The Great Turnaround

   A while back Life Services, my Practical Christian Ministry for school, began planning an event that was called "the Great Turnaround" that was going to raise money to end abortion in Spokane. I was really excited about it and was helping out in the office to promote it to churches and past volunteers by calling homes... a total of 270 homes to be exact, and talking on the phone is not my strong suit.
   Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, the author of The Prayer of Jabez is the promoter of this ministry and he was the one who had begun to organize these fundraisers for pro-life clinic across the US. The goal was to raise 100,000,000 at 100 of these events. The speaker at our event was a business woman who's mother had gotten pregnant at 19 and was coaxed by her family to have an abortion. She ended up not having one and raising her child without the support of her family.
   I was really excited to help out at the event and see all the people from the local church come together and support this clinic within the community, and to see the body of Christ stand up and say, "This isn't okay" when it comes to abortion. I invited all of my housemates and guys from my brother house.
   At the event, a story from Dedrich Bonhoeffer's book was read about his life as a pastor in Germany during WWII. The story was of the churches that were very close to the train tracks that led the Jewish prisoners to concentration camps. The Jews would see the churches and would cry out to them for help from the Christians worshipping inside. The Christians would hear these cries and couldn't bear them so they would turn up their organ music and sing louder...

I couldn't believe it

   Here i was in a modern day Holocaust asking myself, "What will i do when they ask me 'What did you do to speak out against abortion?'" At that moment i was getting text messages from my housemates saying that they were tired, had some reading to do, or didn't feel like coming. It was like God was placing a picture in my face and saying, "Look! This is you! This is the Church today!!!"

   I came home feeling SO convicted.... convicted about the millions of children killed because of selfishness and convicted about the way the Church has timidly sat by and even secretly participated in. Why do we still consider the church the place for perfect people to come when it's the place for broken sinners to be forgiven and encouraged??

   The next night a guy from my brother house was having a prayer night and i REALLY didn't want to go. I was tired, it was late, and i wanted to just watch TV and sleep. 

BUT then i thought...

   This is something that my brother feels convicted about... i do have as strong a conviction as him but in the end, he is right! I should be praying more often and going to God with everything! I should be praying with my brothers and sisters! I should do this EVEN though i don't really want to right now.

   At the end of the day i was feeling convicted about the actions of the Church and how we need stop letting our timidity, shame, and silence keep us from doing what is right!

RIP Muk Hut

Muk Hut... you will be dearly missed.

    My ALL time favorite restaurant to come home to has been closed. It was definitely a shock as the climax of my Spring Break was going to be the moment when i would order a Mahi mahi fish taco from that cold aluminum counter and sit down with a Diet Coke and sweet potato waffle fries alongside that perfectly grilled fish nestled in a bed of cabbage, salsa, dill ranch, and lemon juice all tucked into a tortilla. We walked up to the door on top of the hill overlooking the Mukilteo ferry and i looked inside the now gutted restaurant and yelled, "NOOOOO!!!" I can't explain to you that feeling of utter disappointment as your heart sinks deep into your gut and you know that delicious fish taco will never sit where your heart now beats.

RIP Muk Hut... You will be missed

   On a happier note, my aunt and cousin came to visit me on my Spring break and it's been great hanging out and catching up!

Porn and Paper Pastors

   This week in one of my not so favorite classes my professor read us an article by Dan Phillips titled Porn and Paper Pastors. I myself, like every other Christian, have my own pastor celebrities that i like to read, listen to, and would love to one day meet. This article hoped to encourage believers to look to their own pastors as their real disciplers vs. the "paper pastors" we can sometimes idolize.




Porn and Paper Pastors
by: Dan Phillips


Decades ago, I read a disturbingly candid essay by a pastor about his struggles with pornography. It was in Leadership magazine. Yearslater, two of his realizations still stand out to me.

The author came to see (as I recall) that he was attracted to these images because they were unreal. The women in the pictures never had bad days, were never crabby and demanding, never disrespectful and demeaning. No mood swings. They always suited his mood, his needs, his wants. They were unreal.

He came to see that he had no actual relationship with these women whatever. If (he named a female celebrity) had sat down next to him in an airplane, she wouldn't know him from Adam. Whatever may have happened in his sinful fantasies, the two of them had no relationshipin the real world.

Of course, this is why so many women resent actresses and models. It isn't catty pettiness or smallness. It is that they know how visually-tempted men can be, and they know that they can't compete with afantasy — if their man is fool enough to chase one.

And they're right, in a way. They can't compete with these women. Because these women don't exist in the real world! They may not even look like their pictures! Thanks to computer wizardry, the pictures we see may actually bear only the slightest resemblance to the actual women.

Nobody can compete with a fantasy.

And this post is not about pornography, men, women, nor marriage.

It is about people with paper pastors.

Now, some professed Christians sin outright, by never physically attending an actual, in-person church. We've talked about that, and they aren't our focus.

But others do attend a church — physically. They come in, they sit down. They sing, they may give financially. They may look at you, Pastor, as you preach.

But you know their heart belongs to another.

Their real pastor isn't you. It's Dave Hunt. Or it's John Piper. Or it's John MacArthur, or Ligon Duncan, or Mark Dever, or David Cloud, or Joel Osteen. Or it's Charles Spurgeon, or D. M. Lloyd-Jones, or J. C. Ryle. Or Calvin, or Luther, or Bahnsen, or de Mar, or R. B. Thieme, or J. Vernon McGee.

And they're such better pastors than you are! You know they are!

Why?

Well, paper pastors are never in a bad mood. They're never cranky, or sleepy or sick. (Especially the dead ones.)

They've never just had someone else pull their guts out with a rusty fork, and then had to turn and listen graciously to your complaint about the translation they preach from, or argue about a Greek word you can't even pronounce. They don't have a family who loses the time you use. They never half-listen, never have an appointment that cuts short their time. Their office hours are your office hours. They're available 24/7, and everywhere, at your whim, and you always have their undivided attention.

What's more is they always have all the answers! They can tell you with complete confidence and masterful eloquence. They never stammer, guess, nor search their memory. And they can prove it — whateverthey're saying! With footnotes!

And these paper pastors maintain the perfect distance. If you don't want to hear something, they don't press it — or you can instantly shut them up, snap! They never ask you to do something uncomfortable and follow up on you. They never persistently probe an area of sin, in you, in person, eyeball to eyeball... nor will they. Church discipline will not be a threat with them. Ever.

Because they don't know you from Adam.

Yet how many pastors know that there are people in their flocks, thinking, "John Piper would never say it that way. Dave Hunt says that what he just preached is heresy. John MacArthur isn't like that.Mahaney says that... Mohler says that... Lloyd-Jones said...."

So, because it's awkward for your pastor to say it to you — and because I've no church who'd suspect I'm talking to them, at the moment — I'll just tell you plain:

Brother, sister: John Piper isn't your pastor. John MacArthur knows nothing about you. Dave Hunt never got on his knees and prayed for you. Lloyd-Jones won't come to your house when you're recovering from surgery, or one of your children shatters your heart, or your marriage is shaking and rocking and barely hanging on. Charles Spurgeon won't weep with you as you weep.

You could buy or not buy _____'s next book, and he'd never know it. But if you're in a manageable-size church with a caring pastor and you're suddenly gone next Sunday, he'll be concerned. He may call. He may ask if everything's okay.

God gave you the pastor He gave you.

God told Paul to tell you:

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord andadmonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. (1 Thessalonians 5:12-13)

God told the writer to the Hebrews to tell you:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

Your flesh-and-blood pastor can't compete with these paper pastors for the same reason you can't compete with paper women and paper men.

Because they're not real.




Dan Phillips blog