Category Archives: Church Family

What Will Be Remembered

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On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Although FDR rightly described it as a day that would live in infamy, my mother, being 21 years of age, said to herself, “Ugh! War! Well, I will pay it no attention at all,” and set her mind to ignore it completely.

That worked for one day.glennandmarymilitarymarriage

On December 8, 1941, my father and mother met.

They fell in love and Dad was drafted to serve in the European Theater.

On December 12, 1942, just over a year later, they married.

The war Mom had resolved to ignore turned out to be the focus of her attention.

On October 16, 1944, Dad was wounded on the battlefield and had to be evacuated to England, and then returned home to the farm near Brookville, where he and mom lived a good life until he died in 2001.

It’s strange to imagine that one day people will regard these events in much the same way as I regard World War I or The War of 1812 — mere historic events, void of personal connection. It’s strange. Kind of sad. And a bit sobering.

We like to think that the memories of our loved ones will live on in the course of human history, but, as someone has rightly observed, our great-grandchildren will probably know nothing about us much beyond our names. Any knowledge beyond that will be merely trivial and quite impersonal. And choosing to ignore this reality is no more realistic than a 21-year-old choosing to ignore World War II.

But there is an event in human history that never fades and always remains personal. It’s the Advent of the Christ Child. This event — this divine life — is as personal to you and me as we want it to be. It can be as personal to us as it was to those who witnessed it firsthand, because what Jesus offers is a relationship with himself — the Risen King, the Living God.

On the wall of their home, Dad and Mom had a plaque that contained these words: Only one life; ’twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.

It’s good to recall days that live in infamy. It’s important to study human history. But here’s something I constantly remember — what lasts throughout eternity has Christ at the center.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable.
Always work enthusiastically for the Lord,
for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.
1 Corinthians 15:58 (NLT).

“You Can’t Reboot Childhood” -Steiner-Adair

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screenshotIf you know me at all, you know I am not an “alarmist”. And if you know me at all, you know I enjoy technology. So this may seem an odd post, because it seems to be alarmist concerning technology.

While I was hunting today, I was listening to a podcast from thevilliagechurch.net, and heard them interviewing Catherine Steiner-Adair regarding her research for her book, The Big Disconnect. Steiner-Adair has some important things to say about the effect our use of technology has on our children — and our relationship with them. She also addresses when and where to permit children to engage technology.

The second portion of the podcast is about Thanksgiving. You can skip that, if you like, but if you interact with children, the first 39 minutes of this podcast may be important for you to hear.

And, yeah, I did not miss the irony of me using technology to alert you to a potential problem in the use of technology. 😉

The audio from the podcast is here.

About that One Who Pushes You

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Take a moment and think of someone who was part of your life who was also hard on you, personally. Maybe it was a parent — always riding you about your laziness. Or maybe it was a teacher — always nagging you concerning your academic performance. Or maybe it was a good friend who was always on your case about something in your life where you weren’t doing as well as you could have done.

Do you have that person in your mind? Good. Let’s call him Chauncey.

Now consider this question: Why was Chauncey so hard on you? Did Chauncey hate you? Probably not. Was it because Chauncey wanted to ridicule you? I doubt it. Was Chauncey generally obnoxious? Not really.

Here’s what I have noticed about myself: I am generally the most frustrated with the people in whom I see the greatest potential. If I see little potential in someone, I have small expectations of them. If I see great potential in someone, and I see time passing by without them pursuing their potential, I become disturbed — for their sake. And the degree of anger I feel concerning this shortcoming in their life will correspond with the depth of my love for them.

In chapter five of his excellent book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller considers the question, How can a loving God be an angry God? As he addresses this, Keller points out that when you have love, you are bound to have anger against anything that injures what you love. Keller quotes Becky Pippert, who writes, Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference. I get that, because it is generally those that I love the most and wish the best for with whom I become the most frustrated.

This helps explain why some say, “I feel more acceptance from my drinking buddies than I feel from the people I go to church with.” Sometimes this is a matter of projection — the speaker is projecting a disposition onto his church family that most of them do not own. Other times it’s a matter of “Christians” being overly-critical. That happens.

But there’s a third explanation: Maybe his drinking buddies don’t really want the best for him or the best of him. Maybe they want nothing more from him than for him to be a good old boy. In contrast, maybe his brothers and sisters in Christ want the best for him and the best of him. And when he fails to pursue that very thing, the friends who love him most let him know.

Could this be the explanation for the behavior of Chauncey — the person that pressures you toward better things?

And whether it is the explanation or not, how would your life be different if you were to see those who press for the best for you and in you as an ally?

What’s It Matter…

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One sunny morning a child was walking a beach littered with starfish, left behind by the tide. As she walked among the thousands of starfish, she began to pick them up, one by one, and toss them into the sea.starfishes

Within a few minutes an adult walked by and inquired, “What are you doing?”

I’m tossing these starfish back into the sea before they dry out and die.

You’ve got to be kidding. There are thousands of starfish drying out on this beach. You can’t save them all; what does it matter?

The little girl picked up a starfish, looked at it, and said, “It matters to this one,” and tossed it into the sea.

Curwensville Alliance is watching — more than watching — participating with J&J in their adoption of one little girl from an Eastern European country. They were among the first to make many of us aware that there are 144 million orphaned children in our world.

144,000,000 oprhans. And they are adopting one. What difference could it make?

It matters to this one.

Faith — Hope — Love…

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From Pastor Steve’s 2014 Annual Report

Some time ago, some of us attended a Catalyst One Day event where Andy Stanley noted that if church leaders don’t know what is making their ministry work well, they won’t know how to fix it when it’s broken. I think this was his way of saying, “Don’t expect that the good things you are seeing will continue to happen automatically. There are God-given ideas that have produced the fruit you’ve experienced. You need to know what is making that happen if you expect to see it in the future.”

As I pondered that idea, I adjusted his thought in my own mind: If we don’t know how we arrived at the place we are; we might not know how to proceed forward from this place.

So what brought us here?

What have we learned and implemented over the years at Curwensville Alliance? I think the three remainders – Faith, Hope, and Love – mentioned at the conclusion of the Love Chapter make a good framework on which to hang our recollection of the past and a runway toward the future. I’ll talk about them here, but not in the order we generally see them.

Hope

Years ago a group of people hoped that an Alliance Church could be planted in Curwensville. They dared hope, and the church was established. Decades later, people of that congregation hoped that God would empower and direct them to relocate from the house they were in to a better location. They hoped and God made it happen. A dozen years ago, we hoped that God would give us some property to expand that facility for needs we didn’t yet have, but we hoped  we’d have those needs. And God came through once more. Then we hoped that through looking at ways to connect with younger men and women, we’d be able to grow in number. And once more, God honored our hopes and has made it happen. Hope. It’s a great thing.

Looking ahead, I wonder, what are we hoping for in the future? Are we satisfied with where we are? Have we found the best parking space where we can just sit and enjoy the view? Or are we hoping for more of the same? We can have higher hopes than that, right? It’s my hope that we can see God do greater things than we have seen in the past. I hope for multiplication of ministry. Multiplication of leadership. And I have a couple specific hopes.

I hope for freedom. When I was a young Christian, freedom was a frightening concept. It seemed that the thinking was, If we allow people to be free, what will they do?! So, as a younger pastor, I bought into a lot of what the established church had taught – that Christian life means slavery to a lifestyle that no one would ever want. As I’ve grown, I see that Christ brings a different kind of freedom. He brings freedom from things like guilt, sorrow, depression, slavery, shame, and self. Christ breaks our bondage with the gospel – so that you are free to live from a foundation of being loved deeply by a God who has set you free. I hope we, as a church and as individuals can grow in that kind of freedom.

I hope for innovation. That Curwensville Alliance will be a place where people can try new things to express their worship and to live out their joy of being made new. It’s great to remember the past; it’s productive to innovate for the future.

Hope brought us to the place we are. I look to the years ahead with hope.

Love

Love is attractive. And, it’s the greatest of the three items we’re thinking about.

I love Curwensville Alliance. And when I say that, I am not saying I love the building, although I do. I am not saying I love the music, although I do. I am not saying I love the programming, although I do. When I say I love Curwensville Alliance, I am saying I love the people. The people here are working to shed the human tendency to hide and be real and genuine with God and with one another. They are working to honestly admit their struggles in this real life in a world marked by challenges. And they are constantly seeking the presence of the real God Who is speaking to and through them.

I love walking with people who pursue and embrace these things so boldly.

I love the grace that has come to exist at Curwensville Alliance – that when you mess up, no one is nodding their heads as if to say, “Yeah – I saw that coming.” Instead, when you fail at Curwensville Alliance, there is someone nearby to help you up, extending a hand. Grace is a powerful expression of love. Love, expressed in grace, is transformative.

Love is hard to maintain, though. Ask anyone who is in the post-newly-wed stage of marriage. Reality tends to test love. Grace can wear thin over time. Love can run dry. Because of this, we need to be on our guard to keep our grace/love tank full. We know how to do that, right? Jesus told us. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. – John 15:4. If we disconnect from Jesus, we will run dry. Personal closeness to Him is essential to maintaining a heart, and an atmosphere, of love.

Love brought us here. Love is essential as we move forward. It’s the greatest of these.

Faith

I have come to believe that faith is one of the least-well understood things in Christendom. A. W. Tozer noted that his own generation saw faith as an open-sesame coin, whereby one could gain admittance to heaven, or gain whatever else one sought. Others see faith as a sort of self-blinding will-power whereby you eliminate the negative thinking and replace it with positive thoughts. Neither of these is anywhere near biblical.

In his great work, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Bible Doctrine, Wayne Grudem makes this statement about faith:

…the word “trust” is a better word to use in contemporary culture than the word “faith” or “belief.” The reason is that we can “believe” something to be true with no personal commitment or dependence involved in it…. The word faith…is sometimes used today to refer to an almost irrational commitment to something in spite of strong evidence to the contrary, a sort of irrational decision to believe something that we are quite sure is not true!

The word trust is closer to the biblical idea, since we are familiar with trusting persons in everyday life. The more we come to know a person, and the more we see in that person a pattern of life that warrants trust, the more we find ourselves able to place trust in that person to do what he or she promises, or to act in ways that we can rely on.

So rather than to say, “I have faith that this can be done,” Grudem might encourage us to say, “I trust God to do this. But whether He does this or not, I trust Him.” Trust is based in personhood. Faith may or may not be.

I look into the future with a spirit of trust in God and in my church family.

Curwensville Alliance has arrived where we are by trusting God. And by trusting one another. Trusting that God would take care of us when we walked away from a building on Filbert Street. Trusting that God would help us as we intentionally reached out to younger adults. Trusting that God would provide for us as we took a great step of faith and built an addition that the engineers warned us we could not afford. Trusting that God will keep us together as we expand the styles of worship we offer to Him. We are where we are because we trusted God. And because we trusted one another – we trusted that God had renewed us and was working in and through us.

Trust has brought us where we are and will be essential in propelling us toward a healthy productive future.

Hope, love, and trust. We need all these things, not just as a framework onto which to hang our past accomplishments, but as a vehicle used of God to move us forward in His care.