Raise Your Hand

Evangelism was the topic at the Kanakuk Institute this week.


If you are anything like me, then your first thought when you hear the word "evangelism" is a old video clip of a guy spewing the gospel message in a Huey P. Long campaign speech type technique.  


Those video clips are much more fun to watch than they are to listen to.


For the generation of which I am a part of, these types of speeches are not as relevant as they were in years past. 


There are tons of different types of evangelism these days.  Some methods that we looked at in class are the 4 Spiritual Laws, the Roman Road, passing out tracts, open-air preaching, the Bridge method, Soularium, and relational evangelism.  


I don't think it's necessary for me to talk about what each one of these things is.  You can Google them if you're interested.


We also talked about the "gift of evangelism" this week.  The speaker asked who had the gift, and me and about 3 other people raised our hands.  The Bible talks about evangelism specifically in a few different spots.  The word "evangelism" means to proclaim good news.


I don't think that I just naturally have a gifting that lends itself to me proclaiming good news.  I'm not going to be the first guy on anyone's list to speak to a large group of people.  I'm not a smiler or a joke teller and all that.  I am so glad that there are other people who have that skill set.


So why would I raise my hand?


From what I've read in the Bible and my experiences so far in life, I think that everyone in the room should have said their hands.  


Some people do have gifts that allow them to have a platform for proclaiming good news, but I think everyone who has experienced salvation through Jesus Christ has the gift of evangelism.  


The gift of eternal life, the gift of being in right relationship with God, the gift of salvation.  Those are things that every child of God has the privilege to share with other people whether those other people are also believers or non-believers.  


Proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ is a choice.  With that said, there is a right choice and a wrong choice.

It's the Church Baby

It’s The Church Baby

Man the church is a messy thing. 

Let me think of some other messy things...

Government, families, businesses, teams, the Jersey shore. Now what do all of these things have in common? People.

Church is messy because of the people who go to it?  Yes – sort of.  Most of us have a diluted definition of the word, “church.”

The church is not a thing that people go to.  The church is people.  Specifically, the church is God’s people.  God’s people are the church when they are sitting in pews on a Sunday morning, or sitting in bleachers on a Friday night.  So does that mean that the same conduct should apply in the pews and in the bleachers? 

Ouch. My bad yall… Nachos and beer would be kinda cool in the pew tho, right?

There are some churches that actually might take me up on that idea.  Ok, nachos and beer might be a stretch now, but if they keep heading down the same path without checking up for truth, a nachos-and-beer-church will be a conservative one by comparison.

The kind of church that I’m talking about are part of the “emergent church” movement and the “emerging church” movement.  Yes, they sound similar phonetically, and they do have some similar characteristics.  I do want to talk about these movements and how they compare to each other.

The Emerging church refers to a movement of churches in the present time that seek to make churches (building) more relevant to and applicable to people of today’s society.  One part of this movement is a “House Church” lane.  This lane appeals to people’s distaste for big buildings and congregations.  These people want to stay away from the big performances and plastic grandeur of “mega-churches.”  The Emerging Reformers lane of the movement look to Acts 29 for guidance to make church services more relevant.  They seek to respect the past while moving forward.

The Emergent church is often referred to as, “Emergent Liberals.”  These churches call in to question Biblical doctrine that should not be questioned.  They consistently hesitate to take a stand on absolute truth.  They are pushing a perverted version of Christianity that can be molded around a person’s personal preferences rather than God’s authority through scripture. 

When studying church history this week at the Kanakuk Institute, we learned about these modern day church movements.  In my observations of the information that we were presented about the church’s history throughout all time, the Emergent church seems more likely to be disregarded as heresy rather than accepted as another reformation based in truth.

I do think that the Emerging church can hold tightly to truth and season it with relevance in order to bring about reform in the way church is done in America.  Do I think that this would be a bad thing? No. I think that with truth of scripture as the priority, churches should seek new ways to present that truth so that it is relevant to the culture. 

Kingdom Era

This week in class at the Tute has been one of the less thrilling weeks. 

History is interesting, but it's not always what you want to sit thru for 4 hours, 3 days in a row.  Especially when the week before was about something super applicable like marriage.  The history that we went thru was the Kingdom Era.  Basically 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles in the Bible.  Understanding the Kingdom Era is crucial to understanding the Bible.

I want to make sure and say that I did appreciate this week, even if I didn't necessarily love it.

So my assignment questions are a little boring, but ya know I have to answer them anyway.

Question 1: What have you learned about leadership from the Kingdom Era?

The thing that comes to mind right off the bat is, "how not to lead."  That is because the Kingdom of Israel was divided and rules by some awful kings for most of it's existence.

However, there were some good kings during the division, and there were also 120 years when the Kingdom was united under the rule of Saul, David, and Solomon.  Saul wasn't a righteous king.  David was a great king, and his son Solomon was a good king for about half the time. 

As far as leadership goes, David would definitely be the model.  Yes, everyone knows about what he did with Bathsheba, and he suffered some grave consequences for that.  David's life was so much more than the Bathsheba incident though.  Even before David was king he showed the leadership that a man of God should live by.  David relied on God's provision in several situations that people would normally shrink away from.  For example, David trusted that God would give victory in fights with lions and bears, and no one can forget the great underdog story of David and Goliath. 

It is important that we admire David's faith.  The whole Bible tells of people who were given power to do great things because of their faith in God.  David is one of these people who recognized that God's power was much greater than his own power.  He went to God humbly when he was facing trials.  The biggest issue that I have been working thru in my personal walk with God is my tendency to rely on myself to take care of all my needs, instead of relying on God to meet those needs.  God has been teaching me humility.  Usually He teaches me by humiliating me. I don't have to tell you how little fun it is to be humiliated. 

So God has taught me that a good leader has humility because of the knowledge that God is sovereign. 

Question 2:  What is something that you have learned from the Kingdom Era about the character of God?

Well, I think this relates to the first question.  David struggled at times with relying on his own strength for things.  Like when he took a military census and stuff like that that he knew God disproved of.  David was trying to get a gauge of how much power he had as king of the nation.

God taught David lessons by doing certain things to get his attention.  For example, God sent a plague thru Israel that killed 70,000 people after David took the census. 

This is a lesson to me that shows that God doesn't let things slide.  He teaches us lessons, and sometimes those lessons aren't easily learned.  In other words, discipline is in God's character.  I think when I am raising children this lesson will take on new meaning.

If you want to know anything about the Kingdom Era of the Bible, Holler at me. 

Marriage Week at the Tute

Marriage Week at the Tute

Dear reader,

This week at the Kanakuk Institute we talked about marriage.  Let me start by saying that I'm glad that I'm already involved in marriage with a WOMAN who loves me even though I don't deserve that love 105% of the time. 

You see when you're wife loves you like that, you know that she's a blessing from God.  Polly is my personification of the grace that we receive as believers in Jesus Christ.  By the way the Jesus Christ guy is the one true God who came down to earth as a man to live a perfect life so that He could die as a perfect human sacrifice for the sins that you and I commit on the daily.  The only way for any human being to live eternally in Heaven is for said human to place faith in Jesus that He is who He says He is.  The reason I say "is" instead of "was" is because after He was dead and buried for three days He was resurrected back to life by the power of God.  He then ascended into Heaven via a cloud.  A bunch of folks saw him get carried off into the sky, so don't act like I'm trippin.  Oh, and the reason you can live eternally when you believe in Jesus is because in exchange for simply believing, God offers you grace for your sins and sees you through the lens of Jesus' perfect righteousness. 

Holler at that, right!  I know man, it's crazy good news.  Lots of people call it good news too.

God even goes further than grace though (as if that weren't enough).  He comes and takes control of our soul and lives within us.  How?  There is an aspect of God called the Holy Spirit.  This is the part of God that dwells here on earth in order for us to live empowered and stay connect to God.

ok, back to the marriage stuff

So I didn't ever do relationships with girls perfectly.  I actually made tons of mistakes.  One time I realized how much of a failure I had become in the area of interacting with females; so I literally asked God to shelter me and girls from myself by distancing me from them.  Well along came Polly (oh get over it) about three months after this, and I wanted to treat her like she deserved to be treated.  So I tried to treat her good.  I messed up again.  The crazy thing though is that Polly forgave me for messing up and helped me learn how to treat her better.  God even let Polly fall in love with me after awhile (I was in love with Polly after two weeks of just being her friend).  So you see, grace is this phenomenon that comes from God, and it is crazy because no matter how much you or I mess up, God continues to hang in there with us and teach us how to serve him better.  He continues to trust us even after we betray His trust. 

So you see, He trusted me with Polly and helped taught me how to do right even after I had messed up a bunch of times before. 

Thank you God! I think this blessing everyday, and I will never take her for granted because I know that I only have her because of Your lovingkindness (yep, one word. no spell check line came up).

My assignment this week is to tell you 5 new things I have learned about marriage this week that I didn't already know, and tell you 5 goals that I want to implement in my marriage.

I'm combining them.  Here we go:

0.       I learned that my own quality of life is not based on my wife being the person who I think she needs to be.  My stress level is based on how my relationship with God is.  When I trust in Him to work things together for good according to His purpose, I can be at peace.  My goal from this is that when I get stressed and life is stormy, to be still and know that Jesus is God.  I need to remind myself that I'm not the sovereign authority on anything, and taking anything out on Polly is moronic.

1.       If Polly needs to change, God will work that out with her.  Im here to love and encourage  and pray for her just like Christ's love and sacrifice for the church is continual.  I'm so dang critical, and I should have my mouth permanently gagged because I say some dumb, hurtful things to Polly sometimes.  If I were to take a second and think before I speak, I would surely realize how much of an idiot I am.  My goal is to trust God's wisdom in how to correctly love and serve Polly.  I know there is wisdom in thinking before I speak, especially when I am frustrated.

2.      Proverbs 22:4 Says that "The reward of humility and fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life."  I've got to be humble.  I've got to humble myself as a servant to Lord, to my wife, and to other people.  Mark 12:30-31 say that I must love the Lord and love my neighbors.  Humility in the marriage relationship is something that has hit me this week, and it is also my goal.

3.      I learned today that Polly has 3 doors to her heart.  The first is Logic which is opened by the Holy Spirit.  The second is Emotions.  Part of loving Polly is treating her emotions as important.  My goal is to validate her emotions by listening to her tell me about them and having empathy.  I can't easily do that.  I know that makes me sound like a jerk, but I'm being honest when I say that it is difficult for me. The third door is Spiritual.  I need to love her by participating in her walk with God.  I need to know what's going on with her, and she needs to know what's going on with me.  This takes time, and my goal is to make time.

4.      At the beginning of this week, we took spiritual gift assessments and personality assessments.  Polly and I learned that she is gifted with encouragement, and I am gifted with prophecy.  We also learned that I have a more task driven personality, and she has a more whimsical free spirited personality.  We kind of already knew the personality stuff, but the tests reiterated that it's true.  The goal from this is for us to be able to love each other better and serve God's kingdom better because we have a better understanding of who we are and what we are naturally bent to do.

Thanks for sticking it out through all that.

There are some things that convicted me, but they weren't new things.

5 new things is awesome! I have a lot to work on!

The Tute Made Me Do It

One of my personal policies for my blog is that I never force an entry.  That is to say, I do not want to put pressure on myself to come up with something to say, simply so I can  have something posted.  I have had things to say since my last entry, but I never felt compelled to say them through the medium of my blog. 

Well I am breaking my own policy out of obligation.  The obligation is not something that I am disappointed with though.  The obligation (I'm tired of saying obligation, duty would have been more fun) is this, I have to do an assignment each week while I am at the Kanakuk Institute (google it). These assignments can be in the format of an essay, a talk outline, a lesson-plan, or a blog entry.  Naturally, I chose the blog entry. 

So, are you reading my first assignment? Yes you are.  This assignment is about the Inductive Bible Study Method.

Say what?

Yeah I'm about to explain.

You think it's going to be a boring read don't you? Well shut up thinking and read it anyway.  You aren't too busy to blow this off.

The Inductive Bible Study Method is a strategic plan for studying the Bible in a way that allows the studier to understand the Word literally.  That definition sounds like I copied it off of something, but I thought it up myself.  Go me.

 

The three major areas of the IBSM are observation, interpretation, and application.

Observation is simply examining what the text says.  Some great things to look for are who, what, when, where, why, and how. You also want to keep your eye out for words and phrases that get repeated a lot.

  Interpretation is understanding what the text means.  Ok, so this is getting a little deeper.  The biggest thing you want to remember to note is the context that the text is written in.  If you pluck a single scripture out of somewhere without reading the context that verse is set in, you can't really be confident  that you know exactly what the author meant by writing that verse.  So when Paul says that he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him.  He is saying that whatever situation he is in (rich, poor, prison, sickness, healthy) he can serve the Lord faithfully.  If you didn't read through the context of that verse, you might think that he's saying that you could run a marathon in an hour, or flap your arms and take off in flight, or feel great after eating at Griff's / Steak n Shake.  Context is a big deal y'all.

Alright, application is applying the meaning of the text to your life.  So, this is talking about your belief and your behavior.  If you believe something, your behavior should prove that.  For instance, if I believe that the stove that I turned on 10 minutes ago is hot, I won't put my hand on it.  Also, if I read in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life, my application to that is to believe in Jesus.  If I read in Mark 12:31 that I shall love my neighbor as myself, I choose to believe that I am supposed to do that.  I should apply that to my life and start loving my neighbors as myself.  Application is mostly easy to understand, yet many times it is difficult to put into practice.

So speaking of application, I have to answer the question of how the Inductive Bible Study Method applies to my life.  Well, I can start by saying that learning things like this is exactly why I wanted to come to the Institute (the reason that I actually came is that Polly made me).  I've gotten to the point in my quiet times that I've heard about most everything I read, so it is familiar.  However, I don't grasp much meaning.  The results of these quiet times are two-fold.  I don't feel like reading my Bible because I don't know what I'm reading, and I am motivated to learn how to understand what I read at a deeper level.  So learning this method of understanding the scriptures is meeting a need in my spiritual life that can help me out of neutral and into drive.

Man I have to tell you though, this Kanakuk Institute life is intense. I would say something cliche` like, "it aint for the weak and faint-hearted," but if that were the case I wouldn't be here because I'm definitely weak and faint-hearted.

If you want some more info on the Inductive Bible Study Method, holler at your boy.  andygrass100@gmail.com

I'm also a recent Twitter convert, so you can look me up at @andygrass. or not  

Sugar Free Gum and Mickey Mouse Camouflage

Back when I was like 8 or 10 or 12 years old, the Pendergrass side of my family would do some squirrell hunting in the woods in North Louisiana. I remember my grandfather always fussed at my dad about me and my brothers having "mickey mouse" hunting gear (not that our camo actually boasted the mouse man of Disney on them, but that they weren't quality threads).

That random thought has nothing to do with the main point of this blog. However, this next random thought does strangely enough have to do with this blog.

Another auxiliary memory to the actual squirrel harvesting is that my Uncle Bill would always offer me, my brothers, and my cousin a piece of the pink Sugar Free EXTRA Gum. It tasted like bubble gum, but could scarcely form any respectable bubble. To this day, if I ever see a pack of that gum, I think about squirrel hunting with my family. And if I think about squirrell hunting, a pack of pink gum often flickers through my thoughts for a brief moment.

weird right?

just one of those things I guess.

so the other day I thought about both squirrell hunting and the pink gum simultaneously like there were two screens in my mind and one side was a first person view from my junior self tramping around the woods amidst my kin. The other side was a still frame of the pink gum.

This time it was a new thought that triggered the flashback.

I was talking to Mrs. Pat (my employer) about how I had gained some encouragement from her husband earlier in the day when he talked about how he was praying for some discernment about a decision he had to make. He told me that he had reached a point when he just told God, "you know that I don't want to do the wrong thing, so I will just be at peace and wait until you show me what is right."

That was a lesson and encouragement to me because I am a hasty decision maker...even when I offer up a dutiful prayer asking for discernment I usually already have my mind made up. #hardheadedtomfoolery

So when I was talking to Mrs. Pat- I was like, "truly wanting to do His will is pressure-less if you allow yourself to be at peace and wait for His lead."

Little did I know that Mrs. Pat was packing a six-shooter loaded with spiritual wisdom bullets.

She cocks back the hammer and sweetly says, "yes, I don't even need to know where I'm going when He's leading me. I just go!"

BABOOOOOM - picture a sweet little lady in her sixties on the outside, but a righteous Doc Holliday on the inside. So that makes me Ringo. (watch Tombstone, but not around small children..or any sort of children)

So this is when I see gum and mickey mouse camo

Why?

Back when we would go hunting, we would be out near Lake Darbonne, Corney Lake, or on our hunting lease outside Minden. I had know idea where we were on a globe, in the state of Louisiana, or especially in the actual woods. If I were by myself I would have never known how to get anywhere. Even if I got out of the woods and to a road, I wouldn't have known which direction to take the road.

I was simply following wherever the people that I trusted went.

So all of this applies to my life in this way: I have felt a lot of pressure to make decisions about my future recently. Like, what am I going to do after the Kankakuk Institute? Where are Polly and I going to live? What do I want to do with my life? What can I do with my degree?

The truth is this: I will make these decisions and others when God leads me to the right things to do. I wont try to make stabs in the dark just to have answers. I trust that God will lead me where there are lots of squirrels, and if he sees fit then maybe he'll even offer me a piece of that pink sugar free gum at some point along the way.

July is Fun

Whew it is time to check in with you.

We've been so busy enjoying life that I kinda forgot that I have a blog.

I'm pretty sure that I've spent every moment since my last blog entry having a great time. That is except for when I got food poisoning on my birthday and spent the 4th of July under attack of some vile thing that was in the king crab dinner I had.

But alas, I shook back and had a great rest of the week.

We love our employers! They treat us like family. We love hanging out with them and also Mary's fam bc we get to be a part of family atmosphere (which we need in our lives).

So we hosted Scott again for the better part of a week. He and I caught some salmon. We all hiked up Mt. Roberts. Polly and I really enjoyed Scott's company.

Polly and I have been hanging out on sandy beach a lot.  I make a fire and then we only pause our reading to roast weenies or make s'mores... I also write thank you notes while out there.

It's just what I do ok.

Our friend Kelly got us free spots on a SWEET tour that involved taking a helicopter to the ice fields, landing on a glacier, and being pulled on a sled by Alaskan huskies that have done the iditarod race (google it).

 And yes I named this puppy Craig Michael Turner.

That was almost as cool as the weekend trip we just got back from. Me, Polly, Josh Garmon, Mary, David, Kelly, and Marg hopped on a float plane and flew across the ice fields to the Taku Lodge which is on the Taku River and looks out at the Hole-in-the-Wall Glacier. (oh yes, something this awesome exists).

We ate a grilled salmon feast (nature's solution to cleaning off the grill) and then took a 20minute boat ride to a guy's 60th birthday party. We got off the boat and Josh says, "where the heck are we?" which is exactly what I was thinking. So we partied with some backwoods Alaskans and then went back to the lodge to stay the night.

When we got back to Juneau on Sunday, Polly and I spent the day with Mr. Howard and Mrs. Judy Doughty. We went out to the Mendenhall with them and hiked a little bit to Nugget Falls. We were glad to get to see and hangout with them!

I'm so proud of Josh and Kyle. They have been appointed to leadership positions in the Juneau Men's Project because staff just left. Kyle is the Project Director, and Josh is the Director of Manhood Development.  They are both perfect for those positions, and project is in good hands with Kyle and Josh leading it.

Those are some legit dudes.

Speaking of legit dudes... None other than The Michael S. Plette (aka the most attractive man in the world) is set to arrive in Juneau today. I can't wait to give that dude a hug before I push him into the ocean. He doesn't know it, but we are going to make him cook gumbo at Mary's house one day this week. I cooked crawfish bisque for them last week, and it was a hit. So they want to experience more Louisiana food.

Well I'm not sure when I will blog next, but in the meantime you can find me in downtown Juneau, Alaska - where we happily break out our shorts and t-shirts on 70 degree days like today.

 I almost sweated yesterday...

I need to go to bed because it's 2am, which is actually not too far from sunrise.

But I don't want to end this entry without a shout out to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Polly and I are blessed to be living this good good lifestyle. We feel so fortunate to be able to be here with a roof over our heads and food in the fridge, not to mention getting to do all the amazing things that we are getting to do. I don't want to trip like we could've pulled this off on our own, and I don't believe in luck.