Easter Eggs? Easter Bunnies? What is up with that??

So many of our holidays have strange elements. Easter is no different. I am not talking about new shoes or a new Easter hat. I am talking about Easter Egg hunts, Easter baskets, and Easter bunnies.


I grew up in a home with that unusual combination. I raised my own kids that way. So what is the big deal?


There is actually an interesting history to this story. In 325 A.D. Roman Emperor Constantine "Christianized" the Roman Empire. For Christians who had been slaughtered by this empire for centuries, this change must have seemed to have been a welcomed relief.


But like every change, there is always the law of unexpected consequence. Constantine took the Christian practice of Easter and wed it with ancient fertility cult practices. To the untrained eye, one can tell the similarities. Jesus comes out the tomb and give new life, in much the same way that flowers burst forth out of barren soil and show that spring and new life have returned.


The egg and bunnies are obvious symbols of fertility. Easter is the story of new life in Christ. So what is the problem?


When religious beliefs or practices, become wed to secular ideas, religion suffers.


A recent CNN poll gives us a snap shot of religious belief.  74 per cent of Americans believe in God. 72% believe in miracles and 68 per cent believe in heaven. It also tells us that 42% per cent believe in ghosts, 29% believe in astrology, and  26% believe in witches.


Here is the one statistic that rings most true. 19% of all Americans believe themselves to be highly religious.


That seems much more believable than people simply saying they believe in God. The sad thing for me as a minister is that these per centages are dropping; and dropping quickly.


We live in a nation with a civil religion. We live in a culture where you can believe in God and ghosts; witches and miracles, astrology and the power of prayer.


For many people is just another day in their civil religion. They will nod toward God and some will even make their way to church. They will buy new outfits and gorge themselves on Sunday lunch. They will wake up on Monday and little has changed.


That is the world we live in. And much of that began with an Emperor who saw nothing wrong with wedding bunnies to the tomb.

Why can't we laugh at ourselves anymore?

Stephen Colbert has to close down a satirical foundation called: Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation of Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.


It was shut down because of outraged political activists who were offended by the gesture. If you were to read the name of the foundation out of context, you would probably find it offensive too.


With context, it makes much more sense. Colbert was making fun of Daniel Snyder, wealthy owner of the Washington Redskins, for setting up a foundation to support the team's controversial nick name.


I should probably care more about the Redskins name, but I am a Cowboys fan. I can only hope that their refusal to change the name brings for them decades of bad Karma.


What this latest incident shows is that Political Correctness run amuck takes the fun out of life. Colbert, John Stewart, Lewis Black and others like them, come from a long line of political satirists. Mark Twain and Will Rogers are two of the brightest and most engaging Americans to spin a yarn or turn a phrase. They would have found Colbert's response funny. They would have understood it for what it is...satire.


I have recently reengaged social media. Facebook is fascinating to me. Sarcasm, irony, and satire are lost, if not hard to come by, in this venue. I have developed only one rule. If I have to put an emoticon or a an "lol" behind something I write on Facebook, then it just does not need to be said.


We have simply lost the ability to laugh at ourselves. Why is that a problem? It means we take ourselves too seriously. That is arrogance in the most virulent form.


So I close with a joke. How many Baptist preachers do you invite to go fishing with you? The answer is two. If you invite one he will drink all your beer and claim to have caught the biggest fish.


As a recovering Baptist preacher I give you permission to laugh. A the great comedian Larry the Cable Guy says: "I don't care who you are...that's funny."

Why is common ground so uncommon?

There is very little dialogue these days. There is even less healthy public dialogue. What we have is a culture where talking heads speak to other talking heads. The idea seems to be if I yell enough and repeat myself enough then what I say must be correct or important.


An article about the movie Noah encourages Christians not to attend. They do so by labeling the director as an atheist. It would have been nice if they had dialogued with the actual content of the movie instead of labeling by libel.


Comedian Bill Maher calls God as a mass murderer. It is consistent with who he is and what he believes, but it was also great for ratings.


Where can a person find common ground for conversation when there is a lack of civility and courtesy? Have we lost the ability to listen? Have we lost the ability to allow someone the chance to be heard?


This now creeps its way into church life. We as Pastors find ourselves reviewing curriculum and setting guidelines for small group discussions in the church setting. It seems that common ground and courtesy have even lost their way in our local congregations.


I had someone share a story from a mega church this week. The Pastor was preaching on a fairly controversial political topic. I struggle to imagine what biblical text he used to justify preaching about it. An angered congregant stood up and called him a liar and stormed out of the building. Where did this person learn this behavior? I am not sure, but it was modeled for her a few years ago in our own congress.


Church should be a thermostat and not a thermometer. We should set the expectations for ethical behavior, discourse, and dialogue the way a thermostat determines the environment in a house. In stead we seem to reflect the behavior of our culture and we are no different than the world around us.


How we say what we say says as much about us as what we say.

What would the Shark Tank say about my new church?

I usually blog about current events and topics that are interesting to me. I want to blog about something a little more personal today. I want to write about a church that I Pastor that we started January 1st, 2014. It is called The Path to the Cross Church and we are located in Northwest Houston.


I really like the show Shark Tank. If you have never seen it the premise is pretty simple. Entrepreneurs come on the show and present their businesses and ideas to a group of multi-millionaire/billionaires. The "sharks" can be gracious if the business idea has real potential and the presentation is well done. If not, they can be brutal. It can also become contentious if several sharks begin to bid on the same business.


I have become really intrigued in recent months because for the first time in my life I am an entrepreneur. My wife and I decided to start a new church in late October 2013. Armed with a dream and a handful of potential members, we launched a faith based business.


We had no real business plan. What we had was 35 years experience in ministry on my part and 30 years of accounting and business experience from my wife. We had no money in the church account and no members. In a way it was crazy. It has been the best crazy thing we have ever done.


We began meeting in our home. A dozen people became fifteen people and soon we outgrew our home. That is when miracle number one happened. My wife's boss offered for us to use his facility. ABC Home and Commercial Services is a high profile business on the Sam Houston Parkway. It has a huge meeting room, smaller rooms for small group studies, and a kitchen for our fellowships. It is easy to find and parking is very convenient.


On the first Sunday we had 30 people. By the first week in March, we had 59 people attend on a Sunday morning. How have they come? Word of mouth, Face Book, LinkedIn, a podcast, and signage have led people our way. The church is growing and offerings are growing as well.


The other night I wondered to myself...what would happen if I went on Shark Tank and asked these men and women to support our church financially? What would I say in my presentation? What would their questions be? How would I explain some of the things that have happened that could have only occurred by divine intervention?


The truth is that The Path is an entrepreneurial enterprise. It is also a church. We should do our best to follow the very best business principles that we can. We should also.  remember that not everything about a church fits on a balance sheet. Their are resources and provision that just cannot be explained.

Hollywood and the Bible...It is a strange marriage

In the next few weeks we will have the opportunity to see at least three movies with biblical themes.


"Son of God" has been out a couple of weeks, earning at least $45 million dollars. It was actually already seen on the History Channel last year and this was a part of that original series. I spent hours reviewing the whole series on godsfavoritepodcast.com. You can hear my comments about the movie in the sections where we deal with the life of Jesus. In one of those podcasts we actually say: "You know, they could make a movie out of this part alone." ...and they did.


What is of interest to me is how they marketed it. They did not use the traditional movie approach. They went directly to churches. They encouraged churches to "buy out" movie theaters. This approach seems to have worked well enough. Mark Burnett made another $45 million dollars on something people could have watched on tv for free.


It is intriguing that there is a sub set of Christians who will support almost any movie about Jesus. The response to "The Passion of the Christ" was even more rabid ten years ago. To not see the movie was almost "un-Christian." Robert Parham writes a great editorial on this at ethicsdaily.com.


It will be fun to watch what happens with the next two movies as well. "God is not dead" is almost a remake of the Scopes Monkey Trial, only this time the question is the existence of God and the setting is a secular college campus. Having taught philosophy at a community college, I am intrigued to see how the whole scenario plays out. I am also interested to see how Duck Dynasty star Willie Robertson fits in the picture.


The movie I am most anxious to watch is "Noah." The lead character is portrayed by George Clooney. It has a stellar cast and a huge special effects budget. Like the epic "The Ten Commandments" which came before, it promises to be epic.


Read the fine print before you go. My paraphrase of the television commercial is this: "Though we have taken great liberty with the biblical text, we think we have captured the spirit of the story." This really is nothing new. Watch "The Ten Commandments" again; this time with a bible in one hand and a remote in the other. Hollywood has always taken liberties. Even "The Passion of the Christ" was a much more Catholic rendering of the story than most viewers realized.


My curiosity is the way in which "Noah" is laid out. Will the movie reflect current thoughts on life and death, responsibility to one's neighbor, and even global warming and climate change or will it reflect ancient Jewish thought and theology? I am willing to invest a few bucks and catch a matinee. Unfortunately, unlike watching from home, I will be unable to throw my pillow at the screen when they same something really stupid.

Faith, Food, Fitness, and Focus

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. For several years I have taken on the spiritual discipline of Lent. It is the idea that we "give up" certain physical habits or patterns and we "take on" certain spiritual disciplines. All of this is meant to sharpen our focus as we head toward Easter.


It was a Catholic priest, Father Richard Neuyer, who showed how little effort and time I spent toward preparing for Easter. His question was simple: "How can you celebrate on Easter Sunday, if you haven't grieved through Lent?"


I have chosen to take on "The Daniel Plan" for my Lenten discipline. It is a book by Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Driven Life, and several Doctors.


My inspiration actually came from Colin Cowherd of ESPN television. He spoke one day of how small choices make huge differences. Two cookies a day can mean two pounds of extra weight at the end of the year. Two pounds a year for thirty years means a person is obese. It is not the occasional binge that gets us in trouble. It is a series of small bad choices repeated over and over.


The book is built on four interconnected principles. Rick Warren says that all four are necessary for success; and better yet, their is a synchronistic and geometric benefit is all four areas are addressed carefully and passionately.


So here is my plan:


Faith: I will spend thirty minutes a day in intentional prayer and devotion time; not in sermon prep or church work, but just time alone with God.


Food: I will eat the foods laid out in Daniel chapter one, as practiced by Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I will eat fruit, vegetables, and water.


Fitness: This is one area I actually do well. I walk two miles every day with my dog. I will just double the laps.


Focus: This is the tough one. Not sure this one will work itself out. I will let you know.


I hope that you would choose to embrace Lent. Not sure what your needs are, but it is a good pursuit.

A Baptist Seminary in Lebanon?

I had the chance to meet a man named Nabil Costa last week. He works for the Arabic Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon. His is an incredible story,


I had to confess to Nabil that I did not know nearly as much about Lebanon as I thought. It is a small country. It is roughly the size of two to three good sized counties in Texas. Lebanon has coast line, forests, mountains, and dessert. There are three million Lebanese inside the borders of this country. One third are Christian, One third Sunni Muslim, one third Shia Muslim.


Lebanon lies due north of Israel. Because of conflicts with Israel in the past, Lebanon's relationship with the United States is tenuous at best.


But tucked away in the middle of Beirut, there is a small group of people with a global vision.


They tape bible studies and put them on satellite television for all the Middle East and North Africa to see. They have a high school in the heart of Islamic Beirut. Islamic parents willingly sign a release allowing their children to be taught the Bible. They do this in trade for the quality of education their children will receive.


They have sixty students in their seminary. These are pastors from all of over the Middle East and North Africa. Their belief is simple. People in Tunisia will respond better to a Tunisian Pastor than an American Missionary.


They also have an incredible opportunity at their doorstep. Almost one million refugees have flooded Lebanon from war torn Syria. Most of these are Islamic people. Christians in Lebanon are at the front lines distributing aid to these Muslim refugees. Being able to put aside political differences for the good of people is admirable.


I will lead a group of ministers and laity to Lebanon this September. It will be a trip which will try to raise awareness of the issues Christians face in this part of the world.


It is one thing to be a Christian in Texas. It is quite another to be a Christian in Beirut.