QotD: Happy Birthday, Francis!

January 30th marks Francis Schaeffer's 100th birthday. He'd celebrate were he still alive. Instead, he's glorying before the throne of his King.  


If you have never heard of Francis Schaeffer, let me recommend three books, The God Who is There, Escape From Reason, and He is There and He is Not Silent.  You can actually buy it as a trilogy on Amazon (here). He was one of the foremost philosophical minds of our era. You likely have not heard of him because he was an unabashed, unashamed Christian whose conviction about God and the Bible informed every thought he had and every topic he discussed.


In honor of his birthday, a quote from his book, Death in the City, seems apt in our post-postmodern America. The italics are his, the boldface is mine.

Do you really believe He is there? Why is there so much unreality among evangelicals, young and old? What is the final reality? The final reality is that God is really there. The Bible is what it is because the God who exists has spoken it in propositional, verbalized form. But does your Christianity end with something less than God who is there? In the teaching of your courses in Christian schools, do you believe He is there? In your learning, do you believe He is there? Do you really believe He is there, or are you only living in some sort of sociological belief? Are you only making the right theological statements, or do you believe God is there and you live before Him?


If He is really there and if He is a holy God, do you seriously think that God does not care that a country like our own has turned from Him? There is only one kind of preaching that will do in a generation like ours---preaching which includes the preaching of the judgment of God.

Facing reality

The other day I was chatting with my daughters about a friend of ours who has cancer and who has been told by the doctors that her time remaining is short. She is dying. I looked at my seven-year old who heard that information with as much interest as if I had just described a political debate, and asked her, "Do you know that you're dying?" Her eyes focused and she screwed up her face with that "Dad, don't be such a dork" look that your kids sometimes get. You'd have thought I told her we were flying to Neptune tomorrow. I explained to her the certainty of death leaving taxes for another time.

Some might consider me cruel or at best macabre for telling my seven-year old little girl such a thing. "Why, she'll have nightmares!" I don't think so. You see, my little girl has the same confidence that my dying friend, Nancy Anderson, has.  Read what Nancy posted on her CaringBridge Journal recently:

I am confident that I will go to heaven.  This has nothing to do with me being a good person.  Lately a lot of people have given me an abundance of love and affirmation about the value of my life and the positive impact I have had.  This is important to me, and it encourages me.  God created us to live significant, impactful lives. But when it comes to goodness, there is no meaningful scale. Basically there is God and there is us.  He is good.  We are made in his image, but we are marred by the brokenness of sin.  He is in a completely different dimension when it comes to goodness.  I love the verse in 2 Corinthians 5:21 which says, “God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 

I love the analogy that trying to reach God through my own goodness is like trying to swim from here to Hawaii. Some really great swimmers might make it several miles, while others would have to bail much earlier, but no one is going to make it to Hawaii. In the same way, my only hope of heaven is that I have a Savior who will take me there.

Some folks rail upon Christians for being exclusive. We are not. We simply declare what God has declared to us in his word.  Jesus said with crystal clarity

I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

~ John 14:6

An audacious claim. It is either absolutely true or it is absolutely false. Shortly after John documented his account of Christ's life in what we have come to know as John's Gospel, he wrote a letter. Therein he makes more audacious claims:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life--and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us--what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

~ 1 John 1:1-3

Those words jump out. John is testifying as though he were in a courtroom as a witness. He is speaking of what he had seen and declaring what was manifested (made known) to him. Again, either his testimony is true, or he is daft.


I can hear you say, "There have been a lot of folks that have said they are speaking for God." That's true. But John was with Christ. He heard, saw, and touched him, and John states that Jesus is the payment for our sins, our rebellion against and hostility toward God (2:2). But John goes even further. He makes plain that if you don't believe him, it's not him you disbelieve but God.

The one who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that that God has given concerning His Son.  And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

~ 1 John 5:10-11

The audacity continues in the next verse. "Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."


How serious is this? Nancy is dying, but so are you. She just happens to know that her death is close at hand. For her, death is not something to fear because she knows with certainty that she will live forever in the glorious presence of God, not because of what she has done but because she believes that what happened to Jesus Christ on a cross 2000 years ago credits to her. It's that same confidence my daughter has.


It's the same confidence you can have, too. Consider it.

Church: It's not an amusement park

A few months ago, I came across this blog by a local pastor. As he stood at the pulpit (or in his case, sat on a stool) and preached the word of God, he looked out over the congregation with which God had blessed him, and he noted some things that troubled his soul, things that made him wonder if those who called upon the name of Christ understood the gravity of joining with the body to worship Almighty God. 


I appreciate his courage in writing these things to his church. I include some of them below with a few comments in blue as a challenge to you and a challenge to me that, as you enter into worship in 2012, we might take a few of these to heart:

1. Put your clock and calendar on hold on Sunday. Don't hold God to the clock. Unless there's an emergency, you should never leave a service early. We rush around all week long, let's rest in the Lord on Sunday. (Might I add, go to Sunday school, too? The church is for the strengthening and building up of the body. Set your alarm and take advantage. As a Christian, don't use Sunday as your sleep-in day.)

2. GIve yourself time. Before you go to bed on Saturday night, plan to leave on time on Sunday morning. Don't start a day meant to be focused on Him, by a mad rush of berating your children and breaking the speed limit. (Yep. What he said.)

3. Unless you're a doctor or pilot, leave your cell phone in the car. Nobody is that stinking important. Take a break and bring in a paper Bible; actually turn the pages. (We are going more and more to Nooks, Kindles, and iPhones, so the paper Bible is a preference. The cell phone, though--turn it off, or at least to silent. Can you think of a text you must get during the service that trumps the word of God?)

4. Be on time. Being punctual is just being considerate of someone else's schedule. At Colonial, we start on time and when people drag in for the next 10 minutes, it creates a distraction. Worship involves learning but it also involves all of the life of the body of Christ. The emotional experience of singing and worship is as vital to us as the intellectual experience of learning and the volitional experience of obeying. Be in your seat when the service begins. (The time thing again. Is time important? You bet. Does your boss expect you to be on time? If you have an appointment with a doctor or plumber, do you expect them to be on time? Does it frustrate you when they're not? Time is a valuable commodity and how you use it shows what you believe is important. That's just the way it is.)

5. Be respectful of others if you have a crying child. A continual whining child becomes a constant distraction for others and frustration for the teacher who is grasping to keep everyone's attention. We have tons of dedicated spaces with TV's and live feed of the service. (Not all churches do, but most do have nurseries. Just a question of courtesy. Very thankful for the moms in our church who care for their kids and for the body in this manner.)

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10. Don't, don't, don't CLIP YOUR FINGERNAILS. (Wow. Really? People do this during worship?)

11. If you insist in bringing a child to the adult service, they must behave. The purpose of bringing children into an adult environment, is to train them in adult ways. Playing a computer game defeats the purpose as well as being disrespectful. It also teaches a child to be irreverent. Our children's environments are the greatest in the city if not the entire region.Use them. (It's all part of training up your child (Proverbs 22:6), something fewer and fewer parents do in our country. In an MTV generation, rare is the child who is taught to sit and pay attention for longer than three minutes at a pop. Train your child to be such a person.)

12. Respect the building. Would you spit your partially chewed mints on the carpets of the White House? If you see a piece of trash, pick it up. When you use the restrooms, wipe down the counters and mirrors. Habits build character. (The church facilities are your facilities. It breaks my heart when we find graffiti in bathrooms or worse. Church is not the building, but the building has been given us by God for the ministry of the church. The church is the people. How we steward that which God has given us (the building) says a lot about us and what we think of God's provision for us).

(Taken from "Church Etiquette," by Terry Chapman)

Would you endure a few of my own?


13. Hold it. No doubt a few folks have bladder problems and require trips to the commode at thirty minute intervals. That's not most of us. That's not most kids either.  How do I know this? Because they can sit through a movie and they can sit through a couple of hours of school and they can play outside for a couple of hours and never think of it. Try this: go before the service and endure the hour or hour and a half. Your getting up and going out is a distraction to others. Most kids don't need to go. They just want to get up and move. That's normal. Discipline them to sit for a few more minutes. Please.


14. Nursery ≠ Infirmary. If your child has the sniffles or a cough, one parent should stay home with that child rather than starting a round of Flu Tag among the entire church. Really, that goes for sick parents and teens, too. It's not an excuse to ditch church but a loving act to not subject others to the misery you are enduring.


Some may think those cold and unfeeling. I would argue the opposite. They might be cold and unfeeling to you because you feel your toes being crunched, but they really exhibit a love and concern for your brothers and sisters in Christ. It's not about us. It's not about me. It's about preparing our hearts to gather together and worship the living God.


See you Sunday!