April 10, 2009

It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming

This is a big weekend coming up. Today, my family and I leave for the Hyatt Regency DFW and for LTC. LTC stands for Leadership Training for Christ. Young people from churches all over the Southwest gather together in different hotels for a weekend of activities ranging from drama to puppets, from signing to singing. Kids learn skills, leadership, problem solving, and, oh by the way, how to serve Jesus in more affective ways.

Our youth minister, Tim Henderson, plays a major role in LTC. I am proud of him and his wife, Denise, for the work that they do. I am also amazed at how much they accomplish. We also have a number of our people, who volunteer to help make the weekend a success. Dozens of people spend hundreds of hours helping kids get ready, packing meals, loading trucks, and much, much more.

Another reason why this is a big weekend is, of course, Easter. I like the fact, each year we have many guests, who visit us at Shiloh for worship services on Easter Sunday. I would like to think our congregation properly emphasizes the resurrection each Sunday. Still, I know we are granted a marvelous moment on Easter Sunday morning to reach out to people.

Easter Sunday is a challenge. We probably have about three hundred people who will go and minister at LTC this weekend. A few others travel to visit relatives. Still others remain here to minister to people in Tyler. A lot of missional work will be done by Shiloh for the Kingdom this weekend.

While most people in LTC remain for a huge Sunday service, my family always hurries back after the LTC banquet on Saturday night. I grab a little sleep and get up at 5:00 or 5:30 on Sunday morning to ready myself for the busy day. It is an exhausting, yet exhilarating, weekend.

This Sunday morning I plan to address Paul's desire to know the power of Christ’s resurrection. There is power there. The power that raised a man from the dead and transformed his body is available to us today. I believe that power can help us overcome envy, strife, division, bitterness, sexual immorality, greed, addictions, and much, much more. I want to know that power. I want us to know that power.

The Created World is Fallen, and My Eyes are not Doing Much Better

I’ve been nearsighted now for more years than I’ve been sighted. However, when it came time to check out my prescription for contact lenses, I made a bold decision. I decided to compensate for my deteriorating vision. Here’s what I mean.

Previously, I had a prescription for my left eye that allowed me to see things at a distance, and a prescription in my right eye that allowed me to read or see things up close. I decided to forego that option, and I went with contact lenses they gave me 20-15 vision in both eyes—from a distance. I see like an eagle things that are far away. The problem is, I see like Helen Keller up close. I mean my food at supper is literally a blur. So, I got a prescription for reading glasses to compensate. This was a change for me. I can normally read without corrected vision. But with my contacts, I have to have reading glasses. Hence, I traveled to my local Wal-Mart and purchased for myself an inexpensive pair.

Problem. With my contacts in, I cannot see the computer well, and it strains my eyes to look at my computer through my reading glasses. So, I received another prescription for glasses to look at my computer when I’m wearing contacts. Again, my local Wal-Mart came through. Yet, what do I do on those days when I cannot wear my contact lenses? My local optometrist gave me another prescription for glasses to wear when I’m not wearing my contact lenses. Let’s tally the score. I now own three pairs of glasses plus contact lenses.

I like the vision that my contact lenses provide. Still, it can be quite a circus when I am at the office, at my desk, and wearing my contacts. If I am reading and I want to see somebody who walks into my office, I must take off my reading glasses. If I want to look at my computer, I must put on my computer glasses. If I want to read a book, I must take off my computer glasses and put on my reading glasses. If someone then walks into my office… well, you get the idea.

There is no question that we are living in a fallen world. But I am sad to say, I think my vision has fallen even farther.

“What Losing Taught Me About Winning”

I was never a big fan of Fran Tarkenton, but I have always respected him. He was a record-setting quarterback with the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants back in the 1960s and 70s. (Any of you 60s or 70s boys remember the character, based on Fran Tarkenton, in the fictional book Throw the Long Bomb, by JACK LAFLIN?) You may also remember Fran Tarkenton formed part of the famous troika of That's Incredible! He joined John Davidson and Cathy Lee Crosby in one of the first TV reality shows.

Well, Fran Tarkenton has since become a very successful entrepreneur. As of the writing of this book, which was 1997, he had founded 12 companies that had taken in more than $200 million in businesses stretching across 50 countries.

Since then, Tarkenton has faced his problems. He recovered and is still a player in the business world today.

I found this book on tape, online for a dollar or two, when I was ordering some other books. I figured with free shipping, I could not go wrong in buying it. Tarkenton is very folksy in this book drawing upon his personal experience, as well as, many anecdotes.

Tarkenton states that your job in business is to make other people’s lives better. Does the entrepreneur want to profit in his or her business. Certainly, but one does so by leaving someone better off than before.

My favorite part is where he emphasizes the importance of focusing on the customer and his needs as opposed to your own. He goes so far as to say become obsessed with the customer’s needs. I wouldn’t go that far, but I like the idea that good business is not thinking about how much money you can make off someone; rather, it is focusing on the needs of another. That sounds suspiciously like Jesus. Moreover, Tarkenton encourages people to forge relationships with people. Good business is relational.

I also found extremely helpful the section that related to the book’s title—failure. Tarkenton lists seven steps to facing failure:

1. View failure as an essential part of success. No one escapes failure.
2. Don’t run from failure. It is not a terminal disease. Failure can depress you, drive you to quit, or it can energize you. Use it to invigorate your life.
3. Acknowledge your responsibility in failure. Allow this to give you perspective.
4. Claim control of your life.
5. Turn the negative into a positive.
6. Practice optimism grounded in reality.
7. Face failure again by finding a new challenge. Trial and error are partners to success.

It will not be required reading for Harvard Business School, but if business is your thing, he offers principles that are definitely not outdated. And if you find a copy for a buck or two, I think it's worth giving up your change.

I Wish I had Said That

“Today, the average person -- including a good many scientists -- treat the ideas, concepts, and theories of science in exactly the same way as the ancients treated their golden calves. We take quarks, black holes, and the big bang story to be objective elements in an authoritative description of an external, independent reality. We forget or suppress the fact that all of these elements are ideas that came originally from the human mind, as do all the arguments we use to justify them. All scientific concepts and theories, together with the whole system and rationale of the so-called scientific method, clearly originated in the human mind. The complex, extensive, detailed, and astonishing picture of the natural world that we call science is the product of human imagination, thought, insight, and genius. It is neither external, nor independent, nor final, nor even provable. The whole structure and content of science, including its fabled empirical method, is like a vast and intricate game whose rules, playing board, and pieces were all created by human beings for their own use, benefit, amusement, power, and security.

“It wasn't for nothing that the Old Testament prophets singled idolatry out for special condemnation. We can easily see its destructive effects on modern civilization. Every other culture in history has invented or ‘received’ a creation myth whose express purpose was to rationalize human existence -- to tell us who we are, how we got here, and what our value and purpose are. Indeed, it is the job of creation myths to tell us the meaning of life. Modern science does precisely the opposite. For the first time in history, a culture has conjured up a story about itself that altogether denies any meaning, value, or purpose in human existence. This is far more perverse than simply fouling our own nest; this is a total denial of any need for a home, a haven, or any sense of belonging....

“In a sense, science has taken over the role of state religion in modern culture, and it has become a very influential religion at that. Who can deny that the scientific establishment has become a modern priesthood? The pronouncements of scientists are respected and accepted by today's public just as the doctrines of the church fathers were respected and accepted by people a thousand years ago. The rigorous training in arcane mathematics and methodology is no less exacting, demanding, and monastic than was the medieval study of ancient languages and theology. Modern scientific training today is an insuperable barrier to the lay person who would question the authority of science, just as the ecclesiastical training of the Roman Catholic priesthood was a great obstacle to the medieval laity with its questions and doubts. If anything, modern science incurs far less challenging criticism than the church ever did. The church fathers would have given their eyeteeth to command for medieval Catholicism the kind of obedience and blind faith that we freely lavish on science today.

“Although we condemn them today, we cannot fail to appreciate the church's efforts to defend itself in a war that it ultimately lost to science, just as it had feared. It is science and not religion that gives today's world its rationale, morality, sustenance, and story of creation, such as it is.

Despite protestations that science has nothing to do with religious and spiritual questions, it is science that dictates to the church and not vice versa. It is science that determines the character philosophy of civilization. The danger in all of this is that it has happened unconsciously and without liberation or consent. Science has been of enormous and indisputable material benefit to modern civilization; but if we fail to recognize and take account of the deeply religious role that science plays in our lives, we run the risk of destroying not only our material benefits but our souls as well.”
--Roger S. Jones, Professor Emeritus in the field of Physics, University of Minnesota, from his book Physics for the Rest of Us, pp. 132-136.

Except for the part about the creation myths, I could not have phrased these thoughts any better. I have no idea the religious views of Dr. Jones. But he has given voice to beliefs that I have held but have not been able to articulate well. My thanks to Dr. Jones.

Five things I think I think (a tip of the hat to Peter King for this idea)

1. Okay, so I was wrong about North Carolina.

2. I posted this on my Facebook page the other day. If you are over thirty, buy a copy of the book Grown Up Digital. Don Tapscott does the best job I have seen describing what is happening to our world as we transition into this new electronic and cultural era. Ten years ago, Tapscott wrote GROWING UP DIGITAL. I believe this is the fourth major shift in the past 150 years. First came the telegraph age, next the radio age, then the TV age, and now we are transitioning into the digital age. More on this another time.

3. Did you read Newsweek’s major story this week on Christianity and the U. S.? It stated that a recent survey found that the number of people who claim to be Christians dropped from 86 % to 76 % since 1990. Just because a majority of people still claim to be Christians, it does not mean that we are a Christian nation.

4. Last Saturday, I sprayed to kill the weeds in my yard. They’re still going strong. Amazing how Judy and I can work hard to cultivate the grass and lose it. However, we can do all we can to destroy the weeds, and they grow just as if we cultivated them. Something is wrong with this world.

5. There is not a single movie in the theaters that I want to see.

Have a great weekend!