Advocating a Boring Passport

At 18, I received my first passport. 10 years later, once the passport expired, the diversity of “stamps” became a source of pride – you see every time you enter a country, immigration stamps your passport. Each country has a unique stamp, and often at the end of a trip I enjoyed sitting down and looking through all the stamps and visas in my passport. I marveled at the littlest countries with the biggest stamps (like Lichtenstein) and the manner in which stamps reflect the culture (the German stamp is unadorned yet efficient). My passport had stamps from 5 continents, and a couple dozen countries – stamps from mission trips to Venezuela, Peru, Central Asia, India, England to name a few. My passport was the James Dean of passports.

However, today, I want to advocate a boring passport.

My first passport revealed a misunderstanding of effectiveness in short-term missions. I loved going to a new country, sharing the gospel, seeing many “pray to receive Christ” and plan on going on mission again the next year – just to a different country. This allowed me to have an amazingly colorful and diverse passport.

A little over three years ago, my attitude about short-term missions changed. Now my passport is boring. In the last three years, I have been to two countries on mission trips – India and Argentina. I’ve been to India once in this time span and Argentina nine times. As I flip through the pages of my passport, all I see is the same entry and exit stamp over and over again – in a word, boring.

Rather than going on several mission trips a year to several different countries, I decided that the best way for the missions ministry at North Richland Hills Baptist Church to make a lasting impact was to go to fewer countries more frequently per year. In the last three years, our primary international partnership has been in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (If you want to learn more about the partnership check out adoptabarrio.wordpress.com) NRHBC has sent fifteen mission teams to Buenos Aires in the last three years.

Pretty boring, huh? However, we have seen lives impacted by the gospel – just this week I enjoyed studying the Bible with a young man who a year ago became a believer and couldn’t find a single book in the Bible. On Wednesday, he didn’t miss a beat – able to find books in the Bible just as quickly as I could. Iker is well on his way in discipleship.

Prior to the change in philosophy, discipleship was an afterthought. Now it is our passion. After all, Jesus did not call us to make converts, he called us to make disciples.

A boring passport is not an empty passport. We live in a day and time in which travel is easy and relatively inexpensive. There is little reason for an American Christian to have an empty passport in regards to missions.

Boring passports reveal a white-hot passion for contributing to God’s mission to redeem humanity – in other words making an impact on one location – one people group – one partnership through evangelism, discipleship and church planting.

If you don’t have a passport – get one and use it for missions. If your passport is exciting – join with NRHBC’s work in Argentina and make it much more boring.

How boring is your passport?

Video Du Jour - BENNY HINN CONFRONTS JOEL OSTEEN

This is funny...pot calling the kettle black?

If you want your best life now, either buy Joel Osteen's book or send "seed money" to Benny Hinn.

The Scriptures - Our Instruction Manual for Life

This is an excerpt from my sermon yesterday - for a copy of the sermon, check out www.nrhbc.org.

As a red blooded American male, I have no interest in using instruction manuals when I have to put something together. After all, isn’t “some assembly required” really just a challenge to my intelligence?

As a result of having two kids 8 months apart, my life became filled with a handful of instruction manuals – interestingly enough – none for the actual kids – just for their stuff. And apparently kids need a lot of stuff!

There is an inherent danger in ignoring the instruction manual as some assembly required may turn into some reassembly required! If we neglect to follow the instruction manual, we may construct a swing, when we were supposed to be building a high chair. No honey, it’s supposed to wobble when the kid sits in it!

Neglecting or forgetting the instruction manual can be hazardous.

Imagine if you had an instruction manual for life. You would have a best-seller on your hands as this is something people crave! There are 99,060 self-help books on Amazon.

Fortunately for Christians, we have this source in the Bible. The Bible is our instruction manual for life – we have a choice to either follow it and be fully equipped or ignore it and be uninformed, ill-equipped and in a sense broken.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

The scriptures are profitable for teaching – are you hearing & applying?

The scriptures are profitable for rebuking and correcting – are you open to being torn down and rebuilt?

The scriptures profitable for training in righteousness - are you spending time in the word?

Article Du Jour - Global Warming?

Are carbon emissions responsible for global warming? Does global warming exist?

Michael Crichton doesn't think so:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html

from the article:

"Michael's detailed explanation of why he criticizes global warming scenarios. Using published UN data, he reviews why claims for catastrophic warming arouse doubt; why reducing CO2 is vastly more difficult than we are being told; and why we are morally unjustified to spend vast sums on this speculative issue when around the world people are dying of starvation and disease."

What do you think?

Praying for the Couples in our NRHBC Family

In the last few weeks and months, several couples at NRHBC have experienced difficulties in their marriage, some even leading to separations.

A few weeks ago, the Sunday Morning Bible Study (our Sunday School) leaders were asked to set aside today as a day of prayer for the couples in our church.

If you are a married couple at NRHBC, understand that your SMBS leaders and I are praying for:

1) Restoration - for the separated couples

2) Protection - for every couple in our church

3) to Thrive - for every marriage in our church to thrive - to be a godly example of a marriage in our community.

Article Du Juor - "Passions over 'prosperity gospel': Was Jesus wealthy?"

Passions over the "prosperity gospel": Was Jesus Wealthy?

"'Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the finest transportation of their day was a donkey,' says Anderson. 'Poor people ate their donkey. Only the wealthy used it as transportation.'"

What this pastor is forgetting is the importance of Christ coming from humble origins. The Israelites had certain expectations of the messiah - that he would be a conquering king.

The problem for the pharisees, Sanhedrin, Saul (before he became Paul) and even at times the disciples was that Jesus did not meet their expectations for the messiah. After all, what good comes from Nazareth?

Wealth would have meet one of their expectations for the messiah. Instead, God sent Jesus to be laid in a manger, to grow up in back-water Nazareth and to enter Jerusalem on a donkey, each as symbols of a humble messiah.

We can have confidence that Jesus was not wealthy in terms of worldly wealth. Praise God that he sent his son to humble himself even to death on the cross!

Why Fuller Seminary

**Updated**

Growing up in Texas, I had only attended Texas institutions for my education - kindergarten through seminary. Furthermore, I have always attended Southern Baptist Churches and earned my masters of Divinity at an SBC school in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

When thinking about doctoral work, I decided that I wanted to get out of Texas and out of SBC circles.

I examined a few schools based on a few things:

1) Is the institution evangelical and orthodox?

2) Will the professors equip me to lead a church to engage the culture with the gospel, make an impact locally and globally for the kingdom, encourage the body of Christ to move deeper into a relationship with Christ, and become a transformational leader and preacher?

3) Do the alumni reflect #2?

I decided upon Fuller Theological Seminary as it impressed me the most on all three levels. A few friends have derided that decision - funny enough - because the program is challenging. They encouraged me to look for an easier and shorter program just like they did. Their goal is to earn a DMin - my goal is to become a better leader/preacher/missionary/etc.

In order to prove my point on #2 and #3 from above, I'd like to provide a list of professors and alumni from Fuller.

Professors in the DMin program:

Dave Gibbons - (this Dave Gibbons, not this Dave Gibbons) pastor of Newsong and author of The Monkey and The Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church, speaker at Leadership Summit in 2009.

Alan Hirsch - missional thinker and leader, his books, the Forgotten Way and The Shaping of Things to Come have made an incredible impact on the missional movement among evangelicals.

Reggie McNeal - member and leader in the Leadership Network, his books, The Present Future and A Work of the Heart are widely regarded as encouragement for changes needed in the western church.

Alan Roxburgh - consultant, teacher, speaker, author on all things missional. Roxburgh's books, The Missional Leader and The Sky is Falling – Leaders Lost in Transition are important books in the missional discussion.

Bishop William Willimon - a Bishop of The United Methodist Church since 2004...For twenty years he was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University...A 2005 study by the Pulpit and Pew Research Center found that Bishop Willimon is the second most widely read author by mainline Protestant pastors.

Bishop N.T. Wright - Bishop of Durham, England...is one of today's best know and respected New Testament scholars...has written over thirty books, both at the scholarly level and for a popular audience.

Alumni:

Rob Bell (M.Div), author of the acclaimed Velvet Elvis, founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church.

Bill Bright (B.D), founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and commissioner of the Jesus Film.

John C. Maxwell (D.Min), evangelical Christian author, speaker, and pastor who has written more than 50 books, primarily focusing on leadership.

John Ortberg, (M.Div & Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology), teaching pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, and author of several books including The Life You've Always Wanted and If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat.

Les Parrott III, (Ph.D.), professor of clinical psychology for Seattle Pacific University, author, and motivational speaker.

John Piper (B.D), author of works such as Desiring God and Future Grace, theologian and senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Bob Roberts (D.Min), pastor of Northwood Church in North Richland Hills, TX. Author of Glocalization and leading authority on all things Glocal.

Rick Warren (D.Min), pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Church and the best-selling hardback book in U.S publishing history, The Purpose Driven Life.

The opportunity to learn from Alan Hirsch, Reggie McNeal, and William Willimon as well as to be counted as alumni along side Rick Warren and John Piper sealed the deal for why I choose Fuller Theological Seminary.