Too Succeed… You’ve Got to Fail

            I have in my files a bulletin article written several years ago by a fellow named Coy Roper. It is so good—I thought I would pass it along in its entirety. Be encouraged!

            Baseball fans are all talking about the new base-stealing record set by Ricky Henderson of the Oakland A's. The last time I heard, he had stolen 122 bases, breaking Lou Brock's one-season record of 118, with more than a month still left in the season!

            But before he set that new record, he set another; he broke Ty Cobb's old record of being thrown out 38 times in one season, when he was thrown out for the 39th time in 1982 in a game with the Tigers!

            And that reminded me that Babe Ruth not only held the career record for home runs for many years; he also held (and still holds) the career record for strikeouts!

            And the moral of the story? To succeed much, you've got to try much--and expect to fail often. The preachers who make the most mistakes are the preachers who preach most often. The personal workers who have the greatest number of failures are also the personal workers who win the most souls. Don't quit just because you get "thrown out"; it's those who try often and fail sometimes that end up succeeding.

Walking the Talk

            In youth minister’s Tony Tucker’s bulletin article, I read that the Christian band dc Talk wrote the following lyrics in one of their songs, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips often walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

            Wow! What a challenge to live lives consistent with the teachings of Jesus.

            The Apostle Paul talked about the same challenge when he wrote to the Thessalonians that Christians should embody the gospel they proclaim. Easier said than done!

One Toot, and You’re Out

            Do we make our guests (visitors) feel welcome in our worship assemblies?

            Many years ago, in a small Scottish church, an usher was painstakingly attending his duties, making sure that all in the worship service were in their places and properly quiet during the sermon.

            Suddenly, he spotted an old Scotswoman with an ear trumpet. He had not seen these contraptions (ear trumpets were metal instruments, shaped like trumpets, long ago used to assist the hearing impaired); consequently, he hurried over to the woman and, in a low but threatening whisper, told her, “One toot and you’re out.”

            Are there any members in your congregation who convey this spirit to your guests, “One toot and you’re out”?

Lost Souls

            I’ve been reading recently Dominic Sandbrook’s fascinating account of the 1970s. In his book, Sandbrook tells of con man named Warner Erhard.

            Erhard was a car salesman from Norristown, Pennsylvania. In the late 1960s, he left his wife for a younger woman. He began dabbling in Scientology, Buddhism, and therapy, when, in 1971, he claimed to have received a revelation while driving in his car on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

            Inspired, he organized workshops lasting two consecutive weekends. He would charge people hundreds of dollars to attend.

            His training was to submit attendees to incessant questioning and locking them in uncomfortable, hot rooms for hours at a time—without access to bathrooms. In some ways, it was as if he was maintaining a military boot camp.             

            His purpose in all of this was to strip away the “layers” of personality that had accumulated in his clients through the years. His method, he said, would help people to reach the essential nothingness of “the person within.”

            Instructors would yell at the students and call them obscene names. After finally laying aside their personalities, participants were invited to “take responsibility” for their failures. Once they had gone through all of the training, Erhard would issue this pronouncement, “You are omnipotent. You are a god in your universe.”

            Hundreds of thousands of people paid for this training. Celebrities including John Denver and Valerie Harper participated. Ultimately, Erhard grew rich. By the end of the decade, the workshops ceased due to allegations of sexual abuse and charges that Erhard was creating a cult.

            I am amazed at the extent to which people will go to find spiritual peace. Surely, we Christians, carrying the message of the Prince of Peace, can find some of these lost souls and share with them the Good News of Jesus. Perhaps, some would even listen.

Bury That Talent!

5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone (Col. 4:5-6.) NIV

            Whenever I think of that verse, I think of a story, perhaps apocryphal, told about John Wesley. Supposedly, a woman approached Wesley and said, "I think I know what talent God gave me."

            He said, "Yes, and what is the talent that God gave you?"

            "I think my talent is to always speak my mind."

            To which Wesley replied, "I do not think that God would mind if you buried that talent."

Overhearing the Gospel

I picked up the book, IN THE LAND OF BELIEVERS, last week from our local library. The subtitle gives away the premise: “An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church.” In other words, a non-practicing, Jewish coed decided to attend and become a member of, under cover, a large Virginia megachurch.

It reminds me of my favorite “over-hearing the gospel story.” An acquaintance of mine, several years ago, was serving as a campus minister at a Texas university. He became friends with a guy, who grew to be very interested in the gospel. They began meeting in the student’s dorm room to study the Bible together.

The student’s roommate got wind of this—and did not like it. He decided to sabotage the study. He began bringing his girlfriend over, and while the guys were trying to study, began a process of—how do I say this?—physical intimacy that led ultimately to consummation.

As I recall, this happened a couple times. The campus minister and the student would be studying. In would come the roommate with his girlfriend. They would greet the studiers; act normal while the studiers studied, the shift into a more expansive, mutually, interactive process. At this point, the studiers would leave. After a couple of episodes like that, the studiers shifted their study somewhere else.

The interesting thing is, the student studying with the campus minister never became a Christian. The roommate and the girlfriend ultimately obeyed the gospel and became upstanding members of the campus minister’s congregation. As a matter of fact, she became the church secretary.

You never know what might happen when people overhear the gospel.