Tonight is my last in India. I fly out in a few hours (we are approximately 12 hours AHEAD of Central Standard Time, so, I'll take off approximately 2pm on Thursday back home). I'll fly eight hours to Paris, and then have a planned seven hour layover. I hope to take a train into the heart of Paris and walk around for a while and get some good pictures. I hear there are some things worth seeing there. I'm a bit skeptical, but, who knows? Maybe it will be more visually pleasing than Montgomery. :)  Then, I'll fly another eight hours to Kennedy airport in New York. I'll have over a 3 hour layover there, where I will have to take a shuttle to LaGuardia. I'll then fly almost 3 hours to Atlanta, where hopefully someone will pick me up and I will drive over two hours home. I should get home a little after midnight on Saturday morning, having sat in airports, airplanes, shuttles, trains, and cabs for over 36 hours. International travel is not for the faint of heart. Your prayers are much appreciated!

Last night, I visited the oldest Hindu temple in Dehli and the largest Sikh temple. It was grueling. I joined with Paul in being "greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols" (Acts 17:16). People were lying prostrate in front of statues of monkeys and elephants in the Hindu temple, and they were bowing before a holy book in the Sikh temple. I've seen all this before, but it affected me strongly last night. Maybe I've come to care for the people more and I no longer see them as aliens or objects. I think that I am just grieved.

Thom and I spent hours talking at a restaurant last night after the temple tour. He really is fascinating. I've known him for 10 years now, and he always challenges me and keeps me thinking. This morning, over eggs and toast, we began to talk about the global struggle for human dignity and freedom and we nailed down some plans to create the Parks-Phule Human Dignity Award.  It would be an annual award given in India to a person who labored to lift people out of despair and bondage in a struggle to provide justice, mercy, and hope from the position of following Jesus. Parks would refer to Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights movement that started in Montgomery where I live, and Phule would refer to Mahatma Phule, the Indian Father of Social Revolution. Both were guided and influenced by the ethics and person of Jesus Christ. Our hope is that by highlighting these values, we will be able to encourage others to do the same, and thus live out the call of Jesus to lift the burdens off the oppressed and enslaved around the world spiritually, socially, and economically, by reconnecting them with the dignity bestowed upon them by their Creator through the acts of redemption, reconciliation, and restoration to the Imago Dei.

In this endeavor, Micah 6:8 guides our thinking: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Jesus changes everything. He reorients our thinking and transforms our purpose and presence in this world. Today, I was able to meet for a few hours with several Indian brothers who are living out Micah 6:8. They are leading significant ministries in India that are helping to facilitate movements of tens of thousands of low caste peoples out of Hinduism to becoming followers of The Way. They are also influencing politicians and academicians. I got to sit in on an "inner circle" conversation with them, and it was heady stuff. What an honor.

Soon, I'll go to dinner, and then I'll be off for the airport. I'm leaving so much behind in India in love, memories, and sorrow, and I am finding that my heart is growing more and more connected to these people. They are often gentle and kind. They are helpful. They are always smiling. But, they are not a simple people. Many are brilliant. They desperately want to change their nation, no matter their religious background. India is on the move, and as she awakens, her stretching shakes the world. We will all begin to encounter India more and more in our daily lives. The question is, which India? Many say that the future of India is up for grabs during this 20 year window (1995-2015). We are right in the middle of it. India is charting it's course and will take the world with her. Perhaps the Sovereign God is raising up people, like the ones I have met, for such a time as this. I hope to join them. Perhaps, in your own way, you will too.

Noise, pollution, dust, cars, buses, trucks, autorickshaws, motorcycles, ox carts, bicycles, people - all flying at you at a breakneck speed as you travel down broken roads past roadside shops and businesses for an uninterrupted 150 miles from Delhi to Dehradun. India is moving, hurtling forward into the progress of globalization that marks the 21st century, but still stuck in a past that leaves 800 million of her people in abject, horrifying poverty. You can make cell phone calls in the Himalayas (our cell phones do not even work between Montgomery and Birmingham on I-65 in Alabama), but you can't get clean water. There is the high tech, public face of India, depicted in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, and the shadow side, the real India, the backward India, called by it's ancient name, Bharat. Those two worlds are in collision, and the whole social structure is convulsing with the shock.

Emmanuel, the founder of the children's homes and schools that we worked with said that the British dealt the first blow to Hinduism and the caste structure by introducing education to the country. As they began to teach math, science, and history, over 50% of the power of Hinduism was wiped away. People began to think for themselves and, intellectually they left Hinduism behind. It's hold is now primarily cultural among the intellectual elite yet still religious among the masses. Primarily, Hinduism has it's strength among the women who protect the cultural and religious heritage of the people, but are treated like "dust under the feet" of the men. That is why Emmanuel and his daughter Helena are working to take Hindu orphan children, many of them girls, and educate them, teach them a trade, and give them the gospel. They are working with approximately 2,500 children in 6 different sites throughout the subcontinent and are changing India one life at a time.

Emmanuel believes that the rest of the Hindu structure involving caste and religion is being swept away by globalization. Communication with the West and a desire to enter the global community is causing India to involuntarily leave it's past behind. Traditionalists are madly scrambling to hold onto their culture and religious power, but India is a country of the young, and the young are looking to the future. The question is, as they leave the past behind, what will fill the gap? Materialism? Consumerism? Buddhism? Or maybe, can we seed the future of India with Christianity? Emmanuel thinks so.

Dr. Thom Wolf, who I am now staying with in New Delhi, says that this is India's moment. This is the moment that India is transitioning, and the question is, what will she transition to? He, and many others, are trying to help shape the future of India redemptively by looking to the past through Indian leaders like Phule, who was the father of social revolution in India - the Abraham Lincoln of India, so to speak. Thom has written a book with Sunil Sardar called Phule in His Own Words. This is significant because Phule, almost 150 years ago, called for a change from the Brahminical Hindu system of inequality to the Western Liberal system of equality and inalienable rights that are bestowed by a Creator and Liberator. Thom believes that this is India's moment for such a transition, and he is working to effect that from the top down and the bottom-up.

So, I guess that we are working for similar things. Involving this, I was asked the other day why we decided to work in North India. Years ago, I heard that Northern India was the Heart of Darkness, so to speak, with the largest concentration of unreached people groups in the world. As we visited Hardiwar and Rishikesh on the Ganges the other day, the second and third most holy cities for the Hindus, (Varinasi is the first) I was struck by how much evil pulses out of this place. I was also struck by the large number of Westerners that were trudging the streets, following the path of the Beatles, looking for enlightenment. Then, in a village outside Hardiwar where the children's home has planted a church and opened a day care serving 100 children, I met a man who came to faith through the television ministry of Joyce Meyer. She is doing great work in India and many are being transformed through her testimony. I know that's a lot of topics for one paragraph, but it aptly speaks to what it is like here. Just when you think you get a grasp on one aspect, you see God at work in another way. If this is India's moment, I am not surprised to see the God of history seeding the present and shaping the future.

Today and tomorrow I will spend time in New Delhi studying and putting my thoughts together on the return trip in the Fall for the conferences. I also hope to process what I have seen and learned a bit from a personal perspective. I might be doing some more of that on the blog as I have time. But, I am convinced that India is changing and that the Author of History has his hand on it. Incredible pictures of the trip will be up next week when I get home and they will help you see in a clearer way some of the hope and horror of India, as she lunges for the future while still shackled to her peasant past. May we all be a part of unlocking her chains through prayer, sacrifice, and witness. 

We're still here. Our three man team has been in North India for almost a week now. We flew into Delhi and immediately travelled north to a northern state near the Himalayas.  We had a driver who drove us approximately 8 hours through the plains. Driving here is very dangerous, as cars, trucks, motorcycles, ox carts, and auto rickshaws are flying at you from every direction. It is very scary, but after awhile, you just become numb to it. We have connected with a children's home and school and are working with them as a base of operations. They are connecting us with places to do a series of public health conferences in the fall as a platform to talk about true transformation. We have had three encounters that have gone really well.

Our first day out, we went into the Himalayas. We met with a doctor who has started his own hospital and is doing development work among the hill people. He is working with fresh water projects and providing community health care in the villages. We travelled to a village and met with a village head and heard about the problems there in the area. We later travelled into a valley between some mountains where we met with a Nepali congregation that had been started by a young church planter. We worshipped with them and I spoke from John 17. The congregation is very new and has about 20 families. God is doing amazing things. Throughout the trip, the fog and clouds were rolling in amongst the mountains and the mountain roads were very dangerous, but God provided safety. It was an amazing day. We will have a conference among the mountain villages here.

After this, we went to a hospital run by believers in the plains. They are doing community development work as well, and are sending teams out into the villages to do public health training. It is a large operation and they are doing a great deal of good. We will also have a one day conference in this area as well.

Yesterday, we pulled together 8-10 leaders that represented community development ministries and organizations in the mountains and the plains in North India. They are all doing church planting work as well. As a matter of fact, they had collectively started about 150 churches and were doing training and equipping of church planters. They are combining the spiritual and the social aspects and are engaging in holistic ministry among the people. We will do a two day conference with them and their workers as well that from a holisitic development approach. The amazing thing is that these ministries had never come together in this way before, and, after our meeting yesterday, are now talking about forming a network of transformational missionaries. This is far beyond what we thought we would be doing, and we are frankly, in over our head. I love it.

All of our work has been with indigenous people. Phone and computer access has been rare, so this is a short update. I have tons of pictures and many stories to tell, but I have to be careful about details for security reasons. Let me just say, that God is doing AMAZING things and doors are opening for incredible work in the future. We are serving as catalysts to bring people together and to help maximize their work. Tomorrow, we travel to one of the holy cities on the Ganges, and then we will spend a couple of days back in Delhi before returning home. This trip has far exceeded all expectations, and I wish that I could begin to tell you even a tenth of what we have experienced. Please pray for our safety and continuing success with divine encounters. I'll write again as soon as possible.   

This morning we leave for India. Three of us are going on a delegation of sorts to establish contacts for a future public health conference and to explore microbanking initiatives. We hope to have lots of conversations with people about their own future and the future of India as well. We will learn a lot, but we also hope to help people find the Way. We'll be gone for almost two weeks, so blogging will be sporadic, if it happens at all. I do hope to find a few internet cafe's along the way, so I'll post updates as I can. Please pray for safety, health, and divine encounters along our journey.

I've done a lot of study over the years on the place of culture and worldview when it comes to issues of development. There is a large amount of scholarship that is beginning to emerge that is pointing to culture being the overriding factor behind the economic development of a nation. I believe that India's biggest problem regarding the poverty and mortality of the vast majority of it's people has to do with worldview and culture. I know that that is not a huge shock to most of my readership, but the secular world has only recently begun to think this way. We plan to help them along a bit.

Since I won't be posting much, I want to recommend a paper for your reading pleasure. It was written by Dr. Thom Wolf, president of Global Spectrum, and delivered at Lucknow University in India. In it, he explores the factors that make cultures progress prone or progress resistant. His conclusions are very interesting and hold dramatic implications for us globally, as well as here in America as we continue to grapple with a culture that is spinning wildly out of control. If you have time, read it and tell me what you think.

Progress Prone vs. Progress Resistant Cultures by Dr. Thom Wolf

Grace and Peace.

"For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ." - Acts 28:30-31

I ran across this verse at the end of Acts the other day and I've been thinking about it ever since. Paul, while under house arrest, preached the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. What does it mean to "preach the Kingdom of God?" We know what teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ is pretty much, but, the Kingdom of God? Not so much, I'm afraid. I don't what to separate Jesus from the Kingdom, but it seems that more is meant here than that they are the very same thing. Of course, everywhere Jesus goes, His Kingdom is manifest, but what does that really mean?

The Kingdom seemed to be a pretty big deal to Jesus. Matthew 4:23 says, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people."  He taught his followers to pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 5:10).  He sent the Twelve out and told them "As you go, preach this message: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give" (Matt. 10:7-8). So many of Jesus' parables were about the Kingdom, as well. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed . . . yeast . . . a treasure. Jesus preached it. Paul preached it. We are told to preach it ("And this gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole word as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come" - Matt. 24:14).

So, if it was that big of a deal, then what is it? How much teaching do we hear on the Kingdom of God? How many of us really know what it is? A simple definition would be that a Kingdom is wherever the King reigns and rules. When Jesus said "the Kingdom of God is within you" (Lk. 17:21), He was speaking of the place where His Spirit would reside and where He would reign and rule. When the gospel of the Kingdom is preached, it is meant to bring people and all creation under the reign and rule of the King, Jesus Christ. We are not to just preach, teach, and obey a gospel that allows us to be unchanged within and that just gets us into heaven. The gospel of the Kingdom is to be all encompassing. It is to touch every aspect of our lives and bring redemption to dead places within us, our families, communities, culture, and world. We are to literally pray that God's Kingdom would come and that His will would be done on earth, just like it is in Heaven! Do we really pray that way? Do we live that way? Do we preach that way?

I think that what Jesus and Paul meant by the gospel of the Kingdom is a whole lot bigger than what we hear in our churches. What do you think the gospel of the Kingdom is, and how can we see it in our lives and the world around us?

I just got Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. It is the story of Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Yunus and Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for their work in providing micro loans to the poorest of the poor and helping lift them out of poverty stricken conditions. Wikipedia had this basic explaination for what Yunus has been doing:

In 1976, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank (Grameen means "of rural area", "of village") to make loans to poor Bangladeshis. The Grameen Bank has issued more than US$ 5.1 billion to 5.3 million borrowers. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of "solidarity groups". These small informal groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment and support one another's efforts at economic self-advancement^[8]. As it has grown, the Grameen Bank has also developed other systems of alternate credit that serve the poor. In addition to microcredit, it offers education loans and housing loans as well as financing for fisheries and irrigation projects, venture capital, textiles, and other activities, along with other banking services such as savings.

The success of the Grameen model has inspired similar efforts throughout the developing world and even in industrialized nations, including the United States. The Grameen model of micro financing has been emulated in 23 countries. Many, but not all, microcredit projects also retain its emphasis on lending specifically to women. More than 96% of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families^[9].

While I am trying to find myself this weekend, I plan on reading a good portion of this book. From what I can tell, this man has done amazing work and he has made a major impact in reducing poverty by helping people help themselves. I am inspired. In a little over a week, I will be heading up an expedition to Northern India to develop relationships that will enable us to return and put on a public health conference with professionals from Alabama, as well as participate in microbanking possibilities with the head of an investment company that has set up their own non-profit to aid the poor of the world according the principles found in Isaiah 58. We are also exploring the set up of a non-profit called Community Development Initiatives (CDI) that will help us with this work, as well as many other things, both locally and globally. Our desire is to facilitate spiritual, social, and economic transformation from a Christian worldview by connecting Christian professionals and their resources with local/global need.

It seems to me that Yunus is doing part of the mission of the Church. We are to make disciples of nations and bring God's Kingdom on earth. We are to care for the poor, help people reflect the image of God, and truly help people connect relationally to God, one another, and their world. People like Yunus are revealing part of God's plan, if we would just pay attention. What if we began to appropriate the billions of dollars that American Christians give and spend on themselves to such initiatives? What if our incredible wealth began to flow in such a way as to help the poorest of the poor help themselves? Yunus says, "Poor people are not asking for charity; charity is not a solution for poverty."  He is helping lift them out of poverty by giving them the means to develop their own businesses and provision and help themselves. What if the Church did the same? There are many examples of the Church doing just that, but not enough. I want to make more. And, if it is done from a gospel perspective, just like we have been doing on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina, what could the limits be?

For several years, a group of us went to a local housing project every Sunday afternoon. We got know the people, did Bible studies and had prayer time. I became the unofficial chaplain to the Crips gang there and a personal confidante to the head of the gang over that area. God actually used me to lead him to the Lord. We met a guy one Sunday who had been in jail continuously from the age of 18 to 32. He had just gotten out after becoming a Christian in jail. We met with him every week, prayed with him, and helped him stay off drugs and out of jail. He's still out today, 3 years later, and is walking with the Lord. We saw many saved and many lives transformed.

Still, I was frustrated that we did not see more transformation. We gained trust. We spent hours in people's homes praying for them and getting to know them. The community embraced us. Yet, there were so many who were excited to see us and would respond when we were there, but when we left, they would immediately revert back to old ways. I would wonder why and spent a good deal of time praying about this. For every success story, there were 20 more who never made the jump. They would receive the Word, but it would get choked out almost immediately. One day in prayer, it occured to me that we were doing insufficient discipleship and evangelism. We were offering a purely spiritual message. For some, this was enough. For others who were completely dependent upon the government or menial jobs, it was just words. The gospel transforms not just the spiritual realm of life, but also the social and economic realms as well. If someone was on government assistance or had dropped out of high school and could only hope to flip burgers at Burger King, then they had most likely developed a dependency mindset. They weren't taking ownership over any area of their lives. Why would I think that they would take ownership over their spiritual growth?

I began to see that true evangelism and discipleship had to touch on every area of life. We didn't need to only be having Bible studies on sin and redemption, but we also needed to show people how to balance their checkbook and develop skills. We needed to help mothers raise their children and help fathers be responsible. We needed to help create better workers and students who could then influence their domains for the gospel. Salvation was not to just be an escape from hell, but it was also to be an introduction to a full new life in every facet. I couldn't believe what I had been missing.

Well, fast forward a couple of years. So much has happened, including the birth of another child (who later developed cancer and is doing great, by the way), the resignation of our previous pastor, a year of interim, and my promotion to pastor, and a thousand other issues. We are finally about to step back into things that we started learning about a couple of years ago. Hopefully, CDI will be the vehicle for that into our community as it provides a neutral interface with government, business, and other non-profits and churches. India will be a part of that as we seek to do this globally as well as locally. As we go, I hope to be learning from people like Yunus, who have been doing this type of thing from another motivation for quite some time. Maybe God is allowing non-Christians to be sign posts for us to remind us what our lives are supposed to be about. Maybe we should pay closer attention to what is happening around us.

Next Week: A review of a paper by Dr. Thom Wolf given at Lucknow University in India called "Progress Prone vs. Progress Resistant Cultures."  His thesis is shocking, to say the least. Tune back in next week - hopefully, I will know my identity by then. :)    

Note: For obvious reasons, the language used in this post is neutral.

In 2004, I went to India. We flew into Delhi and then travelled north to Dehradun, the capital of Utteranchal state. We had an amazing time working with a children's home and travelling throughout the country. We met with many people who were doing incredible work there and we made a lot of contacts. Two weeks from today, I, along with two others will be returning to India. We will return to the same children's home (they actually have 6 throughout India) and will travel to several different hospitals. We are going to be doing advance work to set up a public health conference in the fall. We are also going to be looking into possibilities for microbanking initiatives that would help entrepeneurs with small business startups. This is all very informal on this trip and we are really just going to meet people, see what opportunities are available, and try to go from there. I expect for concrete things to come out of this trip, however, and for multiple platforms for future positive work to be developed. Your prayers for the development of positive relationships through our contacts, as well as for safety, would be much appreciated. There will be three of us travelling. The other two men going with me work in the fields of public health and finance. I'm just going to help set stuff up.

Here are some pictures from our last trip. The first two are from a slum in Delhi that we visited to tell The Story to. Can you see why we feel that public health is a major need? The next picture is from one of the Children's homes where we were telling The Story. Hindu kids were climbing on the roofs of the houses across the lane to see and hear us tell The Good News through interpreters. It was amazing. The last picture comes from a trip to Rishikesh, the third most holy city on Hindus on the Ganges River. This man was bathing for the purification for sins. There were quite a few people there that day in what was easily the most horrid place I have ever visited.

I've started a preaching series on the life and ministry of Jesus in the Gospels. On Sunday, I preached through The Sermon on the Mount. Yep, three chapters of Matthew in around 40 minutes. I wanted to look at this most incredible message from a big picture view, instead of breaking it apart into a million moralistic pieces. We often get hung up on certain aspects of this message and we make a new law out of it. Generally, we end up using this new law against others, instead of letting Jesus' powerful words do their work in our own hearts.

I remember when I first really came to the Lord in college and I read this message over and over again. At first, I set out to do it, thinking that I could just align myself with Jesus' words on Kingdom living. Poor in spirit? No problem! Meek? Merciful? Peacemaker? Sure, I can do that. No anger, lust, judgment, or revenge? Uh oh. Pray for my enemies? Give to those who abuse me? Go the extra mile? Turn the other cheek? Wait a minute! Do good for God alone instead of for credit before man? Look to heaven instead of worldly gain or fame? Don't worry about anything? Now, you've gone from preaching to meddling! I found that the harder I tried, the more I came up short. At one point, I felt like hurling the Bible across the room. "I can't do this, God!" Sometime later it dawned on me: That's exactly the point.

Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount to show the religious people and the self righteous ones that true Godly righteousness was a matter of the heart, not of outward performance. He said that their righteousness must surpass that of the pharisees. He said that our inner motives and thoughts mattered as much as our actions. He said that it wasn't enough to not do evil, but we had to do good, not just to our friends but to our enemies. The Sermon on the Mount is the greatest example of Jesus' call for a renovation of the inner life. In short, he described what Kingdom living looks like. We can see how much we've actually let Jesus take control of our lives by how closely we resemble what Jesus called us to in that message. You see, He doesn't call us to do this on our own. The life He describes is His life and only Jesus can live this message through us. "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20.

What if we all lived out this message? What if we made it our life's desire to have Jesus live through us in this way? How different we would all be! Think about how much arguing, strife, and dissension would go away! Think about how Christ would be glorified in us. We wouldn't have much trouble being salt and light, would we? The Sermon on the Mount is a description of the life that we cannot live on our own. It shows us why we need a Savior and why we must live by the Spirit with a new heart and mind. It describes the life that only Christ can live through us. May we read these words and fall on our face in humility and dependence upon the Lord.

How would our lives change if we took these words seriously? How would our families, churches, workplaces, and cities change? Our culture? Perhaps, living out and helping others live out these words is what Jesus meant when He told us to make disciples of NATIONS. But, it starts with us, doesn't it? If we can't take it seriously, then how can we expect others to?  

I ran across an interesting quote today from a respected Christian leader. Let me know what you think:

I fear for the future of authentic faith in our country. We live in a time when the common man in our country is thoroughly influenced by the current climate in which the cultural and educational elite propagates an anti-Christian message. We should take a look at what has happened in France and learn a lesson from it. In that country, Christianity has been successfully attacked and marginalized by these same groups because those who professed belief were unable to defend the faith from attack, even though its attackers’ arguments were deeply flawed. We should be alarmed that instruction in authentic faith has been neglected, if not altogether eliminated, in our schools and universities.

Is it any wonder then that the spiritual condition of our country is of little concern to those who don’t even educate their own children about true Christianity? Their conduct reflects their absence of concern, not only for the state of Christianity in their own country, but also for the need to communicate the message of Christ to those in other parts of the world who have not heard this truth.

Some might say that one’s faith is a private matter and should not be spoken of so publicly. They might assert this in public, but what do they really think in their hearts? The fact is, those who say such things usually don’t even have a concern for faith in the privacy of their interior lives. If you could see their hearts, you would find no trace of authentic faith. God has no place among the sources of hopes, fears, joys or sorrows in their lives. They might be thankful for their health, success, wealth and possessions, but they give no thought to the possibility that these are all signs of God’s provision. If they do give credit to God, it is usually done in some perfunctory way that reveals that their words have no sincerity.

When their conversations get really serious, you will see how little of their Christianity has anything to do with the faith taught by Jesus. Everything becomes subjective. Their conduct is not measured against the standard set by the gospel. They have developed their own philosophies, which they attempt to pawn off as Christianity.

Who do you think said this? James Dobson? Jerry Falwell? Pat Roberston? John MacArthur? Josh McDowell? Any of the SBC culture warriors like Richard Land and other leaders?

Like everyone else, my wife and I always talk about how we don't have any money. This is primarily because we compare ourselves to others. In reality, we are very well off. We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in a decent neighborhood and TWO minivans. Our 4 children are well fed and clothed, and take part in ice skating lessons, basketball, and private preschool. They got everything they wanted for Christmas. We take vacations out of state and travel regularly, sometimes internationally. We are wired technologically through cell phones and the internet. When our son got cancer last year, our health insurance picked up the tab for him to get some of the best healthcare in the world, and his life is being saved from a fatal disease. We don't just have everything we need, we just about have everything we want. Of course, advertising and envy of our neighbors causes us to be disatisfied and want more, but we are really fine.

Paul Littleton got me thinking about how we are treating the poor around the world. Did you know that almost all Americans are in the richest 5-10% of the world's population? To see exactly how wealthy you are, CHECK THIS OUT. We pay inordinate amounts of money on entertainment (vacations, movies, football coaches :)), and in reality, few of us are in real need. Before I travelled to India a couple of years ago, I thought that there was real poverty in America. Of course, there are children here who go to bed hungry and do not have proper care, but that is usually related more to the lifestyle choices of their parents or some type of unexpected hardship. The grinding, unrelenting poverty of the Third World is foreign to most of us.

We have it so good, and we are so blessed. Yet, we take it all for granted. We talk without ceasing of how we don't have money. We complain about finances. We want more and we want it now. When will this stop and when will we address it for what it is? Idolatry. Jesus said we can't serve two masters. I am as guilty as anyone. The consumerist culture we live in causes us to think that we will not be happy unless we have the next best thing. Christian Spirituality requires us to look at our possessions and our lust for wealth in a different light. We are to be givers, more than receivers. We are to help our brother in need. We are to care for the poor, the sick, and the forgotten. What are our attitudes toward the phenomenal wealth that we have accumulated? How often do you compare yourself to others instead of thank God for what you have?

I'll have some ideas later on some concrete things you can do to make a difference, but for now, have you ever thought that God blessed you with incredible wealth, not for yourself, but so you could be a blessing to others?

I encourage you to check out Strider's post on the causes of poverty. He says that they are primarily relational, and quotes Walking With the Poor by Bryant Myers (excellent book). He points to Jesus as being the primary answer to the global poverty problems of the world. Of course, food, water, and medicine are necessary, but you have to go beyond the immediate and get to the root causes of why people are in the situation they are in. The real issues deal with culture, worldview, and spiritual condition. As I've ministered with the urban poor over the years, rarely have I found someone who truly did not have resources. Often, people have broken relationships and have made horrible decisions (especially in America). In other lands, there are definitely cases of oppression and real lack of resources, but even those situations have root causes that must be dealt with.

In short, we should always give a cup of cold water, shelter, clothes, and food to eat. But, we should not stop there. We should also offer the hope and deliverance that comes from being renewed in Christ. Check out Strider's post. It is it very insightful.

Some other resources along these lines, from a secular perspective are Culture Matters (Harrison and Huntingdon, ed.), Underdevelopment is a State of Mind by Lawrence Harrison, and The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes.  They work off of Max Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism where he says that capitalism emerged in the West because of the underlying cultural and spiritual ethic of Protestantism. Fascinating thoughts. Jesus really does make a difference for the whole person.

I'll write more on this later . . .

Several years ago, I had the privilege of developing a relationship with Jay Lorenzen. He is the Associate National Director, Training and Development for Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry.  He's also probably one of the sharpest missional minds in the Western Evangelical world. That is not hyperbole. He is a voracious reader with amazing ability to synthesize information into discernable applications and he is also an excellent teacher. I attended his Gettysburg Leadership Conference a few years ago where he takes a small group through the three days of the battle in real time, and with the Bible, applies leadership lessons for ministry. It's probably the best conference I've ever been to.

Jay also blogs at Onmovements.com, where he writes about what it takes to build a missional disciplemaking movement. Here is an excerpt (Update: This is actually a quote on Jay's blog that is taken from Eric Swanson, a friend of Jay's):

Lately I’ve been finding myself saying to others, “As difficult as it is to surf, it is far easier to catch a wave than to cause a wave.” My point is that we need to be aware of the big things God is doing in the world and get in on them.

God has a plan. Recently I was talking with Reggie McNeal (The Present Future). Reggie made this metaphoric observation.

“I doubt that God went to bed last night thinking about how many people you had in your church. Most likely he went to bed last night thinking about the two billion people that live on less than a dollar a day or the 30,000 people who died because they didn’t have clean water or about human traficking or the genocide in Africa.”

When God wants to act, if the church is not paying attention, he will raise up whom he will…who have his full attention to bring forth his agenda in the world. Sometimes it is a Cyrus or an Artexerses or Nebuchadnezzar. Sometimes it is a Bono, a Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet . . .

In the November 13, 2006 Newsweek, Michael Gerson writes “I’ve asked young evangelicals on campuses from Wheaton to Harvard, who they view as their model of Christian activism. Their answer is nearly unanimous: Bono.” (p. 40) A couple weeks ago I was with a bunch of Campus Crusade leaders who were working on establishing spiritual movements on every campus in the northeast region of the country (1/5 of all US college students).

Perhaps the wave that God is causing is what we should pay attention to. Instead of thinking how we can get Crusade staff to bring their students to a certain beach project we should be thinking how to mobilize all the student groups on one campus to go to Africa and sink 20 water wells. It’s not so much about wringing our hands, consuming ourselves about growing our campus groups from 60 to 80 (remember Reggie’s words) but how can catalyze the students on campus to change the world.

Last spring Crusade mobilized 15,000 students (believers and non-believers) to work on the gulf coast. These shoulder to shoulder relationships spawned a hundred thousand unlikely conversations about Jesus. This was our “proof of concept.” If Bono is universally admired by believers and unbelievers alike, why not show up on campus sporting (RED) gear, identifying like-minded people and planting (RED) groups or ONE groups or Bono groups or U2 groups on campus and mobilize students for a global agenda sponsored by local businesses?

Leaders can keep the spiritual agenda on the front burner and invite students to meet God through service to others (Matthew 25–”When you did it to the least you were doing it to me.”) It is then the job of believers to help their friends interpret what they are experiencing as they give themselves to people on the margin. There is a groundswell of students that want their lives to count for something. We can be a catalyst (like we did around Katrina) and give leadership to fulfill that desire for purpose. It is always better to be in the business of satisfying demand rather than trying to create demand. Students don’t want to be on the sidelines. They want a piece of the action.

Now, can you imagine movements everywhere on every campus where students are making a global, spiritual and material difference? Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?

Okay. Chew on that for a few minutes. Jay always challenges me to think differently about things, and after I listen to him for a few minutes expound on really complex concepts, what he is saying seems obvious to me and I wonder why I never thought of it myself. That is the mark of a great teacher. You should really begin reading him. Outstanding stuff.

Also, Alan Hirsch is fairly new to the blogosphere. Many have read his revolutionary book, The Shaping of Things to Come with Michael Frost. He now has a blog called, The Forgotten Ways. He has a book out by the same title. He is really insightful and asks some wonderful questions.

One recent post (A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With a Single Question) on comparisons between the growth of the early church and the underground church in China has really gotten me thinking.  He asks how both churches grew so rapidly in such miserable conditions. I personally think that persecution and God's sovereign work were the primary factors, obviously. Many groups have experience persecution and did not grow. Many groups have experienced a visitation of God that petered out over time. But, when you combine God's presence, with persecution, and a people who have nothing but Him, spiritual explosions tend to take place. I don't think we are going to see the awakening that we long for in America until we fall on our face, cry out to the Lord, and throw off all the other things we are so dependent upon. We are so prideful and arrogant, we shut off the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and ministries. Prayer is obviously a key, but we spend far more time focusing on other things.

Track with Alan as he helps us understand how God is working around the world and how He can work in our lives as well.

The last thinker/leader I encourage you to check out today is Bob Roberts, founder of Glocalnet (global and local transformation). I met Bob at the Intersection Conference last year in Seattle, WA, put on by Global Spectrum.  He is the founding pastor of a truly Glocal church that has helped plant churches all over the world and is now involved in the discipling of nations. He has been connected with Thom Wolf/Carol Davis for years, so his thoughts are very familiar to me. Bob is interested in helping believers interact with what God is doing around the world through globalization. He teaches that believers should be leading innovators in the connection of the world and that the gospel is the transformative force to bring the change that people really want. More than a thinker, Roberts is a doer. Keep up with his travels and thoughts, and you'll be the better for it.

When I was younger, Christmas was ABSOLUTELY my favorite time of year. I loved the presents, family getting together, the Christmas TV specials (I became a big Burl Ives fan), the Christmas carols, decorations, the presents . . . sorry, I already mentioned that. As I got older and started having a family, Christmas became much more hectic, yet still satisfying. Instead of mostly receiving, I was in the position of giving. It was great to see my kids get excited and introduce them to all the Christmas traditions of my past and to make new ones of my own.  My wife and I were married on December 17, so our honeymoon was the week before Christmas and that makes this time of year doubly special.

However, somewhere along the way, I lost my Christmas spirit. I started to get jaded and frustrated. The bombardment of materialism and gift buying and giving started to get to me. My parents divorced almost 4 years ago, so I joined my wife in having a split family. That was painful. When we got together with family for gift exchanges and all the little family Christmases that you have, everyone just gave presents and didn't say much about it. It all began to seem odd, what with all the parties, gifts, shopping, food, and expectation of what? It all began to ring hollow to me.

I got a call this week from a reporter at the Montgomery Advertiser, our local newspaper. After already being misquoted in the Dallas Morning News, I was a little hesitant to be interviewed. But, this was for an entirely different reason. Someone in our congregation thought that what is going to happen Sunday night is newsworthy, and I guess it is. We have invited Family Life Bible Fellowship, a predominately black church, to join us for our annual Christmas party, the Christmas Extravaganza. The reporter thought that this was interesting, because it is rare to see black and white churches working together this way. He asked me if I thought that was significant.

Well, I guess it is. But, it shouldn't be. And, Pastor Slater and I are not doing this because we are tying to prove some type of racial unity point. We're doing it because we're friends. We've come together before and it just seemed like it would be fun. Unity is much easier when you are actually in relationship with someone, instead of it being contrived.

When I think about the difficulties that we addressed at the Roundtable discussion in Arlington on Tuesday, and I think about this event coming on Sunday, I understand more and more that I am not unified with others just because we have Baptist on our name. As a matter of fact, if there is no relationship, it doesn't matter what your name is - we're probably not going to be real effective working together. Unity first comes from being a like minded believer in Christ. Secondly, it comes from love. Thirdly, it comes from being in relationship. You have to be friends to trust one another and work together. This has been one of the benefits of the blogs: it has been a forum for building relationships and friendships with other pastors that I never would have met otherwise.

Perhaps our racial problems in the U.S. have more to do with a lack of friendship and understanding, than anything else.

Perhaps our family problems have more to do with a lack of time spent together in mutually edifying relationships and friendships, than anything else. The same can be said for many of the problems in our churches.

Perhaps the problems in the SBC have far more to do with the fact that we don't have strong relationships, than it does with a lack of giving to the Cooperative Program.

Christ is the basis for our unity. Nothing else. If you are in Christ, you are my brother. You are my friend. And, because He lives in me, sacrificial love is there for even my enemies. During the Christmas season, lets try and share that love with family, neighbors, co-workers, friends, and even enemies. Maybe God will surprise all of us!

Last Wednesday night in Bible study, we talked about Micah 6:8: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.  My hope was to talk about justice, mercy, and humility-faithfulness and use all of those issues as take-off points to pray for ourselves, our community, and our world. We got the acts of mercy (love), and faithfulness alright, but we stumbled over justice. When I asked for examples of injustice, we struggled to come up with very many. Then, there was a short discussion over people calling things unjust when they had every opportunity to change their own situation. I found it all very enlightening and have been thinking about it ever since.

Why do we stumble so much with the Biblical mandate to bring justice to our world? I think that, primarily, if we are predominately white, middle class, evangelical Christians, our perspective is that the world is just. We've all had problems and disadvantages, but we worked hard and overcame them. Can't everyone just do that? Why do people complain? Why do people stay poor? Do they just want a hand out? Why can't they do what we did? That perspective, while valuable in regard to the need for a work ethic, falls short because we do not see the whole picture of people's lives. We also don't see what happens behind the scenes. We are also very American. While, the American perspective is that everyone has opportunity and that life must be fair, that is surely not the case around the world (the caste system in India being a prime example), nor is it entirely the case here. In every community there are power issues where individuals or groups are marginilized or taken advantage of and they have no ability to stand up for themselves. This is where the Church should come in, especially as it relates to children, the infirmed, and the poor. But, do we think about such things?

Last weekend, we had a great conference with Dr. Thom Wolf on how God is raising up ordinary people to change the world through their jobs, vocations, time, etc. We pulled together a couple of churches, heard from speakers in many different domains of life, had a roundtable discussion with experts on globalization, the war on terror, and the impact of global Christianity, had many meetings with leaders all around the Montgomery-Troy area on how to move resources and create strategic partnerships with India for the advance of the gospel and the economic development of that nation, and did lots of other stuff! It was an amazing time.

I had written a massive post about the conference with pictures, links, and summaries of each session. It was quite impressive, actually. Then, Typepad ate it in the publishing process and I haven't been motivated to reproduce it. Ugh. So, I was thinking: If you were at the conference, why don't you share you insights? What stuck out in your mind the most? What was a new concept? How will you see things differently? Let's collaborate, instead of me just writing it all. One, I don't want to. Two, I want to hear from you. If you weren't at the conference, I still invite you to interact with the ideas shared by others (Andrew, I'm especially calling you out on this one!). I hope to hear from you! I might add some pictures to this post later in the week as well.

Update: Here are the Audio Downloads of the Conference.

Yesterday was a strong day, once again. Thom and I met with an investment company that is looking into creating a non-profit foundation to help fund ministries that are engaging in Isaiah 58 type work among the poor, widowed, orphaned, and oppressed. Thom recommended that they broaden their tent to take their influence overseas to India and China. It was a fruitful meeting and it is awesome to see believers using their positions of influence to impact the nations.

The conference started with worship lead by the worship team from Family Life Bible Fellowship. They absolutely rocked the house! They are a predominately African American congregation, and their worship of the Lord was full of so much joy and passion. It was an incredible blessing.  We had a really good crowd with people from several other churches. We heard from speakers from the Air Force, the arts, media, and business communities. Thom spoke about how the 21st century is the sister century to the 1st century and how God is moving from impacting the world with the ordained to raising up and using the ordinary. He then shared from the story of the loaves and fishes and how God uses whatever is in our hand to bring Him glory.

It was an incredible time of worship, learning, and fellowship. I love it when people from multiple churches across denominations and races can come together to grow and worship Christ. We are all in this together and we seek to give Him praise. It seemed that people really began to grasp the concept of our work being worship and witness. The kids had a really good experience as well, as we had a really large crowd of children. All in all, God really seemed to move.

We start again this morning at 8:30am and go to noon, and then, we have our roundtable discussion in the evening. I'm believing God for great things!

To quote a David Crowder song that I love, "What a glorious day." Thom and I met around noon yesterday, and we went to visit two friends of mine (and church members), John and Greg. John is the chief legal counsel for our state's Department of Public Health, and Greg is assistant counsel. We have talked about the possibility of forming a team of professionals from their department who are believers to partner with a city or state in India and do a public health conference with counterparts from over there, possibly among the lower castes. It would be a very different type of trip and the possibilities for activating the gifts and talents of professionals here and partnering them with need over there, while at the same time engaging the Hindu worldview from a Christian perspective, would be astounding. As we met with Thom, he detailed a great number of possibilities and suggested the state we could partner with in the north as well as two universities in India that could sponsor such an endeavor. We will put together a proposal and are looking at a trip next year. This could be really exciting!

Andrew Hicks and I picked up Thom Wolf from the airport tonight in Birmingham and were treated to an incredible blessing. He had just flown over 24 hours from New Delhi, India and was pretty tired. But, we got him talking, and before long, he was teaching us from the Word. As we drove through the cool Alabama night south along I-65, we asked questions about how The Church on Brady was so successful at raising up and sending people out to the ends of the earth (at one point in the late 80's, early 90's, The Church on Brady in East L.A., now Mosaic led by Erwin McManus, was sending more missionaries to the IMB than any over SBC church - around 500 people and over 50 missionaries on the field, I believe).  Thom began to tell us that they followed God's prescription to raise up people who followed Micah 6:8, He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.  This parallels what Jesus summed up as being important in Matthew 23:23, But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.

God wants us to bring justice to those who are are oppressed. This is the attitude that we should take toward the lost and those who, all their life, have known that things are wrong in the world, but they have no idea how to make them right. We are to bring justice by bringing the Kingdom of God. We are to show mercy to those in need by doing good deeds for the physically and spiritually poor. We are to love people just because God loves them, not wanting to get anything out of it ourselves. And, we are to live lives of faithfulness before the Lord. Faithfulness is the outflowing of our faith. We are faithful to God because our faith is IN God. Thom said that they looked for people who were living out this ethos and they sent those people out to the far reaches of the world.

Beyond what he said, was how he said it. He spoke with compassion about the man in prison who committed murder because of what the victim had done to his little sister. The murderer knew that what he did was wrong, but he had to take care of the man who abused his little sister. The man was crying for justice and did not know what to do. He was led to Christ and found that God knew what to do. He found forgiveness in the arms of His Savior.

Thom travels all over the world, but we have him with us this week. I praise God. I have always learned so much from him, and God has always used him to ignite my soul with a passion for His Word and the lost. When we prayed before we left him to sleep, I thanked God that He was going to download something into us that He had prepared for us this week since before the beginning of time. It's awesome to think about our daily lives that way. I learned to think that way from Thom Wolf.

For several years, I have been exploring the concept of how believers in the marketplace are uniquely positioned to be salt and light exaclty where they are so that they may bring God glory and spread His salvation to the ends of the earth. As we move to a post-Christian era in the West, we find that the influence of the church, and especially those in the full time ministry, is declining. God is raising up a new force to carry His gospel into the 21st Century. Each of us are called, anointed, and equipped by God to worship and witness through our work. Martin Luther, during the Refromation, helped us understandt the ideas of the priesthood of the believers, calling, and vocation. We are all called to give glory to God through everything we do and to be a witness to His saving grace.  We do this through our work, gifts, talents, and abilities.  Whether you are in the fields of healthcare, media, education, government, sports, business, the military, science & technology, the arts, the home, or the church, we are called to disciple the nations. Nations are the ethnos, or people groups. 

A few things I'm thinking about today as we start off another week . . .

Ernesto seems to be moving east toward Florida. I don't wish a hurricane on anyone, and my sister lives in Orlando, but I am very glad it is not projected to hit Louisiana-Mississippi. They truly can't take it. The tens of thousands of people living in FEMA trailers would again be homeless. I just pray that this hurricane season remains relatively quiet.  This week is the one year anniversary of Katrina and the memories are strong. I'm going to write a bit about my memories from last year. Even though I didn't go through it, we were down there four days later and my family went through it. It was a horrendous time and I want to get some thoughts down.

We had a great day at church yesterday. I preached on Philippians 3:17-4:1. Powerful passage. We talked about how Paul's example and pattern were the "way of life in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 4:16-17), and how that is so different from just moral behavior alone. Rather, it is finding your righteousness in Christ by faith and allowing Him to live through you and transform you. That leads to moral behavior, but Christ is always our starting and finish point. He is our guide and our goal. The message notes and audio will be up on Gatewaylife.net later this week.

Murders Soar in New Orleans Suburb

While Christians continue to try and find more and more comfortable places to live and better churches to attend, and while we continue to argue over stupid things, real life (of the hard and ugly variety) continues to occur.  The parish next to New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, has seen a rise in homicides do to increasing drug trade after many people moved out of New Orleans to relocate there after Katrina.  That's not unexpected, but here is the truly gruesome part:

In the latest slayings, a 24-year-old man was shot 11 times Monday night. On Tuesday night, a man was called out of his house by a teenager on a bicycle who demanded money for crack he had sold the man, the sheriff said.

"The guy didn't have the money, so he shot him in the top of the head," Lee said. "I think over a $40 debt. How do you explain that? How does a 15-year-old find it necessary to carry a gun?"

What answers do we have for those folks? What kind of confusion is a 15 year old going through to shoot a guy over a $40 debt? I know there are ministries that are addressing these types of things, but are we? When we think about rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, do we think about these folks? Do we think about them in our own city? Does the Gospel that we talked about in the previous post have power to change the lives of folks like this? We would all say yes, but do we go to them? We should not complain about things like this. We should rush straight into these types of problems with the only thing that can make a difference in human hearts: the good news of Jesus Christ. What do you think?

Michael Spencer at internetmonk.com totally blew me away with The Tactics of Failure: Why the Culture War Makes Sense to Spiritually Empty Evangelicals.   This was one of the most interesting posts I have read in some time. If you read anything this week in the blogosphere, take a moment and read this article.  Spend some time with it. THINK! PROCESS! PRAY!  Here are a few excerpts to get you going:

Both families and churches struggle in turning out disciples. American churches specialize in an consumerized, gnostic, experiential Gospel that is increasingly inseparable form the culture in which that church exists. American evangelicals have become as much like the dominant culture as it is possible to be and still exist at all. In fact, evangelicals continue to exist, in large measure, because they have mainstreamed the culture into their religion so that one’s Christianity hardly appears on the radar screen of life as any in any way different from the lives of other people. We are now about values, more than about Christ and the Gospel.

Evangelicals should come to terms with this: they are in every way virtually identical to suburban, white, upper middle class American culture. They are not as bad as the worst of that culture, but they are increasingly like the mainstream of that culture and are blown about by every wind of that consumerized and materially addicted culture. In fact, go to many evangelical churches and the culture is so present, so affirmed, preached and taught that one would assume that there is nothing whatsoever counter cultural about the affirmation that Jesus is Lord.

AND,

Spiritual formation is no longer interesting to most evangelical churches. Pentecostals want experience and megachurches want activity and support. The point at the end of it all is the expansion of the churches themselves and the ability of individual Christians to live in support of the church as the proper end of the earthly Christian life. The missional goal of most evangelical churches in America is the further growth of the church.

Eugene Peterson has written for years on the loss of the pastor as one who directs the spiritual formation of Christians through the Word, prayer, community and the sacraments. He has lamented the ascendancy of a “pastoral” model that is, in reality, a church growth technician, not a spiritual leader. Peterson has been a true prophet, and we can only hope that younger evangelicals are going to reread and finally hear his warnings now that they have all come true. (One truly trembles at the prospect of many younger pastors actually having to explain scripture, conduct a funeral or counsel someone on an issue of spiritual importance. Rabbi Feinberg, check your messages.)

My Conclusion

I am suggesting, therefore, that the increasing interest in the culture war among evangelicals is not an example of a reinvigorated evangelicalism remaking its culture. Instead, I believe the intense focus by evangelicals on political and cultural issues is evidence of a spiritually empty and unformed evangelicalism being led by short-sighted leaders toward a mistaken version of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The Culture War makes sense to Christians who have little or no idea how to be Christians in this culture except to oppose liberals and fight for a conservative political and social agenda- an agenda often less than completely examined in the light of scripture, reason, tradition and experience.

So, what do you think? Is he right? While I despise the culture war, I am still adamantely pro-life and support pro-Christian values in the public sphere. However, the political and "power" approach that we are taking doesn't seem to be working very well (see Ralph Reed) and I can't really find it in the Bible anywhere.  So, again, what do you think? Where is God at work in all of this? How can we stand for what is right and still keep our integrity as GOSPEL people? More on this later . . .

BTW, PLEASE read the Eugene Peterson article referenced above by Spencer, called Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons. Shattering. I think I'm going to be posting excepts from this soon with some commentary, but read ahead.

Montgomery, AL   Clear, 99°

Tuesday101° / 74°           Wednesday101° / 74°     Thursday 101° / 74°

"I think I want to stay out of the hot."  That's what my 7 year old daughter, Ashtyn, said when I offered to take her and her brothers to a baseball game last week.  I concur. It is blazing hot. Africa hot. The kind of hot that just zaps your energy and makes you want to stay inside all the time.  Thank God for air condition.   The whole country is sweltering in a massive heat wave.  It should break 100 again today in Alabama.  But, my point here is not to complain.

Could it be that we (humans) are causing this? Could the ideas behind greenhouse gases and global warming be right?  I read an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News about the resolution on the environment that Southern Baptists adopted at the convention in Greensboro, NC last month.   Here's a quote:

The National Academy of Sciences, a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government, said last month that data show the Earth is the hottest it has been in 2,000 years and that human activities are responsible.

Yet, the same article has this to say: