I honestly can't see this governmental intrusion on religious liberty ultimately succeeding, but its a window into the "what if"
San Diego County has apparently issued a zoning violation to a pastor who was holding a home group Bible study without a special zoning or use permit. What is interesting is that upholding this violation would mean that groups could only meet at church buildings or other approved designated locations. Our church and many others have been moving away from meeting AT the church building into homes, connecting with the community around us. Christians in San Diego County would have to meet in much smaller groups or not at all outside of church.
The attorney in the article raises good questions about non-approved meetings in homes for any number of events, and I think that reasonable people will prevail on this issue.
But if they don't? What if Christians had to start meeting in secret outside of church? Would we respond like the Chinese underground church and take joy in this new suffering for the sake of the gospel?
What would you do if Stafford told us that we could no longer meet in homes for Bible studies?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
So according to CBN's news channel, many of Notre Dame's seniors will not attend graduation this Sunday because of a controversial decision from it's leadership over the guest speaker. Watch this short video the students made and post your thoughts:
Read the full story here: http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2009/05/12/notre-dame-seniors-say-no-to-graduation.aspx
Read the full story here: http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2009/05/12/notre-dame-seniors-say-no-to-graduation.aspx
Monday, May 11, 2009
It's my birthday!
I graduated from Virginia Tech 8 years ago today. It was a Saturday then, and it was an objectively beautiful day. When I woke up, I knew two things. I was going to get my degree, and I was going to meet my girlfriend's father. I had no idea how the second one was going to go.
Basically, I knew of this girl in my Russian history class my sophomore year. I knew her name from roll call, but aside from that, nothing. I saw her again in another class I took. My junior year, I took a class called Political Theory. The class was semi-interesting, as I got to read Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, as well as Augustine, the Bible, and other works. She was in this class. We became friendly. She hung out at my fraternity parties on occasion. The summer rolled around, and I figured I wouldn't bump into her again. Tech is a large campus. Fall semester of my senior year, a friend and I were walking out of our Constitutional Law class, and she was standing there--she hid the cigarette she was smoking, and we chatted. Her sorority was planning their big fundraising event, and she was the coach for our fraternity. I was the president of my fraternity, so I told her to call me later and we could set up a time for her to come to a chapter meeting and tell us about it. We had a Greek Relations chairman who should have handled it, but a) she didn't know that, and b) I needed her number somehow.
I called her back, and we talked for several hours. We started dating. Several weeks into our dating, she mentioned to me that she used to go to church, had stopped, but wanted to get back into it. I mentioned that my buddy Dom went to a church and played guitar in a band. "NL something" I said. "NLCF" she confirmed--that was the church she used to go to. I agreed to go to church with her. I called my buddy Dom and asked him about the band and when church was. He said he stopped playing, but he was involved in different roles there.
That first Sunday was the first Sunday I had attended church for other than Christmas or Easter since the 5th grade. I remember worrying about what to wear. Shirt and tie? (I wore a polo shirt and khaki pants--WAAAY overdressed). The first song we sang was Charlie Hall's "Salvation." It was amazing to see unchained worship. People clapped their hands. People were holding their arms out like Leo DiCaprio in Titanic. One guy was jumping up and down in the front row. I was staring. Then the pastor walked out to preach. A balding dude with glasses named Jim. Said he was preaching on the Book of Philippians. I used to live in the Philippines, but this was not the same thing. He said that in order to understand what this guy Paul was writing about in the book, we had to understand where he wrote the book from. He described Rome in 60AD, and the history major in me was hooked in. Then he started talking about the things that keep us from truly living free, the bondage that we do to ourselves. I didn't really understand a lot of it, but I knew I wanted to hear more. I went back to church week after week.
Admittedly, my lifestyle hadn't changed dramatically, but it didn't matter what I did on Saturday night, or where I ended up sleeping--if I was in Blacksburg, I went to NLCF on Sunday morning.
I was also getting tired of college. I intended to go to school for another year, getting majors in Political Science and Philosophy on top of my history degree--make myself really attractive for law schools. But a pre-law advisor told me that if I wanted to go, I just needed to go--save money on tuition and take the LSAT and begin the next chapter. Sound advice. I took it. I took the LSAT. I did pretty good without studying.
At the same time, my girlfriend's dad discovered that I was half-Asian, and according to her and e-mails that I read between them, she was forbidden to date me. They quoted some Old Testament scriptures about not intermarrying with other peoples, she quoted back some New Testament verses about neither being Greek nor Jew, etc. They responded with "Honor your father and mother" and if you don't, find out another way to pay tuition and drive around. We decided to lie. She told her parents we broke up.
We kept dating. Over break, I went to Richmond and hung out with her at friend's houses. She came up to Stafford to visit. We went to a friend's house in Maryland for New Year's. We went to Florida on spring break. I don't know if her parents really knew, but we didn't think they did. At least I didn't.
As school was winding down, we were both ready to graduate and go to law school. I had been accepted to a few schools, but I chose George Mason University--it had recently jumped into the top tier of schools, and the admissions dean was really nice and gave me a really good vibe about the school. We knew we had to figure out the situation with her parents. We couldn't go on lying forever.
We hatched up a plan. On the afternoon of graduation the College of Arts and Sciences would hold a reception. She would attend with her parents, I with mine. We would bump into each other and boom--meet the parents, everything goes swell.
On graduation day, I decided to eat lunch at Homeplace, aka, the greatest food on earth. The problem is, the restaurant is in the valley a good 45 minutes from campus. My grandma, aunt and cousin all flew in, and so we had a wonderful time. We tried to get to the reception. We were late. We decided to go anyway, just in case, and walking down the street away from said reception was girlfriend with her parents. From the moment I saw them, I was no longer me. I called out her name and crossed the street. I introduced myself to them. My family slowly joined me. We had a brief, but amicable, interaction. They left, as did we. We drove back to my room at the fraternity house where I was going to get some change of clothes for the evening. She called me and between tears told me that her dad had just realized who I was and that we had permission to date. The catch was, he wanted to meet me. I told my family, who all knew what was going on, and they graciously allowed me to go over to her house. I spent a couple hours with her family. They asked me a bunch of questions about me--about my faith--which, truth be told, I didn't have a lot of answers for. I had been attending church, but I wasn't a Christian.
Her dad took me aside, and he told me why he prevented us from dating. He told me that God can sometimes make a fool out of the wisest of men, and that when our families met, he had no concept of race or nationality. He said that God blinded him so that he could truly see. I had no idea what to think.
I drove up to my parents' hotel in Roanoke, thinking about God the whole time. My family ordered pizza and were playing games, but I just kept thinking about God. Did He really do that? Did he really perform a miracle on my behalf? I called my buddy Dom, who had just graduated himself. I told him the short version of what happened (Dom also knew what was going on). I told Dom that I wanted to follow God if he would do this for me. Dom told me to do the ABC prayer. I didn't know what that was, and I was embarrassed to admit it. He guided me through a short prayer of confession and repentance and told me I was saved. I didn't know what to think. I was happy, confused, all at the same time.
I had certainly been living in some serious sin during that whole period. I had participated in a fairly grandiose lie. I have no illusions that God in any way condoned those acts through the miracle. But what I do know is that He knew I needed SOMETHING to push me over the edge to recognizing my need for Him. Where Thomas had seen the miracles, but he needed to touch Christ's wounds and come face-to-face with the reality, I think I just needed to believe in the supernatural.
God has a way of working out the consequences of sin. Whether it was for the lying, or the immorality, our relationship didn't last through the first semester of law school. We spoke one time since then, the spring of 2002 when she told me that her grandfather had died. I appreciated her telling me. I saw her at the bar exam. She's married, she's got a kid.
After breaking up, in the wake of my depressed state of an unexpected and unwanted breakup, I joined a small group called Higher Ground. I soon found out what it meant to follow Christ. I met the best friends you could ever hope to gain. Best of all, I met Becca. And now I'm married, and I've got a kid.
God's purposes are perfect. I thought I went to Tech because it was the only school I was accepted to. Except that God brought me to Tech so that I would begin the journey of meeting Him face-to-face, on a wonderful Saturday afternoon exactly 8 years ago.
Basically, I knew of this girl in my Russian history class my sophomore year. I knew her name from roll call, but aside from that, nothing. I saw her again in another class I took. My junior year, I took a class called Political Theory. The class was semi-interesting, as I got to read Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, as well as Augustine, the Bible, and other works. She was in this class. We became friendly. She hung out at my fraternity parties on occasion. The summer rolled around, and I figured I wouldn't bump into her again. Tech is a large campus. Fall semester of my senior year, a friend and I were walking out of our Constitutional Law class, and she was standing there--she hid the cigarette she was smoking, and we chatted. Her sorority was planning their big fundraising event, and she was the coach for our fraternity. I was the president of my fraternity, so I told her to call me later and we could set up a time for her to come to a chapter meeting and tell us about it. We had a Greek Relations chairman who should have handled it, but a) she didn't know that, and b) I needed her number somehow.
I called her back, and we talked for several hours. We started dating. Several weeks into our dating, she mentioned to me that she used to go to church, had stopped, but wanted to get back into it. I mentioned that my buddy Dom went to a church and played guitar in a band. "NL something" I said. "NLCF" she confirmed--that was the church she used to go to. I agreed to go to church with her. I called my buddy Dom and asked him about the band and when church was. He said he stopped playing, but he was involved in different roles there.
That first Sunday was the first Sunday I had attended church for other than Christmas or Easter since the 5th grade. I remember worrying about what to wear. Shirt and tie? (I wore a polo shirt and khaki pants--WAAAY overdressed). The first song we sang was Charlie Hall's "Salvation." It was amazing to see unchained worship. People clapped their hands. People were holding their arms out like Leo DiCaprio in Titanic. One guy was jumping up and down in the front row. I was staring. Then the pastor walked out to preach. A balding dude with glasses named Jim. Said he was preaching on the Book of Philippians. I used to live in the Philippines, but this was not the same thing. He said that in order to understand what this guy Paul was writing about in the book, we had to understand where he wrote the book from. He described Rome in 60AD, and the history major in me was hooked in. Then he started talking about the things that keep us from truly living free, the bondage that we do to ourselves. I didn't really understand a lot of it, but I knew I wanted to hear more. I went back to church week after week.
Admittedly, my lifestyle hadn't changed dramatically, but it didn't matter what I did on Saturday night, or where I ended up sleeping--if I was in Blacksburg, I went to NLCF on Sunday morning.
I was also getting tired of college. I intended to go to school for another year, getting majors in Political Science and Philosophy on top of my history degree--make myself really attractive for law schools. But a pre-law advisor told me that if I wanted to go, I just needed to go--save money on tuition and take the LSAT and begin the next chapter. Sound advice. I took it. I took the LSAT. I did pretty good without studying.
At the same time, my girlfriend's dad discovered that I was half-Asian, and according to her and e-mails that I read between them, she was forbidden to date me. They quoted some Old Testament scriptures about not intermarrying with other peoples, she quoted back some New Testament verses about neither being Greek nor Jew, etc. They responded with "Honor your father and mother" and if you don't, find out another way to pay tuition and drive around. We decided to lie. She told her parents we broke up.
We kept dating. Over break, I went to Richmond and hung out with her at friend's houses. She came up to Stafford to visit. We went to a friend's house in Maryland for New Year's. We went to Florida on spring break. I don't know if her parents really knew, but we didn't think they did. At least I didn't.
As school was winding down, we were both ready to graduate and go to law school. I had been accepted to a few schools, but I chose George Mason University--it had recently jumped into the top tier of schools, and the admissions dean was really nice and gave me a really good vibe about the school. We knew we had to figure out the situation with her parents. We couldn't go on lying forever.
We hatched up a plan. On the afternoon of graduation the College of Arts and Sciences would hold a reception. She would attend with her parents, I with mine. We would bump into each other and boom--meet the parents, everything goes swell.
On graduation day, I decided to eat lunch at Homeplace, aka, the greatest food on earth. The problem is, the restaurant is in the valley a good 45 minutes from campus. My grandma, aunt and cousin all flew in, and so we had a wonderful time. We tried to get to the reception. We were late. We decided to go anyway, just in case, and walking down the street away from said reception was girlfriend with her parents. From the moment I saw them, I was no longer me. I called out her name and crossed the street. I introduced myself to them. My family slowly joined me. We had a brief, but amicable, interaction. They left, as did we. We drove back to my room at the fraternity house where I was going to get some change of clothes for the evening. She called me and between tears told me that her dad had just realized who I was and that we had permission to date. The catch was, he wanted to meet me. I told my family, who all knew what was going on, and they graciously allowed me to go over to her house. I spent a couple hours with her family. They asked me a bunch of questions about me--about my faith--which, truth be told, I didn't have a lot of answers for. I had been attending church, but I wasn't a Christian.
Her dad took me aside, and he told me why he prevented us from dating. He told me that God can sometimes make a fool out of the wisest of men, and that when our families met, he had no concept of race or nationality. He said that God blinded him so that he could truly see. I had no idea what to think.
I drove up to my parents' hotel in Roanoke, thinking about God the whole time. My family ordered pizza and were playing games, but I just kept thinking about God. Did He really do that? Did he really perform a miracle on my behalf? I called my buddy Dom, who had just graduated himself. I told him the short version of what happened (Dom also knew what was going on). I told Dom that I wanted to follow God if he would do this for me. Dom told me to do the ABC prayer. I didn't know what that was, and I was embarrassed to admit it. He guided me through a short prayer of confession and repentance and told me I was saved. I didn't know what to think. I was happy, confused, all at the same time.
I had certainly been living in some serious sin during that whole period. I had participated in a fairly grandiose lie. I have no illusions that God in any way condoned those acts through the miracle. But what I do know is that He knew I needed SOMETHING to push me over the edge to recognizing my need for Him. Where Thomas had seen the miracles, but he needed to touch Christ's wounds and come face-to-face with the reality, I think I just needed to believe in the supernatural.
God has a way of working out the consequences of sin. Whether it was for the lying, or the immorality, our relationship didn't last through the first semester of law school. We spoke one time since then, the spring of 2002 when she told me that her grandfather had died. I appreciated her telling me. I saw her at the bar exam. She's married, she's got a kid.
After breaking up, in the wake of my depressed state of an unexpected and unwanted breakup, I joined a small group called Higher Ground. I soon found out what it meant to follow Christ. I met the best friends you could ever hope to gain. Best of all, I met Becca. And now I'm married, and I've got a kid.
God's purposes are perfect. I thought I went to Tech because it was the only school I was accepted to. Except that God brought me to Tech so that I would begin the journey of meeting Him face-to-face, on a wonderful Saturday afternoon exactly 8 years ago.
What a week off
The blog took a vacation, but only because it was such a hectic work week. By the time I got home, I really couldn't stand to sit in front of the computer anymore.
Some really exciting things happened in the past week, though, that really deserved some attention.
*Said response was merely for entertainment purposes and did not actually occur in real time.
Should see more blogging and twittering from me today and this week. See ya.
Some really exciting things happened in the past week, though, that really deserved some attention.
- Nats game, meeting a pro player. Is it safe to consider a guy I rode on a metro train and stood at metro stops with for an hour or two my new best friend? I think so. I think I spoke two words to him as his time was occupied mainly by crazy Cardinals fan Peter Petrelli, a friend of my sister's. Anyway, kudos to my sister for scoring the tickets through my new BFF Bardo.
- Caps game. Went with Micah to Game 1 of the Caps/Pens series a week ago Saturday. Awesome experience. I've been to several Caps games through the last 15 years, but never saw anything like the sea of Red, the mohawks, the great videos. Let's not forget that the seats were amazing.
I am not in the camp of you give "x" and God gives "X" in return. However, I do believe that God does sometimes provide tangible demonstrations of reward. These tickets were a great example. My friend CapsfreakStacie called Becca on Friday night and told her about these tickets that her boss purchased and wondered if we wanted to go. She told me that they were pretty expensive, and I hesitated because we try to be smart with our spending dollars and this would be an investment. But, when would I get a chance to go to a game like this again, so we decided to get the tickets. Then Becca said she couldn't go, and I needed to find someone to take this second ticket. I went to my brother and dad first, but my brother, being the only Caps fan I know who would rather get text updates of a game while he's at work than go to the game bailed, and my dad said he wasn't feeling well enough. Then CapsfreakStacie texted me and said that her boss would prefer that a total stranger not get the ticket, so could I think of anyone at the church to go.
Here's where it gets sticky. I called my buddy Todd first. He's somewhat involved with church. He said that he had soccer games for the kids, and he was actually planning family night at the Potomac Nats game, so he couldn't go. I told him that I actually wasn't inviting him anyway, thanks for nothing.* Then I made a huge mistake. I had the impression that I had a limited time to find a second person for these tickets or they were bye-bye. So I called three people and basically left it up to first-come, first-serve. I called Eric, our church-planting buddy in Pittsburgh. I half-jokingly said he should drive down and watch the Pens' annihilation in person. Then I called Zac. Left him a message. I also called Micah. Left him a message. Then I waited. Nothing. I felt like hours were going by, although it may have been minutes. I called Becca back and said, you should re-arrange your work schedule and just go to this game. She said ok. Problem solved.
Then Zac called. Disaster averted, he couldn't make it. Some time later, I looked at my phone, and I had 7 missed calls and 2 voice mails. Uh oh. First message "This is Micah. If you still have that ticket, I'd love to go." This became craptastic. Second message was from Becca, as were 6 of the 7 missed calls. She said that she forgot that she had Toluca Road rehearsals and there was no way to get out of that. I felt like Jack Bauer. Everytime a new crisis arose, I met the evil square in the face and things worked out. I called Micah back, told him that everything was great, the ticket was his.
Then, Eric called. Told me that he'd love to drive down for the game. DAGGER. I sheepishly called him back and told him what happened. He told me that it was cool and probably for the best that he watch the game in the friendly Pittsburgh confines. He turned out to be correct. The Pens were crushed (although the series is turning out to be a different story).
Ben, when are you getting to the part where you talk about God and blessings and relate this to church in a way other than name-dropping people who work at churches?
So Micah and I go to the game, and its great. We were on TV constantly, so if anyone out there recorded the game and can screengrab, I'd love to get that from you. Anyway, I texted CapsfreakStacie and asked her how much I owed her boss for the tickets, and he said nothing. As in zero. As in zip. As in free. He said to Stacie that he wanted to be able to bless people who have been a blessing to others, and he just hoped we had a good time. Well, we did. And we are humbled and grateful.
I certainly don't get paid to serve in the ministries I'm involved in. In fact, it seems like the more I put in, the more God asks to give. Time for prayer, preparation, communication, administration, study, thinking, planning...it can be extremely taxing mentally, physically and spiritually. But the reward is a closer relationship with Christ, not just for those in I-268, but for me and my family. It is an aweome feeling though, to receive a gift like this and know that it was from God through this generous individual. It motivates me to continue to serve, to continue to grow because it is not a fruitless pursuit.
*Said response was merely for entertainment purposes and did not actually occur in real time.
Should see more blogging and twittering from me today and this week. See ya.
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