Setting yourself up for Bible reading success in 2013

In my January 2012 church newsletter column I encouraged folks to make a New Year's resolution to read through the Bible in the year. After all, 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us, among other things, that all scripture is God-breathed and equips us for every good work. I can't think of a book more worthy of habitual reading than one that is God-breathed and equips us for every good work.

Last year I suggested several methods of reading through the Bible in a year, but one in particular appealed to me then. Zondervan, a publisher of the New International Version (NIV), has made available a schedule for reading through the entire Bible in 90 days. The page numbers reference a special 90-day version of the NIV, but you can ignore those and go by the chapter numbers.

If people have trouble reading the Bible in a year, what makes me think there would be a higher success rate in attempting to read the Bible in 90 days? I wonder if many may find it easier to stick to a discipline for three months rather than 12 months. Furthermore, what if you try the 90-day plan, but you miss some days and it winds up taking you six months or 12 months to finish instead of 90 days? So what? You will still read through the whole Bible within the calendar year, which is better than most Bible readers in our culture.

This year, I'm going to suggest a modification to this 90-day schedule. If you look at the link above, you will see that you don't get to the New Testament until day 68 of 90. Start there, picking up with Matthew, not the the end of the Old Testament. If you can hang with the schedule for 22 days, beginning at day 68, then you will at least read through the entire New Testament. Once again, if you miss a few days and the process takes longer than 22 days, don't quit. 

The New Testament is, of course, a lot shorter than the Old Testament. You can build on your success of completing the New Testament by turning your attention to the Old Testament. Perhaps in this way the discipline of reading through the Bible in a year will become less intimidating. 

We can do this.    

Let your voice be heard

I went to vote early twice, but didn't follow through either time. Last Tuesday afternoon I went to make a nursing home visit in Fuquay-Varina and decided to circle by the early voting location in Falcon Park. The parking lot was full and a long line of voters spilled out of the building and down the sidewalk. I figured the line on Election Day couldn't be any worse, so I went on to the nursing home without voting. 

On Saturday, Terri and I were running a few errands and we drove by the Falcon Park early voting spot and the parking lot was again full and cars were parked on the grass surrounding the parking lot and the line outside the building was even longer We both made the calculation that the wait couldn't possibly be any worse on Election Day and we continued with our errands without voting.

When I left the house this morning, the thermometer registered a temperature of 37 degrees outside. I arrived at my polling place at 7:15 a.m. The parking lot was full and cars lined both sides of the street near the parking lot such that the road was nearly impassable. The line of voters spilled out of the building and wound down the sidewalk. 

Last day. I got in line.

The time that elapsed from the moment I claimed my chilly spot at the back of the line until a ballot was placed in my hand was 31 minutes. Because the polling place was so full, voters were given the option of sitting at a table and filling out their ballot rather than waiting for a more confidential voting booth. I chose the table which was fully encircled with other voters soon after I sat down.

After I completed my ballot and stood in a short line to place it in a slot in a machine, I looked at my watch as I reached the outer door. The entire process took 37 minutes. Someone at church on Sunday told me that he and his wife waited one hour and fifteen minutes to vote on Saturday. Judging by the lines that I saw at the times that I stopped by an early voting location, I don't think I was any worse off in waiting until Election Day. I think it likely that I saved at least a few minutes.

Based on my limited exposure to polling places during early voting and on Election Day, it's a good thing that early voting is an option here. If the crowds that I saw at an early voting location are any indication, it would be tough to get all of those people through the process on Election Day alone. Furthermore one would think that the lines on Election Day would be super long rather than just long if it weren't for the fact that a lot of folks have already voted when Election Day arrives.

I am very encouraged by the long voter lines in my repeated experience at polling places in this election season. I don't know how things are elsewhere, but in these parts people appear to be dedicated to exercising their civic duty by casting a vote. I have no doubt that political pundits would say that a heavy turnout is more advantageous to one political party than another. But, leaving political considerations aside, I think it is a good thing that the people are making their voices heard.

"... lift up your voice with strength ... lift it up, do not fear ...," said the prophet (Isa. 40:9, NRSV). If you haven't voted I hope that you will make your voice heard before the day is over. You may have to wait in line a little while. But it is important that our voices be heard.  

Some good news about abortion

There are fewer abortions per capita in the United States now than in the year before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) there were 825,564 legal abortions in theU.S. in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. The population of the U.S. was estimated at 305 million in 2008, so there were 0.002707 abortions per citizen in that year. In 1972 (the year before the Roe v. Wade decision), there 586,760 legal abortions and the population of this nation was estimated at 209,896,021 for a ratio of 0.002795.

The “official” abortion rate of abortions per woman aged 15-44 remains higher for 2008 at 16 per 1,000 versus 13 per 1,000 in 1972. However, there were far more illegal, unreported abortions in 1972 than in 2008. No one really one knows how many illegal abortions there were before Roe v. Wade, but estimates range from200,000 to 1.2 million per year. Even if the lower number is used, the abortion rate for 1972 would be considerably higher than 2008 when illegal pre-Roe abortions are taken into account.   

It is true that the CDC abortion numbers for 2008 are incomplete with numerous states not reporting. But the numbers for 1972 were not complete either. Nonetheless, even when using the National Right to Life current estimate of 1.2million abortions per year in the U.S., when even a low estimate for illegal pre-Roe abortions is factored in, the abortion rate now is lower compared to 1972.

Just to be clear, I think abortion purely for birth control is morally wrong. Yet, in all the heat surrounding the debate about Todd Akin’s reprehensible comments, it seems appropriate to point out that there is some good news to report concerning abortion. Apparently improved sex education and improved birth control methods have resulted in an abortion rate in the U.S. that is now lower than the rate of pre-Roe days.

I always try to be careful how I discuss the emotionally charged issue of abortion. About 23 years ago, when I was an Associate Pastor of a church as a seminary student, I taught the Sunday evening adult discipleship class. One evening the assigned topic in our discipleship quarterly was abortion. I came prepared with a pretty hardline, anti-abortion lesson, armed with information that I obtained beyond that which was outlined in the quarterly.

As soon as I introduced the topic, I noticed a change in the facial expression and body language of a single mother in the class who was in her early 30’s. She was a new Christian, baptized only weeks before this class. She never spoke during the lesson, which was unusual for her. She left church after the class and never came back.

We reached out to her numerous times, but it did no good. She never said that she had an abortion, but I’m guessing that she did. She did not appear angry over my stand in class. Rather, she seemed ashamed of herself. Too ashamed to return no matter what we said.  

I learned from that experience. While Christians must never compromise on the issue of the sanctity of life, we must always respond to everyone with the love and compassion that Christ would have us exhibit. Behind every abortion in this country is a woman who needs to experience the love of Christ through the followers of Christ. We’re all sinners and we must not allow anti-abortion zeal to overwhelm our duty to love our neighbors.   

"Held at bay by a vicious animal" option 3?

I had to call Animal Control in Wake County, North Carolina for reasons that are not worth repeating. What is interesting is their current outgoing phone message. It is a long message that gives callers the option of pressing various buttons on their phone for various needs. Before you even get to that part, however, there is a recitation of the holiday schedule. Then, finally, callers are told to "press one" for a long list of services related to the animal shelter, or to "press two" for complaints related to stray animals and other matters related to animal control. But it was option three that really got me. Callers are instructed to "press three" for emergency issues including being "held at bay by a vicious animal."

Shouldn't this third option be number one? If I'm being "held at bay by a vicious animal" I'm thinking I don't want to listen through the listing of the holiday schedule, the animal shelter services, and the stray animal/animal control option before being told how to get help. By the time I'm told the button to push to get assistance, the vicious animal may have done its damage. If a ferocious dog is snapping at my heels or a crazed bear is chasing me, I think I should be at the front of the line for help.

Maybe the outgoing phone message of Wake County, North Carolina Animal Control is a good reminder to all of us to get our priorities in order.

Misunderstood preparations

Last week Kieon Sharp, 18, of Charleston, West Virginia, applied for a job with a trucking company. On the same day that he filled out the application he saw one of the trucks of the company he hoped to work for parked on the street with the driver sitting inside. He decided to make some preparations for his potential new job by talking to the driver about the day-to-day routine of driving for this company.

Sharp approached the truck and knocked on the driver's window. The driver immediately called the police and Sharp was arrested. You see, Sharp had applied to Brinks Security and he was knocking on the window of one of their armored vehicles parked outside of a bank. The driver thought the young man had a gun and that he was attempting a robbery.

Sharp was held behind bars for several hours before the story was sorted out. The police were apparently impressed with his cooperation. Sharp was offered an application to the city's street department upon his release from jail.

Kieon Sharp was only trying to make preparations for something important in his life, but his preparations were misunderstood. The Advent season is all about making preparations for something important in our lives. We seek to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. If our preparations are in keeping with the character of the arrival of Jesus then they could easily be misunderstood.

Great kings are supposed to arrive amid scenes of glory but Jesus, the King of kings, chose to enter the world in a lowly, even scandalous, way. A teen pregnancy out of wedlock to a peasant girl. A birth in a stable. His first clothes were rags and his first bed was a feed trough. Behold, your Savior.

According to the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 8:9, Jesus made himself poor in coming to this world. His ambition was not for power and wealth, but for lowliness and poverty. As Mary said, he brought down the powerful and sent the rich away empty while he lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:51-53).

This whole approach upsets the ways of our world--our culture in particular. If we all operated this way, Black Friday would be a disaster and our economy would be wrecked. If our Advent preparations follow the original Christmas pattern then I can easily see our efforts causing considerable misunderstanding and concern.

But I hope we realize, to slightly paraphrase John's gospel, "the true light, which enlightens everyone, comes to the world" (1:9). And we need to help our world to see the true light. To do that our Advent prepartions must shine the true light on a new and different way--His way. We will be misunderstood ... at least at first. But if we are faithful to the ways of the one whose ambition was for poverty and lowliness then the wonder of the true light will transform our world in glorious ways.

Is history repeating itself?

Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed, that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives in the cause of their God, would have tolerated it, for a moment, in the Christian Church.

Baptist hero Richard Furman wrote the words above in a document entitled "The Views of Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population of the United States." The first edition of this pamphlet was published in 1822 and a second edition was produced in 1838, some 13 years after Furman's death. For decades this biblical defense of slavery became the model for Bible-based arguments in favor of owning people in this country. Baptists and many other Southern evangelicals were just sure that there was nothing wrong with holding slaves and they adamantly claimed to have the Bible on their side. On the other hand, other Christians, mainly in other parts of the country, made biblical arguments against slavery.

These days we think Southern Christians were wrong to defend slavery back then and we are ashamed of the biblical arguments made by Furman and others. We repudiate their take on the scriptures as adamantly as they clung to it.

This bit of history is one thing that concerns me about the prevailing position of evangelicals regarding homosexuality. Most evangelicals, including most Baptists, say today that all homosexual behavior is wrong and they point to a handful of biblical passages to support this claim. But some other Christians interpret the scriptures in a more affirming way regarding homosexuality.

Is it possible that someday Christians will look back on the prevailing position of Baptists and other evangelicals on homosexuality today in much the same way that we look back on the position concerning slavery of Richard Furman and other Baptists of the 1800s? Whatever your answer to that question, we have got to learn to talk about this issue in a healthy way. We've got to figure out a way to discuss this important topic with a humility inherent to the realization that we see as through a glass darkly--we don't know it all.

And we've been wrong before.

A decline in spiritual vitality in churches

According to a recent survey, the percentage of U.S. congregations reporting high spiritual vitality declined from 43 percent in 2005 to 28 percent in 2010. Did those numbers sink in? That's a drop of 15 percentage points in five years.

The article linked above reporting this news also notes the unsurprising fact that, according to research, "spiritually alive churches are the most likely to grow." Even so, it appears that there has been a precipitous decline in spiritual vitality in churches of this country. Why?

I think one reason for this disturbing decline is that church folks are just too busy, and not necessarily with church work. Oh, there are some church folks who are certainly overworked in doing church work. But I fairly regularly have folks who do not hold many if any positions in the church who tell me that they are too busy to participate in events designed to promote spiritual vitality.

Because so many folks are time poor these days, here at Woodhaven Baptist, we just launched a non-event-based approach to encouraging spiritual vitality to supplement our event-based programs. In a nutshell, the new initiative involves pairing men and pairing women in the church who commit to gather once per week for prayer, fellowship and discussing a reading assignment. Each pair meets at a time and place of its choosing and decides on its own pace of reading. Furthermore, each person in each pair is encouraged to invite an unchurched friend, neighbor or co-worker to join the group. So each group is composed of a maximum of four men or four women, two of whom are church members and two of whom are not.

It is the most flexible plan for relationship building, communal prayer, and outreach that I can imagine. We will continue to hold various church events designed to foster greater spiritual vitality. But it is just getting harder and harder to find times for church events that many folks can attend beyond Sunday morning (and even Sunday morning is not as easy as it used to be it seems).

Will our new non-event-based approach to promoting spiritual vitality help in a time poor culture? We just launched the plan yesterday, so that remains to be seen. But if many folks say they are too busy even for a plan so flexible, then I see only one alternative: Encourage our people to simplify.

We should probably encourage simplification anyway.