Fire In My Bones

The
passion for revival I saw in eastern Europe this week rivaled what I have seen
in Africa or Asia.

Europe
is often described as post-Christian, and some people have already given up on
the continent. We’ve heard discouraging statistics about mosques replacing
churches in England. We know about dismal numbers of churchgoers in Germany and
France. Some people assume that the region that gave us the Protestant
Reformation is now a spiritual wasteland.

But
that’s not what I found in Hungary this past week. On Sunday I preached to a
congregation that meets in what used to be a communist hall in the Budapest
suburb of Szigetszentmiklos. The Free Christian Church,
a lively Pentecostal group pastored by Josef and Lila Gere,
was celebrating its 20th anniversary—and the mayor of the town showed up for
the service along with the local minister of religious affairs.

A Canadian couple’s decision to raise a “genderless”
child has perplexed me.

I was scratching my head last week after hearing
about the couple from Toronto, Canada, who announced they were going to raise a
“genderless” child. Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, parents
of two boys named Jazz and Kio, had a third child named
Storm on New Year’s Day. Witterick announced to her
family last month that she intends to keep the child’s gender a secret and let
him/her figure it out on his own.

So far mom and dad have not
granted interviews, but the mother said in a letter to the Edmonton Journal,
published May 30, that letting Storm determine his/her gender was “a tribute to
freedom and choice in place of limitation.”

Last week in Singapore I saw the future of
Christianity—and it has a definite Chinese flavor.

Last week during a trip to Singapore I enjoyed all
the tastes and smells of China—chili crab, salted milk crab, prawns, ban
mian (flat noodles), bak chang (rice
dumplings), lychee fruits, chicken feet (not my
favorite!) and several varieties of fish. But the flavor I savored most was
found in the worship times at Cornerstone Community Church.

The
popular author’s controversial book Love
Wins celebrates God’s love but drifts dangerously into Universalism.

I’m
usually quick to speak my mind. But in the case of Rob Bell’s controversial
book Love Wins, I’ve withheld comment
until now because (1) I don’t think Christians should judge books before
reading them; (2) the theological issues addressed require careful analysis;
and (3) I have many young friends who are fans of Bell’s books, and they may
write me off if I don’t treat him fairly.

So
I’ll begin with a compliment. Bell is a masterful writer whose prose is poetic.
As pastor of the 7,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan, Bell has
gained a following because of his casual style, his ultra-cool Nooma videos and
the previous books he’s released with Christian publisher Zondervan (especially
Velvet Elvis).

Here are three reasons why Harold
Camping’s end-times prediction should be ignored.

I spent the past week in
Guyana, a South American nation where the people are friendly, the food is
spicy and churches are growing at a healthy pace. But Christians there face a
serious challenge because of the sad legacy of Jim Jones, the American cult
leader who ordered his followers to drink poisoned Kool-Aid at their compound
in Jonestown in 1978. The mass suicide, which killed 909 people (including
Jones), went down in history as the world’s worst example of religion gone
wrong.

“Even today, the Jim
Jones tragedy poses a problem of credibility for us,” one pastor in the
city of Corriverton told me last week.

Some people cheered when the world’s
most hated terrorist was killed. But I don’t think God was happy about his
death.

Like many other Americans who stayed up
late to hear the news about Osama bin Laden on Sunday night, I had one eye on
my television and the other on my laptop. I was waiting for President Obama to
make his statement about the demise of the world’s most infamous terrorist, but
the White House was moving as slow as Vermont syrup in December. When Obama
finally stood in front of his teleprompter, many of us had already finished the
story—by tweeting, texting and posting entries on Facebook.

These days we don’t just sit and watch
TV. We are involved in the story, and sometimes we know the news before Wolf
Blitzer does. Empowered by our lightning-fast digital media, we are the
commentators now. Yet as I read some of the verbal shots fired into the
Twitterverse by this new army of armchair journalists (“May Osama rot in hell!”
for example, or “I’m glad he’s fish food now”), I had to ask myself: Is it
right for Christians to rejoice over the death of a criminal—even one who
masterminded a plot so evil as the 9/11 attacks?

A small congregation in Puerto Rico
reminded me that we can’t build the New Testament church without supernatural
love.

Last week I preached for several days at Casa del Padre, a small but growing church near San Juan, Puerto Rico. The congregation meets in a rented
facility with tile floors and folding chairs. They don’t have a worship leader
yet, so a CD player provides accompaniment for the singing. The pastor, a
gentle guy named Luis, keeps a second job to pay his family’s bills. Up until a
few weeks ago, the church’s office was in his garage.

Casa del Padre is not a
fancy place. But the church’s lack of sophistication is overshadowed by an
amazing level of love. When I ministered on Sunday morning, the meeting began
at 10:30 a.m. yet I didn’t leave the building until 5 p.m.—not because I preached
too long but because nobody wanted to go home.

Peter’s three denials could have marked
the end of his ministry. But the power of Christ’s forgiveness led to three
great victories.

The
Easter story is full of gloom. Agonizing prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Hostile mobs demanding execution. Betrayal and beatings. A crown of thorns and
a bloody cross.

But
one of the saddest parts of the story, to me, is what happened to Peter the
night Jesus was arrested. Peter was tired, stressed to the breaking point and
fearful of the crowd. When the high priest’s servant girl accused him of being
a disciple of Jesus, he denied it. When she repeated her accusation to some
bystanders, he denied it again. When others questioned him, the Bible says
Peter “began to curse and swear, ‘I do not know this man you are talking about!’”
(Mark 14:71, NASB)

Let’s reclaim the simple, profound
purpose of prophecy—and reject all sensational substitutes.

When
I was a college student, a visiting minister regularly came to preach at our
campus meetings. At the end of his messages he would often point at someone in the
room, smile and say something like, “You in the blue shirt, I believe the Lord
has a word of encouragement for you.” Then he would prophesy.

This
freaked me out! How could this man know what God was saying to someone else?
What if he was wrong? I loved the gift of prophecy because I had benefitted
from it myself. But I remember telling the Lord back in those days that I would
never, ever stand in front of a group and prophesy to an individual like that.
Way too scary!

Before you whine, complain or
throw a pity party, remember that God can bring something good out of something
bad.

I’m usually adventurous when it comes to
foreign food. But I was leery when I learned about a tropical fruit called durian during a trip to Indonesia. Three things made me
highly suspicious of this strange delicacy, which is sold in large quantities
on the streets of Jakarta.

First of all, durian looks absolutely
deadly. Each of the large, round fruits is covered with massive thorns that
stick out four inches or more. I’m sure if you threw one of these things at
somebody from a second-story window the victim would die instantly.

Matt Roberts, a young preacher I met last week,
has built a congregation of 950 in the middle of Mormon country.

U.S.
News & World Report recently released its list of “Top Careers,” an outline of professions
that are expected to be popular in 2011. I was not surprised to find all kinds
of medical jobs on the list—from registered nurse to athletic trainer to
massage therapist—but I didn’t expect to see “clergy.” U.S. News
revealed that the Labor Department expects the number
of religious leaders to climb by 13 percent over the next decade.

One
reason that number will grow is that brave men (and some women) are stepping
out in faith to plant churches in an increasingly unchurched America. I met one
of these courageous souls last week. His name is Matt Roberts; he’s only 32;
and he moved to Ogden, Utah, six years ago to start an
evangelical church in the heart of Mormon territory.