has not “rested”. I was reminded of this vividly with the two mass shootings that happened in our country while we were away. Once again we are confronted with the atrocity that one of God’s image bearers is willing to inflict on another image bearer.

Perhaps not coincidentally both Lisa and I read Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness on our break. For those not familiar it is a novella that is often included in the list of best books ever written. It definitely does not make the list because of its cheery theme or its uplifting title. I suspect it makes the list because of it penetrating honesty about the human condition. In short the book follows Marlowe as he makes his way up the River Congo during the imperial period in which Belgium was colonizing the African country we now know as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of particular interest for Marlowe is a man named Kurtz, who works for “the company” and has penetrated deep into the recesses of the country. As a true renaissance man, Kurtz came to the Congo with wonderful intentions to benefit the natives. However, when Marlowe locates him he is physically sick, but more to the point his soul has been corrupted and he has set himself up as a sort of demigod among the natives inducing them to worship him and in return taking advantage of them and their natural resources (ivory). Marlowe is able to get Kurtz aboard his steamer and begin to make their way back up the river towards civilization. But before they can arrive Kurtz dies. Just before he expires, Marlowe observes him wrestling with himself as he recounts his days. As his musings come to an end and his life ebbs away, with great clarity of realization he exclaims, “The horror. The horror.”

What a picture it is of man without the healing touch of a Beautiful Savior. Conrad has captured so poignantly the trajectory of our lives, no matter how good our intentions, without the life transforming power of the Gospel. It is easy to judge the shooters in our land or the militant members of the social and political “tribes” different than our own (Antifa, BLM, MAGA, MeToo, Alt-Right, Manosphere, SJA, etc…). We isolate ourselves with our favorite voices and newsfeeds, but we must watch out lest, like Kurtz, we find that “the wilderness loves us, embraces us and gets in our veins.” Always our hope is that in the midst of our wilderness YHWH holds us close as our Guide and Friend.

So this Sunday we will be heading back out to the wilderness, in particular Exodus 18, and we will be reminded that YHWH is indeed the hope of nations. We will be reintroduced to Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who “rejoiced for all the good that the Lord had done to Israel, in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. (cf. 18:9)” May YHWH meet each of us and rescue us from our own heart of darkness.

 

 

Photo by Iqx Azmi on Unsplash

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