Jan. newsletter article attached.

Thanks - Berry

What We Really Got 12/09

 As the Christmas season approaches, I begin to notice which toys Luke, my 5year old, is still playing with from last year's batch of gifts. If the giftis still out, functioning, and being used in November, it's a keeper, andthe kind of gift I want to put under the tree this year. One evening I camehome to find him quietly building a Lincoln Log cabin (a gift from lastyear). The makers of this basic, wooden kit must be retired in the Caribbeansomewhere for all the millions of barrel shaped units of this toy sold sincebefore I was born in 1964. But what struck me about Luke's use of this toywas that the cabin he was building was very different from the one he builton Dec. 25, 2008. On that day, I built a small palace and he built a boxnext to it, and complained that his was "no good." Fast forward 11 monthsand he is quietly building a small palace of his own, different, even betterthan mine. What happened? Luke developed the gift, he took a cartoon full oflittle brown wooden logs and green planks (for the roof, of course) andlearned to make more and more complex "cabins." It took time and I showedhim some patterns & pointers, but what looked like a simple "dumb" non-gameat the start, turned out to have more than meets the eye, and he's not doneyet; we haven't built the monster Tower of Babel to be knocked down by Godyet.

 

So, back to the approaching Christmas season. The gift in the manger in thatquiet village stable so long ago can seem like a toy we've kept in thecloset since last year, like a decoration we take out once a year or so tolook at, then put it back on the shelf. But like a diamond that we keep inan astray on the counter with our spare change, breath mints, and car keys,we don't realize what we have in Jesus or His birth. We and the worldreceived a gift that has everlasting value and use and like those LincolnLogs can develop in complexity and maturity over time, if we "come untoHim." You may be able to describe your spouse to me in 5 sentences, but tothe observant spouse you married not a 2-dimensional character but an oceanfull of life to be explored and a mountain range to spend a life timewandering through & discovering. The gift of Christ is a universe you and Istep into like Lucy & Peter stepped into Narnia when they walked throughwhat seemed like just a wardrobe closet. The fact is, many walked by thatwardrobe and never gave it a second thought; it was simply, definable anduninteresting. Because they didn't know what they really had in the wardrobe(i.e. the world of Narnia), they never appreciated, discovered, or werechanged by the world that lay beyond. Those of us who show up like theshepherds to see some baby in an animal pen this Christmas, will likewisehave missed what we got, the ever-lasting, supernatural, life changing,redeeming, savior-King, God's miracle gift so long ago in a dark corner ofGod's creation earth.

 

19th Century S. African pastor Andrew Murray wrote in his famous devotionalAbide in Me, "We know that all that God bestows needs time to become fullyour own; it must be held fast and appropriated and assimilated into ourinmost being; without this, not even Christ's giving can make it our veryown in full experience and enjoyment." Despite living in a culture obsessedwith immediacy, the gift of Christ, which is the life He came to bring usmust be absorbed through the lining of our soul over time, just as the rainwater puddled in my backyard must be absorbed into the earth over time. Comeunto the manager this Christmas considering what you and I really got inChrist, and seeking to receive, be changed, and matured evermore in Hisspirit & love.

 

 

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Without satellite radio in my car when traveling away from home,finding radio stations is like spinning a roulette wheel. Once hit, thedigital scan locks onto the strongest signal, which may be country, heavymetal, gospel, talk radio, or Mexican polka. And so, sometimes reluctantly,I listen to the strongest, sometimes the only signal available. Life is likethis. We grow up listening to the strongest voices in our life. I remember afootball coach whose voice down the locker room hall caused middle schoolaged boys to immediately stand at attention, even in their underwear. Forall of us, there are strong voices in our lives which shape our thinkingabout life, the world, God and ourselves. One of my favorite poems is called“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. In it, the writer describes his neighbor as“hiding behind his father’s saying “good fences make good neighbors.” Forsome of us, our fathers are the strongest voice in our lives and his wordsand actions have left deep impressions upon our worldview. For others, it’stheir mom or grandmother. I had a friend who was propelled through lifeunder the influence of a teacher who told him that he could be a greatwriter one day. Sitting in class day after day under the influence of thatshaping voice, he began to believe him.

* But there is another strong voice on the radio spectrum of lifewhich we too often listen too. In fact, he speaks through some of those verypeople most influential in our lives, but his intent is not for our good. InMatthew 4 the Lord Jesus encountered this fallen angel in the desert afterfasting 40 days. The purpose of the meeting was to test which signal Jesuswas most strongly locked on to and whether He would believe the lying voiceof the weaker signal. In telling Jesus to “turn the stones into bread” tosatisfy his hunger, Satan tempted him to believe that physical satisfactionwas his and man’s most pressing need. This is one of Satan’s most commonlies piped through every media portal in our culture, urging people tobelieve that life & happiness are found in satisfying their physicaldesires. “The body is preeminent” Satan lies, and so we are tempted to focuson the body’s shape through dieting, or look through cosmetics or clothingor hair styling, or age through surgery, or sexual gratification as the keyto our happiness. Jesus replied “man does not live by bread alone but byevery word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” It is the soul, Christdeclares, not the body which is the priority. “Dust to dust” goes our body,but the soul is immortal. With that priority Jesus forgives the lame man inMark 2 of his sins first, even though his friends lowered him through thethatch roof to have his legs restored. This Jesus also did, but afterestablishing the greater restoration needed, that of the soul over the body.“What does it profit a man,” Jesus said, “if he gains the whole world yetloses his soul” (Lk 8:26). We should care for the body that God has given usand for the physical environment that He has made man a steward of, but benot deceived by the lie that the body’s condition is the goal of life orGod’s design for us. By God’s hand we are physically satisfied, but only inGod are our soul’s fulfilled, the deeper desire all people have.*

In future columns I’ll come back to the other two lies in this Matthew 4passage crying out to us by Satan in our culture today and the strong Voiceof the Lord that gives a stronger and truer signal.

Reunions are a favorite summer event for many families. The great clanWallace, many of whose members have been woven into the fabric of PPC almostsince its beginning, gathered recently to remember the times gone by andreflect upon the future of their lives and families. In Acts 15, thefledgling New Testament church does something of the same thing, and come tothink of it, it very well may have been a hot August in the Jordan Valley.The primary motive seems to have been a theological dispute about the roleof circumcision in the life of the believer, but like all reunions, itturned to stories & reports, discussions & I’m sure a few good meals in themidst of welcomed fellowship. When it was over, Acts 15:30-31 tells us, “themen were sent off and went (back home) to Antioch, where they gathered thechurch together and delivered the message from the (reunion). The peopleheard it and were glad for its encouragement.”

 

And so each year the Presbyterian Church in America, like most otherevangelical, Protestant denomination, gather for a reunion. This year, inthe sunshine state of Florida, on one of Disney’s resort properties calledCoronado, 1200 of us met for 4 days and 3 nights to tell stories about whatGod was doing in our little corner of America, how our families andministries have changed, and oh yes, what theological variances needed to beaddressed. Having not been in many years, I especially found the meeting tobe a great reunion, and I kept a list of no less than 20 brothers with whomI had known fellowship in ministry over my 20 years in the PCA. Thanks tothe PPC family for this annual opportunity; it has an almost inestimablevalue for the soul of your pastor along the pilgrimage of his life andministry, and will therefore be a blessing for yours as well.

 

So now let me give you a brief report, as the early pastors did on theirreturn from the Acts 15 reunion in Jerusalem, about what was revealed anddecided at the PCA annual meeting. Day1 began with “fraternal greetings”from ambassadors visiting from other conservative, Presbyteriandenominations. Some of these were the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC),the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) whose leadership iscurrently investigating their denominational college & seminary Erskine todetermine its theological drift, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of NorthAmerica (RPCNA), the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) with whom someconservative mainline PCUS churches are currently seeking to join, and thePresbyterian Church of Brazil, in whose 150 year history has grown to 6000churches. In the afternoon we received a bird’s eye overview of God’s workin our denomination, hearing reports from the 7 permanent committees thatour denomination established at its beginning to carry out the work of theministry. Among these reports, a few details caught my attention.

From our church planting committee (Mission to North America or MNA) welearned that despite the active growth of churches since last year, the PCAdeclined 1% in membership, the first such decline in its 36 year history.This has been a common trend among mainline churches which have lost largepercentages of their members over the last 10 years, but a very recentoccurrence for the evangelical, conservative wing of America’s churches,including the largest, the Southern Baptist. This is a sobering challengefor us who are given the task of making disciples in this current generationin the US.

From our international church planting committee (Mission to the World orMTW) we learned of new works in India totaling 13 by the end of the year.This has long been a difficult people group to reach with Hinduism so deeplyembedded in their culture, but the global marketplace has opened the nationup to more foreigners and the growing presence of Christianity, whichcurrently makes up only about 1% of this nation of 1 billion people.

From our denominational seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary in St.Louis, we learned that enrollment is up 20% but that the endowment dropped$5 million since last year due to the stock market decline, so that normalfunding of the school would be seriously challenged in the coming year. Wealso learned that their seminary courses are now made available online forfree at itunesuniversity.org where over 250 thousand courses are downloadedeach month by students around the world, especially from Great Britain,India & Korea.

From our college ministry Reformed University Ministry (RUM), we learnedthat out of the 3500 colleges and universities around the US with over 20million students, our college ministry has grown to 123 campuses in 33states, with international works in Canada, Mexico, & now Peru. This ofcourse includes RUF works at Davidson. We also are reaching internationalstudents that now attend our own schools here in the US through 6RUF-International works, the closest being at our own UNC-Charlotte withRev. Will Faires.

And finally, we learned anew about the great resource that we have in ourretreat center, Ridge Haven, which stretches across 900 acres of WesternCarolina Mountains near Brevard. The retreat facility hosts youth campsthrough the summer, men’s & women’s retreats throughout the fall, winter, &spring, and hope will be a place the PPC family can make use of more in theyears ahead.

Next month, I will turn to those theological issues which the 1200 attendingelders wrestled over during our annual PCA reunion.

* *Today around America, individuals, organizations, businesses, thegovernment, and even churches are sitting down across a table from someother person or group for the mediation of a legal dispute. Unbeknownst tomost people, this court mandated step in the cancerous legal process of alawsuit forces the parties involved with their lawyers to try and settle thedispute before a costly trial damages them in time, money, emotion, &reputation. However, by the time that mediation occurs, tens of thousands ofdollars in legal fees have already accrued on top of the amount that thelosing party will be forced to pay. What if the offending person or businesshad approached the person they wronged, hat in hand, and in humility hadasked forgiveness for their offense and offered to pay restitution for anydamages? What a novel idea, and one that would save great sums of money,time, and emotional capital that, frankly, could be better spent in otherplaces.

 

Let’s take a real life example that I know about. A local newspaper wrote afactually inaccurate story that slandered the good name of a local business.When confronted about the article and its inaccuracies, the reporter arguedthat he tried to get a response to the article from the business beforepublishing the article, but was unable, so he went to press. Big, foolishmistake. Nonetheless, all the business (which happened to be run byChristians) wanted was a public apology and a published retraction in thenext edition. Instead, of following the simple, biblical exhortation to“settle disputes on the way to the court” and “if you find yourself…go toyour,” the paper chose to raise its defensive, legal shield against thesmall business, bringing no resolution, restitution, or justice. And as theproverb says, “before his downfall a man’s heart is proud.” The Christianbusiness owners, who suffered loss from the defaming article, found littleother option than to pursue a lawsuit against the larger, state-wide paper.What could have cost the paper a humble apology and a quarter page oflegible ink, will now add up to $50,000 in legal bills and over a quarter ofa million in settlement money, further hurting the economic condition of thepaper.

 

America has become the most litigious nation in the world, producing morelawyers per capita than any other country. How does this square with ourother reputation as being a “Christian nation,” “one country under God” asour pledge goes, and a nation of churches? The answer is, it doesn’t.Perhaps the Death & Resurrection message of Easter can lead the Church & theNation to repentance on this issue once again. Perhaps when we consideragain that we had our lives reconciled with God by the death of His own son,we might remember the power of reconciliation next time we offend a neighborby backing into his mailbox. The Cross reminds us that even the greatestdebts which must be paid, can be paid with love & humility.

* *Among the bad economic news that the media has thoroughly reported overthe last 6 months, one particular statement from a government officialcaught my ear. Alan Greenspan, whose Chairmanship over the Federal Reservespanned 3 different presidents, spoke up at a Congressional inquisition tosay that he had been “wrong” about his operating assumption that marketswould necessarily “self correct” themselves. The man whose very words couldpush or plunge the stock market admitted that he had been wrong about howthe markets that he was in charge of worked. To the shock and dismay of allcapitalists, our American wizard behind the curtain admitted an inherit flawwith the system: people in the financial sector of our economy (the markets)could not be trusted to correct the problems that they created. You couldhear a collective sigh of anxiousness from the country the next day, asordinary Joe American wondered “who can you trust to fix our economicsystem?” If the Greenspan Wizard was wrong and the markets don’t necessarilycorrect themselves, maybe our federal government can solve the problem? Andlike a perfect storm of socialist leaning politicians, the untrustworthinessof Capitalism echoed by every uncovered fraud or ponzy scheme in the lastfew months has given a compelling reason to now trust Big Brother toredistribute our money for us to solve our economic woes. Of course, even acursory review of the headlines from the exact same newspaper announcing thefailings of private business and capitalism reveal the failings ofgovernment as well.

Alexis De Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who traveled around Americain the early 1820’s to survey and better understand the success of our youngconstitutional republic. From his travels came a now famous bookcalled *Democracyin America*, in which he states that America is great, because America isgood; and when she ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. DeTocqueville had been struck by the numerous churches that dotted thelandscape from Georgia to Massachusetts and believed this vibrant piety tobe the catalyst to the young nation’s moral character, unity, and vision.The absence of these qualities in his own native France, spelled the doom ofa similar attempt at “revolution of liberty” around the same period of 1789.The result was anarchy and Napoleon, in that order.

And so we come to America’s worst economic downturn since the 1930’s, andthe question remains, will America return to greatness, and if so, how? IsSocialism more trustworthy than Capitalism as an economic system? Are theleaders of Congress more trustworthy than the wizards of Wall St.?Remembering De Tocqueville observation might serve to steer our course backto economic health, for evil resides in the hearts of all men, whether onWall St., Pennsylvania Ave., or Main St., and therefore natural man, left tohimself, can never be fully or continually trusted. But that same evil isovercome with the goodness & virtue that flow from a heart, mind & soulconverted and ruled by Christ. And so America, make more disciples of Christto oversee industry and government, and more leaders, like Truett Cathy ofChick Filet will seek to care for his employees and shareholders, ratherthan line his own pockets. Make more disciples and we’ll have fewerpolitical scandals in Washington and state houses around the country, ashusbands will remain faithful to their wives and constituents, seeking tohonor and serve them, rather than misuse and abuse them. Make more disciplesof Christ, and at every level of every institution, there will return asoundness of wisdom and judgment and truth, which will benefit all of ournation. “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a disgrace to any people”(Prv 14:34) and “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps 33:12).

The 19th Century Pastor/Preacher Charles Spurgeon was once asked about booksto read besides the Bible. He replied that he keeps the Bible in one handand the daily newspaper in the other so that he remained current andfamiliar with the world in which he labored to win souls and make disciples.The recent story of the “Miracle on the Hudson” in which US Air Flight 1549crashed into the Hudson River just after take-off from New York’s LaGuardiaairport revealed even more than just current events. Like most everyone whoheard the story, I was struck by the very fact that all 150 passengerssafely survived, a very different scenario from a similar crash in a winterriver outside of Washington DC some years ago, in which the plane splitapart, leaving many of the passengers to die on impact and others to drownas the plane sunk after its watery landing. As if to highlight the“miracle,” photos captured the passengers after they had de-boarded theplane, standing on both wings, which were now slightly under water so thatit appeared in the photos as if the passengers were actually walking on thewater. So…….how does this “crash” story inform the Christian reader of theworld in which he lives & labors? First, the crash itself once againconfirms the “falleness” of this world, where no amount of safety checks,annual inspections, state of the art design, or highly trained professionalscan prevent a flock of Canadian geese from flying into BOTH engines of theplane. Brokenness, error, crashes, and sin are regrettably formatted intolife this side of heaven because of Adam’s first sin. Secondly, despite thebrokenness of this world, the Lord does work miracles. Yes, sometimes theylook like 150 airline passengers walking on water after their plane made alanding on the local river, but a careful reading of the follow-up storiesand passenger interviews will reveal the greater miracle – the peace whichpassed understanding that guarded the hearts and minds of the passengers(Phil 4:7). Little mentioned from the press is the fact that the flight wascoming to Charlotte, an area heavily populated with God’s children. On thatplane were in fact a number of believers whose faith was tested with theultimate “life or death” crisis. The witness of one of those brothers thismorning on New Life Radio was that contrary to the expected shouting andchaos after the pilot announced “brace for impact,” the plane was filledwith silence, as the passengers prayed. Moreover, the desperate clamoring toescape a sinking plane was replaced by an “orderly” departure from thevehicle. Yes, these were the greater miracles witnessed to us and to theworld of both the Lord’s merciful hand on the plane, but by His Spiritworking through the lives of His children. Lastly, the Hudson Miracle wasnot without its reminders of the world, as one passenger was reported tohave fought valiantly to save her luggage while the rest of the group helpedpreserve each other’s safety. Her priorities showed us once again The Lostin action. So, do what Spurgeon did and read your daily paper, even if younow read it online, something Spurgeon might not understand.

Pastor Berry Stubbs