Pondering the Lord's Supper

At Grace, we have chosen the first Sunday of the month to celebrate the Lord's Supper - "reenacting" the momentous Passover meal Jesus shared with His disciples to begin an unbroken church tradition. The Lord's Supper goes by some other familiar names: most notably "Communion" and the "Eucharist." My personal preference is to call it the "Lord's Supper" because the other phrases often have associations with particular denominations or carry secondary meanings. Furthermore, "Lord's Supper" reminds us of who it's all about.

We have chosen once a month rather than weekly or quarterly or some other schedule because we want to keep it a frequent tradition, but not so frequent that it becomes a mindlessly repeated act. Many churches celebrate it weekly with great meaning, and we have no criticism of that practice. We believe that monthly is best for who we are at this time.

Janette Jasperson, Irena Jasperson, Hannah Flowers, and I'm sure many others who I'm not aware of, have faithfully prepared the serving plates, the bread, and the juice month of after month, and I'm grateful to them for their unsung labor. They "prepare" the Lord's Supper for us. In the same way, we should "prepare" ourselves for the Lord's Supper.

One way to prepare yourself is to fast for 12 or 24 hours before we celebrate it on the first Sunday of the month (such as this coming weekend). Then, you are breaking the fast specifically with the elements of the Lord's Supper. I've done this several times, and it's very meaningful to me - but I don't do it every time so that it remains meaningful when I choose to do it. The time of fasting, then, is a time to reflect, pray, and prepare your heart for how the Lord's Supper reminds us of Jesus' sacrifice for us on the Cross to pay for, and then wash away, our sin.

Whether you fast or not, another way to prepare for the Lord's Supper is to set aside time the night before or the morning of to have an unrushed hour to pray, particularly for the purpose of examining your heart, checking your motives, confessing your sin to the Lord, repenting of your sin (which is not about feeling bad, but about turning away from your sin), and receiving forgiveness. Then, you're not rushed during the Lord's Supper to try to "take care of business" in a short amount of time. The Lord's Supper becomes a way to celebrate forgiveness instead of just capping off a short time of prayer (which, quite frankly, is what it can become if we're not careful).

The Lord's Supper is something we particularly do in community - we take this all together, just as Jesus' disciples shared the elements together. There is an "us-ness" about it. The prayer and reflection are very personal, but the public declaration that I claim Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior is very public. Intentionally so.

Lastly, it doesn't need to be a pastor "presiding" over it or the elders to be the ones to serve it. There is nothing to stop us from having other believers speak, pray, and serve, and we have mixed that up on a few occasions. We should be in the habit of having others serve on occasion.

To read more about the Lord's Supper, read the accounts of Jesus and His disciples (Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; John 13), the accounts of the early church making the Lord's Supper important to their worship (Acts 2:37-47; 20:7-12), and how Paul teaches the church at Corinth how best to celebrate it (1 Cor 10:14-33; 11:23-34).

The Not-so-planny Plan

Biblical literacy is a high value at Grace Fellowship. We want all attenders to be able to dive into the Word on their own and be able to draw richness from the text, without needing anyone to tell them what they should conclude from the text. It's the proverbial teaching someone how to fish - we believe that those who know how to fish will eat better than those who don't.

In 2011, we had a church-wide reading plan to read the entire Bible together on the same schedule. Last year, we had a plan to read through the entire New Testament together, but in a order that roughly followed the timeline of the Book of Acts. In both cases, I have heard people mention how much they got out of the plans - having a goal to read, reading large sections at a time showing the big picture, and being encouraging by reading along with others.

For 2013, we're trying a different kind of plan. Rather than having a goal of reading a certain amount in a year's time, we are selecting readings that correspond to the weekly message. The week following a sermon, there is a set of passages to read that relate to that sermon.

Each week, we will publish in Grace Notes and in the weekly bulletin, plus on our Facebook page, the passages to read. For a given week, there will be five passages to read, one per day. Some will be long, intended to be read at a high level, and some will be short, intended to be read with more attention to detail. We recommend that you journal what you are learning from Scripture, what prayers are evoked by the passage, and even steps you intend to take to incorporate the Word into you life. The sixth day is for reviewing the previous five passages and synthesizing them together. There is nothing scheduled for the seventh day, in order to give you a day to catch up or to allow for one day a week that you just can't get to it.

The benefits of this approach are that it helps simplify our lives by not having so many different things to study in a given week, by repeating a lesson to help reinforce it, by actively digging into a passage that you heard someone else talk about, and by going deeper into the Word.

The downside of this approach is that I can't write out an entire year's worth of passages in advance. I just don't know all that I'll be teaching that far away, or where I want to put the emphasis in a given week. So, this means that we can't hand out schedules at the first of the year like we have the previous two years.

Next year, we'll probably do something else. But for this year, read with us and dig deeper into God's Word. Let me know how we can make it easier for you, and I'd love to hear your feedback on what you do and don't like about this approach. Pay attention to Grace Notes, the bulletin, or Facebook to keep up with us. I also plan to start posting on the church Facebook page some reflection related to the passage of the day.

Stewarding our Values

In last Sunday's message, we introduced the idea of "stewardship." We asked the question, "What is stewardship?" and there were several correct answers offered, all generally boiling down to the idea of being responsible with someone else's stuff. That's all well and good, but there's something important about stewardship that Jesus emphasizes repeatedly that I have ignored for years. I'm finding out since the message, I'm not alone in this. (The audio of the sermon will be available soon on our website.)

We asked three questions. The first was, "When does stewardship occur?" In all the parables about stewardship, not only does Jesus talk about being responsible with someone else's (i.e., His) stuff, but the fact that the Master is away during the time that stewardship is needed. Stewardship happens while the Master is away. Furthermore, stewardship happens because the Master is away.

The second question was, "What makes it stewardship?" What is it about stewardship that makes it "stewardship"? Again, beyond the idea of caretaking stuff responsibly, Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that the Master is returning one day (and on a day or hour that we won't know in advance). It's stewardship because the Master is returning. Because He's coming back, we have something to steward, and then be accountable for.

Thirdly, we asked, "How is stewardship a form of discipleship?" Jesus taught about stewardship in Luke 16:1-13 and ended with a series of questions to the effect of, "If you aren't faithful with small, temporal stuff that's not yours, who in his right mind would entrust you with big, eternal stuff of your own?" Stewardship is something that God uses to make us that kind of trustworthy. We're going to be given eternal time, full capacity of our abilities, fabulous wealth, and a community forever. Those are enormous responsibilities that we need to be prepared for. Stewardship is a form of discipleship in that it changes us to be able to handle the magnitude of what awaits us to our fullest.

We handed out a worksheet for each of us to prayerfully consider personal values to create the foundation of a steward's frame of mind. You can find that worksheet here: (http://doiop.com/PersonalValues, or see the QR code below). Please do take the personal time to walk through the worksheet - it will be very helpful for the rest of our series.



The discussions I've had since Sunday have been interesting and encouraging. Keep the dialog going - let's keep talking about being faithful and wise stewards, and let's encourage one another with the worksheets on stewarding our values. In the coming weeks, we'll talk about stewarding our time, our talents, our treasure, our family, our church, and our mission.

Every Misery Has an Answer

Thank you all for your kind concern for our welfare over this past weekend. We were both down with the flu - thankfully Lynne's case was mild, but my case was perhaps the worst I've ever experienced. Many of you posted, texted, IM'ed, emailed, and called to offer prayer, comfort, and assistance. Steve Reitz was called on Saturday evening with an urgent request to preach the message Sunday morning, and we are particularly grateful to him. Thanks for being family.

Without giving a descriptive narrative of our year-end "adventure," suffice it to say that I faced a long, varied sequence of miseries. But now in the aftermath, I realized that every misery had an answer. The misery of nausea had an answer - meds to fight it, and facilities just hurried steps away to relieve it. The misery of chills so strong they caused seizure-like shaking had an answer - blankets, thermal clothing, space heater, and even a household furnace. The misery of a desperate desire for it all to just go away had an answer - prayer to the God who is there. And so on. As the illness progressed into new miseries, each misery had an answer. Lynne's care was the answer to many miseries.

The answers to the miseries didn't always make the misery go away instantly. But there was an answer - something available, something to turn to, something that helped. There was no misery, no matter how uncomfortable, that lacked an answer.

Then I thought of those who don't always have answers to their miseries. It was easy for me to imagine what it would have been like if I did not have those answers available.

Some people don't have answers for their physical miseries. Whether we talk about our friends in Kenya or our friends across town, some don't have the blankets or the space heater or the furnace or even the facilities. Some don't have the meds. The answers exist, but some don't have access to the answers. Even if the answers don't immediately eradicate the misery, having access to answers brings hope to the misery.

More importantly, some don't have answers to their spiritual miseries. I always had access to God in prayer (and when you're sick, you tend to pray more raw, more honest, more prayerful prayers than when things are going well). There is the great answer we need to our misery of sin and its penalty, and there are ongoing answers to the full variety of spiritual miseries. But those who do not have a personal relationship with God through Christ don't have that Answer at hand. The Answer exists, but some don't have access to that Answer. Even if that answer doesn't immediately eradicate every spiritual misery, having access to the Answer brings hope to the misery.

Everyone you know has spiritual miseries - perhaps evident, perhaps hidden, but certainly present. However, every misery does have an answer. Our access to the Answer to our spiritual misery is found only through Jesus Christ. A weekend bout with the flu makes it easy to imagine what life would be like without access to the answers to our miseries. Make sure your neighbor knows where to find that Answer.

We Want to Make Sense of This

Like most of you, I have read the array of opinions about the shocking massacre in Newtown, CT, last Friday. People blaming mental illness, people blaming gun laws, people chalking it up to free will, people saying its because we've taken God out of the schools (which is impossible to do!), even a certain religious group blaming the sexual morals of the country. While writing this article, I received an email suggesting that if we just put prayer back in the schools, we can avoid future tragedies.

We want answers - we want to know why. We can accept it just a little bit more if there's some sense to it. But this particular incident is more senseless, more disconcerting than previous tragedies. This one seems to have gotten under our skin more, grieved us more, and worried us more than just about every other.

An acquaintance of mine posted the idea that those who say "everything happens for a reason" are cruel, simplistic liars, and that some things happen for no reason at all. It certainly does feel that way. How can something like this make sense? How can this have happened for a reason under the auspices of a sovereign Being?

Others have posted words of comfort. On top of wanting reasons, we want comfort. We don't want to walk around scared, constantly worried about the welfare of our children going to school every day. We want some assurance that this could never happen to us, and yet we know that the surviving parents in Newtown thought the exact same thing less than a week ago.

I don't know about you, but out of all of this, nothing I've read has been satisfying. (This article won't be satisfying, either.) Most articles oversimplify the problem - but to be honest, the simplicity is appealing. Wouldn't it be nice and manageable if the problem were actually that simple?

My question, though, is not "How could this happen?", but "Why hasn't this happened more?" All the probable culprits, from mental illness to secularization of society to saturating ourselves with first-person-shooter video games, are traceable back to the fallenness of man. This is not to oversimplify the problem - it is complex journey back to the Fall. But since fallenness is the root cause, and all are fallen, why hasn't this happened more?

The answer is Grace. By God's grace, the destructive ferocity of our fallenness has not been allowed to rage unchecked. That is what Hell is - a completely grace-free zone where man’s fallenness is left unrestrained. Although this world is not Heaven (which is a completely grace-filled zone with no fallenness at all to restrain), this world has some measure of God's grace, and that grace protects us from ourselves.

This grace allows us the chance to know and receive Christ. It is the same grace that expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and prevented them from returning to seal their fallen state forever. Without this grace, we would not have the opportunity to repent. When that grace is removed, there will remain no chance at all to repent. This kind of horrible incident is not more frequent precisely because God's grace presently protects us from the depths of how far we've fallen.

I don't know why this happened or how to prevent it from happening again. I can't say the words to ease our fears. But I am grateful for the grace that prevents our fallenness from wreaking the havoc it is capable of.

"Can I join your secret club?"

"Can I join your secret men's club?"

I have heard this question a few times in the last month or so. On the one hand, I love the question, because it means that men are interested in a quiet experiment that we've been conducting. On the other had, I reel back at the question, because our quiet experiment was never intended to be a "secret club" that makes men feel left out.

In the words of Inigo Montoya, "Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

The speaker at the 2011 men's retreat, Ron Bennett, has co-authored a series of studies geared for men called HighQuest (http://www.highquest.info/overview.html). The idea intrigued us, primarily because the format of this series is unlike any men's study we've seen before.

The series is designed for men to disciple one another. The studies are not fill-in-the-blank workbooks, but guides that slowly introduce spiritual disciplines, and keep men in the same passage, but gives them enough freedom to focus on different parts of that passage. So, when the men come together, they have individually wrestled with God's Word without anyone guiding their answers to a foregone conclusion. But, since the men are all in the same passage, they can compare thoughts and learn from one another.

We decided that instead of having a big, church-wide big splash launch of Yet Another Program that Will Revolutionize Your Church But Will Last Only 6 Weeks Before the Enthusiasm Wanes, we decided to start small and without fanfare.

Four of us asked up to three other men to consider forming a HighQuest group. Then we just started meeting, each group at their own pace. In my group, we are four men who didn't really know each other that well coming into it. We have different church backgrounds, different experiences and habits, but the same desire to grow as men in Christ. I get every impression that all the groups are similar.

The feedback has been very positive across the board! I could list dozens of positive comments, but I think the most powerful statement is that after finishing book 1, we had a 100% return rate from all the groups for men wanting to do book 2. (There are 9 books total, about 10 to 12 weeks each.)

Starting in January, we are going to explain more about HighQuest and then invite more men to start more groups. Not a big program, not a big splash, and not the only good way to do men's groups. Just a lot of good experiences with a "quiet experiment."

My thanks to Chad Krizan for being our coordinator - he will be the one to organize the groups and get people started. But once the groups are started, they pretty much run at their own pace, take care of ordering their own books, and so on. This is one part of our continuing drive to realize our vision, which includes intentionally cultivating relationships in order to disciple our world for God's glory.

So, it's not a secret men's group. But we're about to go from "Beta testing" to production for those men who want to join in. And I have both personally experienced and observed in others real spiritual growth and an improving set of spiritual disciplines.

We don't like normal killers

Have you ever noticed how the bad guys in movies are often portrayed to have particularly abnormal attributes? They are scarred or have been through some horrible, traumatic event or were abused. They look different, they talk differently, and their thinking is radically different than "normal." They've got to be psychopaths. Being albino is a repeated excuse - apparently that affects your moral compass somehow. In movies, we make the bad guys really abnormal. The truth is: we don't like normal killers.

We like killers who are scary because they are different than we are - we don't like killers who are scary because they are the same as we are. We want them removed from us. We want to think that we are very different from people who would do such things. We don't want to entertain the possibility that someone like me could do such a thing given the same moral make up that I have ... or that I could do such a thing given the moral make up that I have. We're better than that, aren't we? So, we make killers in movies categorically worse than we are so that we can be better than they are.

In my opinion, the scariest killers in movies are the ones who are more like us.

Consider the tragic events of last weekend with Jovan Belcher killing Kasandra Perkins, the mother of his daughter, and then taking his own life. I'm not commenting on Belcher - I'm commenting on society and its reaction to Belcher. There has been a lot of talk about what kind of person he was - heated debate, in some cases. In some of those discussions, people want him to be monstrous so that we can demonize him, distance ourselves from him, and not face the scarier kind of killer - someone who is like us.

No one is all good or all bad. We all have redeeming qualities, and we all have horrid ugliness in our hearts (that may or may not be on display for others to see). Without passing judgment on what kind of person Belcher was overall, we are more like him than we want to admit. We get angry. We have arguments. We sometimes feel like hurting someone, or hurting ourselves. We share the heart sin that was manifested in his life as action sin.

I don't have a $1.9 million contract, I'm not a public figure, and I didn't claw my way into pro sports through the unlikely path of going undrafted. And yet, I am more like Belcher than makes me comfortable. I don't need to demonize Belcher in order to feel better about myself. What I need is Jesus, pure and simple ... and only. I need Jesus, but not to make me different than Belcher - I need Jesus to make me different than me.