Andrew's Blog

An interview with Richard Dawkins - http://wp.me/pDyVa-J

Mission Lazarus is doing some amazing things for God in Honduras! - http://wp.me/pDyVa-x

Thoughts inspired from a time long ago - http://wp.me/pDyVa-t 

I think we can all agree that everyone’s day is made better by a visit from this man. http://wp.me/pDyVa-r

We had our Family Fun Day yesterday, and we had a great crowd - http://wp.me/pDyVa-h. More importantly, my team won when we played some 2 on 2 basketball. Don’t ask me if the goal was 10 feet or not - that’s not important.

I started a blog on wordpress, just because it is easier for me to format and do comments, etc. - andrewdphillips.wordpress.com.  But, I still plan on posting some at Tumblr and keeping up with it. So…that’s about it.

So, I have been thinking over the past few weeks, and I plan on using this blog more regularly. I have had this tumblr account for a while, and I have been using it to keep up with my friends and see what they are doing more than anything else. But, I have noticed how much I have gained from blogs by friends I went to school with and have gotten to know in ministry and in life. I want to try to return the favor. And, I think it would be good for me personally to spend more time thinking and reflecting about what is happening in ministry here (it is easy to get wrapped up in life and forget to think critically about what is happening). I will do my best to make this a helpful resource, although I reserve the right to include photos of our 17 month old son, as well as things I just think are funny. So, I am renewing my efforts to blog on this, my 28th birthday. I know, very symbolic.

I want to start by sharing part of a presentation I put together a couple of months ago. Sorry for those who have already seen/heard it, but I think this is something worthy of discussion. I tried to point to some questions that we need to ask ourselves in ministry, and one of them was “Am I learning from the past?” (Disclaimer: If this reads in a formal way, like a speech, that is because it is from a manuscript)

            Sometimes, we downplay the importance of the past in the Church of Christ. Obviously, we can’t become so focused on our past that we spend all our energy reliving the nostalgia of the “good old days,” but if we want to better handle future challenges, we need to realize what has happened with those who have gone before us.   Also, there is a difference between being intellectually honest and overly critical of our past. In some bulletin articles and on some blogs, there seems to be a negative perception of almost everything the Church of Christ has done in its history. If you read long enough, you might get the idea that we didn’t do anything right until recent years. While we all know that we have made many mistakes (who hasn’t?), in some cases, it almost seems like a recreational activity to poke fun at what the Church of Christ has done over the years, making statements like “I’m glad we aren’t like that anymore.” We all know the value of being able to poke fun at ourselves, and most of us are fine with making jokes. I am, however, sensing a dangerous trend developing that crosses the line into insensitivity. 

                The solution to balance in this area is not more arguing, and it also isn’t turning a blind eye to past mistakes and claiming that the church has been faultless. Rather, the key to balance is learning more about what previous generations in the church have done. For example, when I read the book “It’s All About God” that Harold Shank wrote about the life of E.H. Ijams, I was amazed to see the work brother Ijams had been doing in Nashville. Even more important was the family trip I took to Florence Alabama last year, in which my grandfather showed me the creek where Brother Ijams baptized him. Last summer, I was eating with my other set of grandparents, and I began asking them questions about being charter members of a newly planted congregation in Memphis years ago. It was fascinating to hear about the challenges they faced and the hurdles they had to overcome. I had attended that church as a child, never realizing what it had taken to get to that point. You can probably fill in the blanks with sacrifices you know of that have been made over the years. Do we really want to demean those efforts? Sure, we can admit mistakes and do our best to correct them, but is it a good idea to focus all the time on the negatives about what the church “used to do” or “used to believe?” What kind of message does that send to those who aren’t Christians? What kind of message does that send to those who have been members of the church for decades?

                 All of us today are living in cities we did not build (Dt. 6:10-12), benefitting from the way God has used those who have gone before us.  Let’s be thankful for our past and seek to learn from it. 

Well, what do you think?

(This is going out in our bulletin this week.)

      I don’t know what it is - maybe it is the flood of information available to us in this era of facebook status updates and 24 hour news stations, maybe it is the recent economic situation, or maybe it is just the everyday events in life, but it seems like chaos is all around us. It is hard for us to catch our breath from one problem in time to tackle the next one. As our schedules expand and our stress levels build, it can feel like we are constantly running on a treadmill - working hard, getting tired, and then winding up back where we started. At times like these, peace seems like a distant hope.

     In the ancient Near East, there was a symbol for chaos that would have been familiar to many cultures - the sea.  In tablets discovered at Ugarit (a place north of Israel), there were some writings that dated from 1400 -1200 B.C., and they discuss a pagan god of destruction “Yam,” whose name means “sea.” It makes sense that they would associate the sea with chaos and destruction. Think about the damage that floods and storms can do. They are forces beyond our control; even when we try to predict weather, we still can’t change it. Today, we still refer to turbulent times as “storms in life.”

    We also find the “sea” mentioned several times in scripture. In Genesis 1, God separates the waters, putting them in their proper place. In Job 38:8-11, God reminds Job that he was not there when God was “enclosing the sea” or saying to the waves, “This far you shall come, but no further.” The Psalmist described God as “dividing the sea by His strength” in Psalm 74:13. This is poetic language, of course, but it reminds us of God’s power over the sea. What happened in the New Testament, when Jesus and His disciples were caught in a storm at sea? Jesus calmed the storm, amazing His followers (Mark 4:35-41).

     What does all this mean? Did every Israelite see the term “sea” and automatically think “chaos”? While we can’t know for sure, it is likely that they would have associated the two, and scripture does seem to stress that God was in charge of these elements. In any case, it serves as a good reminder to me that I will never experience any chaos that is greater than God. My life might be overwhelming to me, my problems might appear to flood over every aspect of my life, but I serve a God who is more powerful than any storm. When the new Heaven and Earth are depicted in Revelation, we are told that there will be no more sea (Revelation 21:1). While I might not always experience peace in this life, I know that if I live for God, I will one day live in a place where there is no sea, no chaos, because God has said “Peace, be still.”

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