God Will Send a Tow-Truck

This past weekend my car broke down.  Well, "broke down" isn't the precise definition of what happened - my car's ability to accelerate disappeared completely, making it almost impossible to drive.  My car could drive, as long as it had previously developed enough speed by going down a mountain pass, and was able to coast for a long distance, and had a strong wind at it's back.  It turns out the fuel pump was defunct and thus unable to get gas to the engine (I will refrain right now from a more obvious theological point and blogpost about the need to be connected to God's Word and how that is our fuel to our engine...).  The repairs department said that it was a relatively easy fix, but that their shop didn't have the necessary car part, and that I would have to drive my car two hours (or tow it, at a cost of $1,000 plus from their shop to another fix it shop).  I decided to risk it, save the money, and coast...(I'm very Scottish that way).

As I coasted my car from one fix-it-shop to the other, I suddenly became very nervous.  What if my car breaks down completely, right here in the middle of nowhere?  What if my car just blows up?  Aren't fuel pumps the thing that carry fuel?  Isn't fuel combustible?  Isn't mine malfunctioning?  What if nobody ever hears from me again?  What if I become homeless?  (Did I mention that I can let my imagination run wild at times?).

But then, an incredible thing happened.  As I was coasting along with my flashers on, a tow-truck pulled up along side me, and then he pulled right up in front of me, seeming to escort my dilapidated car down the road.  The draft behind the tow-truck actually helped me to drive more easily.  And then, miracle upon miracles, that same tow-truck proceeded to drive in front of me for the entire trip to the fix-it shop, over two hours away.  Honestly, I felt like Air-Force One being escorted by an F1-11 to an airport runway.  I felt like a little ugly ducking, being escorted through the skies by a great flock of white swans.  And I discovered once again, an abiding truth about faith and life:

God Will Send a Tow-Truck

One of the main difficult truths about our lives is that hardships will occur - bad things will happen.  Sickness will infect, wars will erupt, violence will ensue, famine and droughts will decimate, tornadoes and tsunamis will engulf, hatred will enflame, cars will break down.  These are tough realities of what it is to be human.  Jesus himself promises us and is realistic about the fact that these things will happen; "The rain will fall on the just and the unjust" (Matt. 5:45).  Why these life challenges must befall us is a much debated question.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do bad things happen period?  Depending on where you fall on the theological spectrum of these questions, your answer will surely fall somewhere in between random happenstance and sovereign determinism. The spectrum of explanation for why hardships occur in human life falls somewhere between the well worn maxim,       "(grey matter) happens" and "God allows all things to happen for a reason."

However, in the midst of our difficulties, God's promise is that He will provide.  God will produce manna in our wildernesses.  God will make springs shoot out from rocks.  God will send doves with olive branches in the middle of floods.  God will give us pebbles and sling shots in the middle of wars.  God will send earthquakes to loose us from our prison cells.  God sent a savior to live with us in the middle our messed up existence.

God Will Send a Tow-Truck

I would love to end this blogpost by saying that after the tow truck escorted me to the fix-it shop, he then rolled down his window, winked at me, tooted his horn, and said, "God bless you, my son, now your safe and sound."  But that didn't happen.  And that would be embellishing the story beyond reality.  In truth, God helped me and my fuel pump depleted car to make it to the fix-it-shop in one piece.  And along the way, God gave me the assurance that He was providing for me in the midst of the journey.

All For Now,

GB

Donkey Prayers

I was speaking to a friend recently who was going on and on about how much she "dislikes" Christians.  (Don't you love conversations like these?).  The friend, and I mean friend, all of us need people in our lives who don't see the world exactly as we see it - I call them my Spiritual ombudsmen.  The usual list of complaints followed the initial invective of the word "dislike".  "Christians," said my friend, "are culturally shallow, they have a history that is full of violence, they are hypocrites, and they are judgmental.  Christians are disengaged, uninformed, uninterested in the real problems which face the world."   I had heard the list before.  My response to such critiques has always been the same, "I never try to defend Christians.  Christians are people too, and none of us is perfect.  But I will defend Christ.  Christ is always perfect."

But, then my friend threw out a critique that I hadn't heard before, and one which has caused me to stop and think a moment before I responded.  She said, "And the thing I dislike the most about Christians is that they pray about so many dumb little things.  They pray about parking spaces and hang nails and for good tables at restaurants and for isle seats.  I mean, do you think God really cares about these little things?"  Hmmm, she had a point.  God is pretty important, He does rule the world, and He may not actually have time for a lot of our littler prayers.  But then, I made a great discovery in my Bible this past week, which is a response to my friend's critique, and I believe a word from God.

God often takes our small prayers and converts them into great big plans for the kingdom of God.  I call these small requests that we make of God our;

Donkey Prayers...

Donkey prayers are tiny, piddly, little, minor prayers that are so small that we are almost embarrassed to mention them.  Donkey prayers are prayers for a good wi-fi connection, that my indigestion will go away, that I will have lots of bars on my cell phone, that I won't run into traffic, that I will write a good blog post... and the list goes on...

The first donkey prayer in the history of small prayers was an errand that we read about in the book of Samuel, where a man named Kish sends his son, by the name of Saul, on an errand to go and find the donkeys that have run away from the family barn.  Saul and his servant friend look high and low for the donkeys but they do not find them.  The Bible says, "They passed through the mountains of Ephraim and through the land of Shalisha, but them did not find them.  They passed through the land of Shaalim and they were not there.  They passed through the land of Benjamites, but they did not find them." (1 Samuel 9:4)  Finally, in desperation, the boys go to visit a prophet, a man of God, a seer, a visionary named Samuel, to get advice about where the donkeys are.  In modern day parlance, we would refer to this visit to Samuel to get advice about a donkey as a silly prayer.  These boys are going to God for advice about a very small and insignificant thing - donkeys.

Now, a day before the boys go to the prophet, God actually speaks to Samuel and says, "Tomorrow about this time I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him commander over all my people Israel."  Sure enough, the next morning a young boy, the kid in question named Saul, would walk in with his servant and ask the prophet Samuel for advice about his donkeys.  Samuel then tells Saul that God has chosen him for a much higher purpose, to lead a nation, to be a king.  God would turn that prayer about donkeys into the beginning of the monarchy for the Israelite people, a monarchy that would lead genealogically to the savior of the world, Jesus, some 600 years later.

So, my friend, if you are reading this post, I will close with this.  Yes, Christians can sometimes be short-sighted, yes they can sometimes be small, yes they don't always see the larger picture, yes they can suffer from tendencies towards hypocrisy.  I count myself in that group.  However, I would not be so quick to dismiss their small prayers, because history has shown that God has the power to turn very small prayers - our donkey prayers, into great things for the kingdom.

All For Now,
GB

Hark, Rejoice, Herald, Thusly...

Have you ever noticed that sometimes old fashioned words are the only way to express modern day emotions? The word "hark," for example, has no modern day equivalent. You just don't hear people say things like, "Hark, I'm tired," anymore or "Hark, that was a bad call by the ref." "Hark," Webster's Third International Dictionary tells us is a combination of two word thoughts. Hark means, "to listen, or give ear to," and "to shout encouragement or guidance to." The only time we ever use the word, "hark" is in the Christmas carol, "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." Replacing "hark" with a modern day equivalent, "listen to the Herald Angels Sing," just doesn't have the same punch (Come to think of it, the word Herald is underused as well...).

Herald - "an official crier or messenger," or, "the name of your next door neighbor who is in his eighties and wakes up before dawn to mow the lawn." (And then Herald read The Daily Herald).

The word "Rejoice" is also a word you never hear used anymore. I put the word rejoice in my weekly missive to my staff in an email from the pastor. Actually, I used it about five times in a row, and I am pretty sure my staff now think that I am taking too many cold medications. The word Rejoice, a derivative of joy, stems back to New Testament Greek, and the time of the apostle Paul who invented the word = CHARIS - XARIS. Charis is a word whose combined meaning "gift", "joy", and "grace". When Paul, in the book of Philippians says the word, Rejoice, he is making up a word, which we often translate to "grace." Boldly, Paul doesn't just use the new word he invented once, he uses it in nearly every sentence, "Christ should be proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true, and in that I REJOICE. Yes, and I will continue to REJOICE," (Philippians 1:18) Paul is literally saying here, "Yes, I will continue to throw gifts...." Paul's staff probably also thought he was on too many cold medications...

I'm going to try to use the word Hark, Rejoice, and Herald in the same sentence sometime today...and do it in a way that I hopefully won't get me punched in the nose.

All For Now,

By Jove,

GB

Reflex

Star and I just found out the very exciting news that in about five months time, we will be the proud parents of a little girl. We, of course, knew that we were going to be having a baby, we did not know that our baby will be a little girl. And this means, of course, that the next generation of pastors in the Baird family will all be women (just kidding, no pressure on my kids. As my Dad told me once, "If you can be anything else in life, other than be a minister, please do that thing..." I will offer my own kids the same advice).

I have been reading up on Child Development assiduously, in preparation for our new child. I am reading-up on diapering and bathing and swaddling and caring for babies in all ways. I am also reading-up on the topic of natural infant reflexes. Of particular interest to me is the famous, "infant grip reflex". The Infant Grip Reflex is the reflex phenomenon that infants will grip anything that is put in their hands. For example, if you put your hand into their tiny hand, and a child will automatically reflex their hand around your hand. Scientists are unsure about the purpose for the reflex, except that it possibly dates back to a time when infants needed to grip their parents while running through rain-forests away from wild beasts. But they are unsure. The miracle of reflexive responses, even in tiny infants, means that all humans have intuitive, reflexive responses to life, even from the earliest of ages.

I believe that humans also have a reflexive response to God. The reflexive response that all humans have to God is love. That is, that the natural human, reflexive response to God, is worship of God - is praise and adoration. To put it in the language of B. Pascal, all humans have a "God shaped hole in their hearts, that only God can fill." A natural human heart reflexively has an open stream of communication, excitement, joy, a free-way of love which connects us to God.

The question then remains, why don't all people maintain this reflexive response to God throughout our lives. Why are there some people who maintain their reflexive response to God, and some people who don't. I'm not sure. One answer I have arrived at is that we all have preventatives, I call them "filters", which enter our lives and which prevent us from the natural reflexive position of our hearts for praise. Our filters can be made up of many things; pain incurred through the process of life, sin, intellectual numbness, over-simplification of the Gospel, personal doubt and questioning of self, and the list goes on and on.

This past week's message focussed on the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, riding the colt of a donkey - the fulfillment of prophecy - Palm Sunday. What was incredible to experience in this text was the natural reflexive response that people had to God/Jesus riding into Jerusalem on that Sunday. The text says, "When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the while crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen," (Luke 19:37). This adulation that Jesus received was, I believe a natural human reflexive response to the presence of Christ.

The natural reflex response to Jesus Christ for all human beings is love.

As we begin Easter week, here is my questions; "How firm is your grip reflex with regard to Jesus Christ? Are you holding firm? Is your body naturally expressing praise for God? Do you have filters in the way which are blocking your body and soul's natural response to God?"

All for Now,

GB

Walk Through the Kitchen

One of my favorite restaurants is a tiny Italian, family-run place called "Via Maestra 42" which is located in Santa Barbara, California. The restaurant has incredible food, there is a real Tuscan Italian family who run it, and it only has about 5 tables in the main room, with bar stools stacked along the sides of the wall. My favorite part about the restaurant though, is that in order to use the bathroom facilities, you have to walk through the kitchen. On my way to the "loo" this past week (actually I didn't really need to go, I just wanted to go into the kitchen) I walked past a sous-chef flipping a flaming ingredient in a hand-held frying pan. Another chef was pulling mozzarella cheese by hand. Another assistant was plating an entree. What I loved about the experience of walking through the kitchen was that I felt like I was really a part of the restaurant team. I sensed that I was a part of the action in the restaurant. I pretended to myself that I was even on the chef's staff. On a recent visit, I patted one of the chef's on the back on the way back to my table. "Nice work," I said, imagining that I was an extra on the television show, The Sopranos. Actually, I was just;

Walking Through The Kitchen

People have often asked me what some of the keys to growth in a church are. The answer to this question is, of course, multi-fold and varies from setting to setting. However, for Highlands Church, walking through the kitchen has also been an important dynamic for us. Every Sunday when the doors of our church close at the beginning of worship, there are invariably a large number of "late-comers" who arrive after we begin. Maybe these people don't realize how challenging it can be to find a parking place near the church, maybe they got stuck in traffic, or maybe one of their children threw a tantrum on the way to church. Because of our funky lay-out, and our difficulty in having an abundance of functional space, when people come late, we always route them through the kitchen in order to let them into worship. When people do so, they weave themselves past communion plates being prepared and refilled. They promenade past name badges of connections team members, and brooms for cleaning floors in between services. In order to enter our church on a Sunday morning, many people have to;

Walk Through The Kitchen

Ironically, our lack of a functional space dynamic has actually inadvertently contributed to a sense of intimacy, inclusion, and connection in our church community. The need to invite some people to walk through the kitchen automatically allows them "feel at home", and gives an impression that we are not perfect, and we do not hide our laundry in our church. One of our mottos for Highlands Church is, "no perfect people allowed." Our kitchen is where we demonstrate this reality in spades.

So, if you come late to Highlands on a Sunday morning, or even if you don't, and you are routed through our kitchen, we hope you feel that you too are part of the team, and that we are not perfect, and we don't pretend to be. Feel free to pat one of our volunteers on the back and say, "Good job, thanks for your help." Better yet, pick up a broom and begin to actually be a part of our team. We could really use your help! That's why we have people;

Walk Through The Kitchen

All For Now,

GB

Back to the Theater

Here's a confession that won't impress you very much, but which has long been on my heart. I love Robert Schuller! I love Robert Schuller's ebullient sayings, "Inch for Inch It's a Cinch," "The Only Limits Are the One's God Sets," and "The Power of Possibility Thinking." I love the "little-church that could" that began in the city of Garden Grove in the 1950's in a drive in movie theater, amidst blossoming orange trees and the exponential urban sprawl of the post World War II era. I can still remember the cold December night when, as a Junior in High School, on a snowy white walk, I popped one of Schuller's cassette tapes from his famous, "Church Leadership Seminar" into my Sony walkman portable cassette head-set player (remember those?). On that tape I heard a new vision for church. I heard a new vision for life. Even though I was only 16, I was mesmerized by Schuller's optimism, and his simplicity, and his ever so slightly "psychological approach" that saw human potential as something more than a Calvinistic five step program. Long before Rick Warren, or Bill Hybels, or Andy Stanley or Joel Ostein, there was Robert Schuller - reaching unchurched people for Christ. "That's what I want to do with my life," I told myself, "that's sort of who I want to be."

So, it was with more than just a little excitement that I noticed in the newspaper this morning that after a long winter of dysfunction and collapse within the Schuller empire, that there was once again a flicker of hope. The Crystal Cathedral was alive once again - it was moving back to the movie theater. The theater this past Sunday was different from the original drive-in theater, and was instead, a typical indoor movie cinema theater. The preacher was different; this time it was Sheila Schuller, the eldest daughter of Robert. The calendar was not the 1950's but rather the early digits of the second decade of the next millennium. Gone were the packed out crowds, and the ranks of pipes from the organ, and the Grecian waterfalls which all splashed inside the Crystal Cathedral to create a melange of sound, light and pageantry. A solemn 100 congregants came to the theater this past weekend. Though I was not there to witness it, it would seem that there was a poetic symmetry about returning to the place where you began in life. In the new setting, there was no flash or pizzaz or hyperbole from younger years, but a humble gathering of people who wanted to worship God...."and a river runs through it."

Highlands Church, of course, began in a movie theater in Paso Robles, in 2006. Our first service in the theater did not have even 100 attendees, but only 40 came. Back in those days, my brother Jamie and I and a few hard bitten volunteers would wake up at 4:00 in the morning, and drive our trailer down to the theater, and unload our gear through a back door, side-stepping used syringes and empty beer bottles and dried up prophylactics and smelly throw up - and we would set up church. And people would come. All kinds of people who would never don the door of a church, or a chapel or a Crystal Cathedral. The experience of being in a movie theater to worship God was one of the highlights of my life.

My prayer for The Crystal Cathedral, in this next period, is that it would be able to change it's core identity, to alter it's seemingly irrevocable trajectory of loss and failure. Perhaps even it's name might be reconsidered. For example, it might go from the "Crystal Cathedral" to the "Velvet, Squeeky-Chair, Popcorn Smelling, Neon-Lit Place Of God", and therein rediscover it's purpose.

All For Now,

GB

A River Of Hope

Yesterday, Highlands began it's four week Sunday journey through the book of Philippians, in a new series called H20 - Hope to Outsiders. In the process of doing study for this series, I have been reminded again of just how "hope-filled" the Christian faith really is. More specifically, I have remembered just how astoundingly hopeful the apostle Paul was, even in the face of the darkest times.

Paul, of course, wrote the book of Philippians from the Roman Praetorium (prison), probably about they year 62 AD (just four years from his own death by beheading at the hands of the Roman government). Contrary to the comments of a few Biblical commentators, the Praetorium was no easy place to be a guest - it was no easy place to be in prison. During his time in the Praetorium, Paul is literally shackled to a prison guard in constant servitude and enslavement. Whenever Paul sits down to eat, he eats with his guard. Whenever Paul goes to the bathroom, Paul goes with his guard. Whenever Paul prays, his guard goes down on bended knee with him. Paul loved a captive audience! And yet, even though Paul's circumstances are very challenging, he muses in the first chapter about the fact that imprisonment has actually been a good thing, "What has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel." (Phil. 1:12).

Above and beyond the circumstances of Paul's life, it is the "theology of hope" in Paul's letters which is so powerful to me. In the book of Philippians, and throughout his epistles, Paul seems to be casting a vision of a forward movement in our lives from all things "dark" to all things "light". The Christ following journey, for Paul, is an irrevocable, unalterable trajectory from challenge into ease, from hardship into happiness, from difficulty into joy, from negative to positive. All Christ followers are on this journey. All Christ followers are on this "river of hope." The centerpiece of this theology is this verse in chapter one of Philippians; "Be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Phil. 1:6).

The hopeful power of this verse is manifold:

1. God isn't finished with us

2. God is continuing to move us in a direction of positive change

3. God does this through giving us good things

4. God will continue to do this all of our lives, and until the end of time

5. There is nothing (no sin, no evil power, no change in attitude) which can separate us from this continued on-pouring of good gifts

In my message yesterday, I compared this process of God pouring good things into our lives as a canoe trip my family took, when I was growing up, in Bozeman Montana, down the Missouri river. Prior to the trip, we all thought that the Missouri would be this incredibly fast river where we would be confronted with white water rapids. "Perhaps we would have to wear crash helmets because the waves and white water would be so fast," we mused. When we arrived on the Missouri, however, we found that the river was not a gushing maelstrom of torrential rapids, but a meandering, slowing rolling front of water. The river literally inched along at about 1 mph - no rapids, no whitewater, no excitement. It took us more than two weeks to float down that river. Sometimes when we would paddle, it would seem that our canoe actually went backwards. However, the end result was undeniable. Though we were moving slowly, we were still moving down the river.

God does the same thing in our own lives. Though life may throw many challenges our direction (job loss, marital struggle, family hardship, economic issues, health challenges), God still moves us down the river of our journey with God, away from darkness and towards the light. All Christ followers remain on the river, flowing towards better things, imbued with constant good gifts by Jesus Christ.

"Be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Phil. 1:6)

Ultimately, faith, then is about riding on a river of hope...

All For Now,

GB