anti-Semitism in Russia

Here is a small article that was in the February 2005 issue of the Economist.com's Cities Guide: Moscow Briefing.

"The old taint of anti-Semitism, which has a centuries-old history in Russia, has never gone away. On January 14th, two rabbis were beaten with bottles underneath a Moscow underpass by over a half-dozen youths. Shortly afterwards, a group of 20 parliamentary deputies signed a petition calling for the general prosecutor to ban all Jewish organisations in Russia. They accused Jews of dominating politics and finance, provoking anti-Semitism and fomenting anti-Russian sentiment. (The signatories later retracted the measure.)"

(See the Economist article: An ugly head rears, January 27th 2005 for more details.)

Now, that is scary stuff. Of course, racial hatreds and prejudices never go away. There is still anti-Semitism around. However, I never thought that the government of a major nation would consider going down the same path that Hitler did. Didn't we learn anything?

outreach workshop gleanings

Here are a couple of interesting things from the Outreach Workshop I was at today.

One presenter said he had talked with a very angry man who had been kicked out of the church in a way that would not allow him to go back. This young man had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. The pastor excommunicated the guy, made the girl get an abortion and forbid the girl from ever seeing the guy again. The presenter's response to the young man was, "A representative of the church failed you. Christ did not fail you. Come back to Christ." Wow!

Another quote: "Its okay to be afraid [when witnessing], just don't show it.

Here are ten facts about the adult American population drawn from research conducted by Barna, Gallup, Harris and others. Comments from me or people at the presentation are in brackets [ ].

Fact #1: Almost six in ten adults maintain that the Bible is totally accurate in all its teachings. [Quote or paraphrase scripture to reinforce points you are trying to make. It will add credibility.]

Fact #2: Better then 90 percent of adults believe God exists and about 70 percent of those folks believe God to be accurately portrayed in the Bible. [People do believe in God. Ask them how their relationship with Him is.]

Fact #3: Almost nine of ten believe that eventually all people will be judged by God. Almost three-fourths expect Jesus to return some day. [Judgement day is not a foreign concept to people. Talk to them about it. Ask them if they are certain what the outcome will be for them when they stand in front of a holy God.]

Fact #4: Three-fourths believe forgiveness of sins is possible only through faith in Jesus Christ but as many as half believe faith is unimportant as far as living in heaven after you die is concerned. [There is a disconnect between sin and judgement. Help people see that they are sinners. The Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5-7) is a good place to start.]

Fact #5: Eighty-five percent believe that Jesus was crucified, died and rose from the dead. [Why did he do that? Most people don't know the whole story. Tell them.]

Fact #6: More than eight in ten believe Jesus was as much a human being as they are but almost half believe he committed sins. [We have to spend time telling people Christ was sinless.]

Fact #7: Six in ten do not believe Satan to be a real being, but merely a symbol of evil. About one-fifth of the population believes that the whole idea of sin is outdated. [Jesus thought that Satan was real. The Bible talks about sin. What do these people know that Jesus and the Bible don't?]

Fact #8: Nine of ten pray. Of them, eight of ten are absolutely certain that prayer makes a difference in their lives. [Find out what someone needs you to pray about for them and then do it. Also, encourage people to let God talk to them through the Bible.]

Fact #9: One in three believes that you can not trust anyone other than family and close friends these days. [Make friends with people. Then, talk about God to your friends. Get over thinking, "I will avoid you because you don't go to my church."]

Fact #10: About half of American adults believe a full and satisfying life depends on spiritual development. The same number strongly agrees that the Christian faith is relevant to their lives these days. [Don't think your unchurched friend or neighbor does not want to hear from you about spiritual matters. They do.]

two steps of evangelism

This morning I attended a seminar on evangelism. One of the presenters said there are two basic points to evangelism.

1. live Jesus love
   
2. talk about Jesus love

Wow! Simple and right on the mark. Evangelism does not need to be like sales. We don't have a quota to meet. The idea is to help people get a relationship with God. That's almost impossible unless we first have a relationship with them. You can't talk to someone about something as personal as their eternal salvation unless they see you as a friend..

I really like this way of thinking. I don't have to have any hidden agendas when I talk to people. I don't have to try to find some angle where I can turn a conversation around to spiritual matters. I just have to live my life for Jesus, be a friend to as many people as I can and wait for the HS to provide me with an opportunity to tell what I know.

Now, how do I overcome whatever it is inside me that does not want any friends?

more evangelism thoughts

We had an evangelism committee meeting tonight at church. The focus of the discussion was mainly on "marketing" ideas. We talked about ways we can reach out to the community as well as how we could follow-up with people who are intersted in our church. For the latter, we will get a list of prospects and make an effort to visit them once a month or so. The goal being to inform them about our church and invite them to worship with us or look into our school for the kiddies.

As for the former, apparantly, we are having an Easter egg hunt that all children in the community will be invited to. Then, there is VBS in July. Plus, someone wants to have story time for toddlers in the afternoon once a month. All good stuff to let people know we are here and that we care about people in our community.

There are basically two types of people that the ec committee and Christians in general should be interested in reaching: 1) people who are actively looking for a church to attend and 2) people who are seeking God (actively or not). It looks like our group is doing a pretty good job dealing with type #1. However, we are doing almost nothing for type #2. Personally, I'm not sure that the ec should do the proselytizing work for the members. More on that some other day as it is getting late.

video card blues 2

Well, maybe I spoke too soon about my video card problems.  When I got home from work, the kids were playing Age of Empires.  There was no sound and the colors of the ground was pink.  I could not get the sound to work or the color right so I shut the machine down.  Later, I booted the machine up again and ran AE.  This time, it looked good.  However, the kids were playing the Train Simulator.  It supposedly rebooted the computer during the game.  I'll have to play around with it more some other day.  Perhaps one of the changes I made in the BIOS is causing a problem.

Video card blues

After three evenings of messing around, I finally got my "new" video
card working in the kid's computer. I bought a used Nvidia GeForce3
video card from a guy I work with. I was trying to max out my old 1ghz
desktop so the kids could play games that required a 3D video card.
After I installed the card, I installed Halo and tried running it. It
loaded fine, but when I played the campaign, the computer immediately
rebooted with a blue screen. I tried a ton of stuff--uninstalling and
reinstalling Halo, defragging the hard drive, running Norton System
Works, removing memory chips--nothing worked. Finally, I downloaded the
previous five version of the driver from Nvidia's website and installed
the oldest one. That did the trick. Whew!

Both Halo and the Microsoft Train Simulator programs look great.

Moral of the story #1: computers are still a major pain. The average
person would probably had to take their computer in for someone to work
on. The tech. probably would have reinstalled the OS. I'm glad I was
able to figure this out.

Moral of the story #2: it really helps to have a spare computer in case
your system dies. There's no worse feeling then thinking your PC is
gone and you have no options.

Polling technology

I was just talking with someone who said they read a newspaper article saying that a number of polling stations in our area that had at least 100 more votes then registered voters in the 2004 presidential election.  What's up with that?  Its hard to believe that we can't come up with some way to stop voting fraud or errors. 

I bet this situation will force us to get a national id card for US citizens.  If we had that, the government could verify all votes centrally.  People could vote at multiple polling stations if they chose to, but only the first vote registered in the federal database would count.  Plus, it should make the voting process more efficient since your name does not have to be looked up and verified to let you vote.  If the card is valid, go ahead and vote.  The data could be checked centrally.

Here's the scenario.  Every US citizen applies for a national id card.  The card has some kind of tamper-proof database that contains their unique id number, name and date of birth.  When you go vote, you simply walk into the first available booth, swipe your card, validate that the information read describes you and cast your vote.  All of the data is recorded electronically on a local database.  The local database will do a simple data validation making sure you only vote once at that location.  The local database will periodically upload its data to a central, federal database.  The federal database will do another data validation and check to make sure you have not voted yet. 

The nice thing about this scenario is that we could expand voting to places other then traditional polling stations, even the internet if we could work out the security.

I know the concept of a national id card makes some people nervous--mark of the beast and all that--but it really is inevitable.

#1 requirement for parenting

What does it take to be a great parent? The number one quality is commitment. One must be committed to the job of parenting. What does that mean? Basically that you give up your life in order to meet the kid's physical, emotional and spiritual needs. It means that I will rarely get to watch my favorite t.v. show. It means that I will get less sleep. It means that I will spend time reading to my three year old rather then playing on the computer, watching t.v. or paying bills. It means that Saturday's are now work days where the family does chores together. It means that Sundays are now family days. What day is my day? There is none. When is my time? Anytime after the kids are in bed. What are my hobbies? Whatever I can do with the kids.

I used to spend a lot of time playing computer games. Now, if I do that, the family suffers. Is that fair? Don't I get me time? Not if I want to be a great parent. It takes commitment to do that. Long-term commitment. Parenting is not a 9 to 5 job, nor is it a three year enlistment. It’s a 24 hour a day, 20 year adventure. Wow!

What motivates a Christian?

I asw a video the other day where they said that Muslims (and all non-Christians) are motivated by fear to practice their religion. I can see the point. Anyone who does not know Christ cannot possibly be motivated by love. So, Muslims (and all non-Christians) must be motivated by fear.

My question is, do they believe that? If I asked ten Muslims what motivates them spiritually, would all ten say fear? I wonder if even one would. Even though it may be their true motivation, do they really see it that way? That is what I am questioning. If most Muslims do not see Allah as someone to be feared and their works as a desperate attempt to tip the scales in their favor, then talking about grace vs. works with them wouldn't get us very far.

In the spiritual sense, we are all sick. When referring to the Pharisees, Jesus once said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." The pharisees were just as sick as everyone else, but they thought they were healthy. I would argue that so do most people including Muslims. Sometimes, when we talk about false religions, we imply that the adherents either know they are sick or would realize it right away if we simply tell them. I wonder.

Once when I was going door-to-door passing out tracts or something, I talked to a 55-65 year old man who was not a Christian. I asked him if he thought he would go to heaven. He said yes because he was basically a good person. Most people think that God, being the loving sort, will only send REALLY bad folks to hell. Most cults teach that the only people who will a) go to hell; b) live in outer darkness or c) cease to exist are those who reject the cult's teachings. Insiders will make it to some level of heaven.

People of other faiths do not have some way to get right with God. Also, if they are true to their teachings, they must live in fear and uncertainty concerning their fate. However, I think human beings always find a way to ignore the facts, rationalize their situation and hope for the best.

Perhaps our best plan for dealing with unbelievers is to pray that God would first bring calamity on them to force them to see the hopelessness of their situation without him. Then, pray that the Holy Spirit would work true repentance and faith in their hearts.

“For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. “ – 2 Cor 12: 10

What is evangelism?

What is the purpose of an evangelism committee (EC) in a local church? To centralize the evangelism function in the church? Equip and encourage all members to witness to their relatives, friends and co-workers? Both?

EVERYONE'S A MINISTER
Let's assume that evangelism is every Christian's work. Every member should do their part to be a witness for Christ and bring Him glory. The EC can support that effort by helping people understand what their role is, making them feel comfortable and equipping them for evangelism work. Unfortunately, thinking about evangelism makes people feel uncomfortable. Our society preaches tolerance. Trying to convert people presumes they are wrong and need to be corrected rather then tolerated. Do most people really want to talk to non-believers about their faith?

How should individuals do evangelism? Should I have a goal to talk to all of my-coworkers at least once about Jesus? Or do I say nothing and wait like a Venus Flytrap for someone to approach me and then spring on them? Should I do subtle things like wear a cross to work, put a fish symbol on my car and have "The Fish" playing on my office radio? What is my quota? One convert a month / year / decade? Could people with different personalities have different witnessing styles that work on different people? Is simply living a good life, working hard, being honest and having a positive attitude enough? Maybe someone will notice and ask what makes me different. I don't know and I wonder if other people have similar questions. Can the EC help answer them?

ARE SOME OF US MARKETERS OR CANVASSERS OR DOOR HANGERS?
When Jesus walked the earth, he mainly preached in Synagogues, not on street corners. It never appears that he tried to preach to a mass of people. People came to him and he had pity on them. For instance, at the beginning of the sermon on the mount, Matthew says that Jesus sat down to teach his disciples, not the masses. He tried to get away from the 5,000 but they found him so he taught them.

If Jesus were here today, would he be on the radio or television? I doubt it. Would he send his disciples out canvassing a neighborhood? Probably. Would their message be to repent and turn to God or to invite people to the local church? Possibly both?

WWJD? I don't presume to know. When I read the Bible, I can't find a three-step plan for evangelizing or growth targets for the early church. Evangelism seems to have two parts: 1) always be ready; 2) go and tell.

Is it wrong for us to go door-to-door and invite people to church? No. Are we taking that privilege away from the members by doing so? Not necessarily. Can humbugs like me actually do evangelism work without scaring people away? Yes, but mainly to other humbugs who are unchurched. We all know people who need Jesus. We all can testify (tell what we know) to the truth.