[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

Continuing lessons learned/observed on our Alaskan cruise, let’s think about the crew a little more. According to the fact sheet, there were 1100 of them! 

And they were all different. Different jobs. Different nationalities—as nearly as I could tell, there were no U.S. citizens on the hotel staff of the ship except, perhaps, a few of the entertainers. Men and women. Old and young. Our primary server at dinner, Nestor, about whom I’ll write later, is from the Philippines, 43 years old, and has worked for the cruise lines for 19 years. 

And what they want as individuals doesn’t matter. It’s what the cruise line wants. All were neatly groomed. All were in their appropriate uniforms. All did their assigned jobs cheerfully, correctly, without fanfare, and in English, regardless of what their native language was. 

The application to our churches is obvious:

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything…Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. (1 Corinthians 12.12 – 14, MSG)

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, MSG)

Each soldier does what he’s told, so disciplined, so determined. They don’t get in each other’s way. Each one knows his job and does it. (Joel 2.7, 8, MSG)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

We just returned from our first cruise (a gift from our oldest son, Mark), the inside passage to Alaska. I won’t use this space to bore you with a travelogue, but I will tell you we had a fabulous time: sightseeing in Seattle before and after the cruise, visits to Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway in Alaska, each with its own highlights, and Victoria, B.C. 

The Ewellogy, as always, is about observations and lessons learned.

We were on the Star Princess, not the largest cruise ship out there, but plenty big enough: 17 decks, 1297 guest cabins, just 204 cabins fewer than the number of rooms in the Gaylord of the Rockies, the largest hotel in Colorado.

As I expected, the crew of our ship functioned like a well-oiled machine. There are two major divisions of the crew: the mariners responsible for the ship itself and the folks who ran the “hotel.” The mariners were largely invisible to us. I never saw the captain and only occasionally did I see an officer or a maintenance man walking around the ship. 

The hotel staff were a different story of course. They are everywhere. Housekeepers (“stewards”), chefs and their assistants, waiters at every venue serving food or drink, bartenders, baristas, “front desk” people, storekeepers, and a host of unseen staff as well. The ship had the look and feel of a luxury hotel.

When you think of it, the crew’s job is to create “holy moments,” not for themselves, but for us. They don’t know us. For the most part, they will never see us again, and yet their job is to serve…continually. The last sign I saw as I left the ship Sunday morning read something like:

All passengers will be on board by 3p. All crew must be on board by 2:30. We sail for Ketchikan at 4p.

In other words, less then 5 hours after we had breakfast in the Deck 14 buffet, they were serving lunch to the next group of passengers!

A number of years ago, there was a newspaper story about a church in Colorado Springs in which the church leadership made the point that their “customers” were not their own members. They said something like, 

Our job is not to serve our members. Our job is to teach our members to serve the community. The whole church is to be more like the employees at Walmart.

Today, I would say that the church would do well to see themselves as the staff of a cruise ship, not serving each other, but working together to serve the people in their environment—for them, the ship; for us, our neighborhoods, workplaces, and families. Perhaps, in addition to trips to Branson for seniors and ski trips for our youth, we need more mission trips—or, even better—more emphasis on the fact that we are on mission all the time.

For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. (Mark 10.45)

Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, MSG)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

As you read this, July 29 (or after!), we will have just returned from an Alaskan cruise, courtesy of our oldest son, Mark, July 21 – 28. In order not to have to depend on Internet availability I know nothing about, in addition to shipboard activities and excursions, I set a goal for myself to have these blogs published before I left. And, by God’s grace, I’ve done it! I especially enjoyed writing about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing as well as the other topics that crossed my path since returning from Spring Canyon on July 6.

I was going to say that goal-setting and planning are uniquely human activities, but that’s not quite right:

Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer. (Proverbs 30.25, NIV)

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6.6 – 8, NIV)

Beginning tomorrow, I hope to be publishing blogs about things we saw or learned on the cruise. I won’t be surprised if some of those things have to do with what I hope is a well-oiled machine. I can’t imagine 2600 passengers, and 1100 crew on a ship that’s longer than 2 1/2 football fields.

I hope you’re having a good summer: rest, recreation, AND planning for the fall. We all have work to do.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! (Psalm 90.17, ESV)

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him… Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. (Colossians 3.17…23, 24, ESV)

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1.11, 12, ESV)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

I was struck by David’s enthusiasm for God in Psalm 16.5, 6:

You are my prize, my pleasure, and my portion. I leave my destiny and its timing in your hands. Your pleasant path leads me to pleasant places. I’m overwhelmed by the privileges that come with following you, for you have given me the best! (The Passion Translation)

My question is, when in David’s life was this written: pre-Bathsheba or post? (You can read about David’s shameful behavior with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11.) If post, then the Psalm speaks to reflecting over his life and deciding that following God was the best thing to do–not following God didn’t work out so well. That’s fine.

But if it’s pre-Bathsheba, then we have a warning. How I feel about God today is no guarantee I’ll feel that way tomorrow. We know that Psalm 57 was written pre-Bathsheba. It was pre-everything since he was still running from Saul and hiding in caves! Here’s the official (part of the text) introduction to the Psalm:

A Miktam of David when he fled from Saul, in the cave. 

And David writes glowing things about God here also:

My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. (Psalm 57.7 – 9, ESV)

Yet after that, well after that, when the kingdom is established, and David is wealthy and at ease, he commits adultery and murder. It gives one pause. The Christian life is daily, and as C.S. Lewis wrote in an excellent essay, “The Sermon and the Lunch:” 

There is nowhere this side of heaven where one can safely lay the reins on the horse’s neck. It will never be lawful simply to ‘be ourselves’ until ‘ourselves’ have become sons of God. It is all there in the hymn–‘Christian, seek not yet repose.’

Yet repose is precisely what David was practicing:

…David dispatched Joab and his fighting men of Israel in full force to destroy the Ammonites for good…but David stayed in Jerusalem. One late afternoon, David got up from taking his nap and was strolling on the roof of the palace. From his vantage point on the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was stunningly beautiful. (2 Samuel 11.1, 2, MSG, emphasis mine)

I’m 72, and I want to finish strong. So I tell myself, keep up the disciplines, don’t let anything come between me and God.

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! (1 Corinthians 10.12, NIV)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

My friend Rod and I go back to high school days (not the same high school, and he was a year ahead!). Anyway, Rod grew up in South Carolina, too, and he shared a funny story with me the other day:

I can’t remember if I have told you the following:  Do you ever listen/watch Paul Finebaum on ESPN/SEC network?  Someone called in to his show and was ranting about those Clemson fans who swarmed into towns and passed around all those phony 2-dollar bills, bilking the local merchants.  Paul said, “Um, I hate to tell you, but, those 2-dollar bills are real currency!”  It was so funny!  The guy actually thought the bills were fake!  LOL

I’ll have to admit that I didn’t know about the tradition: I haven’t been to a Clemson game since I graduated in 1968, and the tradition started in 1977.

Here’s my point: Mark E commented on one of my posts: “Recreational outrage is America’s most popular indoor sport.” Here’s an example of a fellow upset, taking the time and energy to call a sports talk show, ranting about something he knows nothing about. In an age where it’s common for people to say that there’s no such thing as truth, that your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth, this dude was wrong…and upset over nothing.

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18.38, ESV)

He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him. (Proverbs 18.13, NKJV)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

I often write about our privilege and responsibility to participate in God’s great Adventure, the story that started in Genesis 1 and is ongoing today. I don’t often write about the cost of such participation, but I couldn’t help but noticing cost in a recent reading of Psalm 105.

Psalm 105 is one of those chapters in the Bible you can read if you don’t have time to read the whole thing! Other such chapters are Acts 7 and Hebrews 11. Early in the Psalm, God promises the land:

He said to them, “I will give you all the land of Canaan as your inheritance.” They were very few in number when God gave them that promise, and they were all foreigners to that land. (Psalm 105.11, 12, Passion Translation)

Then the Psalmist begins to recount some significant events and after finding out about a famine, we read:

But he had already sent a man ahead of his people to Egypt; it was Joseph, who was sold as a slave. (Psalm 105.17, Passion Translation)

“He had sent a man ahead…” How did he send him? As a slave! Joseph served as a slave and also in prison from age 17 to age 30. It took 13 years for him to become an “overnight success” as recorded in Genesis chapters, 37, 39 – 41. Later, when Joseph is reunited with his brothers and they are ashamed(!) at selling him and afraid he will take retribution on them, he responds:

Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (Genesis 50.19, 20, ESV)

Joseph was a hero of the story of establishing the nation Israel; God used him in a significant way, but it came at a cost. 

I continue to call all of us to God’s great Adventure! And just like playing for a winning team, there’s great joy in the victory, but the victory comes with the cost of countless hours of cost in preparation and self-denial. 

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14.27 – 33, ESV)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

Ringo Starr, famous drummer for the Beatles, still performs at age 79. When asked why, he responds, “That’s what I do. I’m not an electrician.” (Parade Magazine, July 7, 2019). 

I like it. Work is a good thing. I’m a speaker, writer, data analyst, and I invest in men. When the Lord calls me home, I hope to have engagements on the calendar and data on the computer! 

But the godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon…Even in old age they will still produce fruit; they will remain vital and green. (Psalm 92.12, 14, NLT)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

I wrote yesterday about Krulak’s Law: The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand. Krulak was a Commandant of the US Marine Corps and saw the law in action as Marines interacted with people in foreign countries. 

If we in the church took this principle seriously, would we be more intentional about training? If we recognized that church is not supposed to be a “Performance at a Place with Programs run by Professionals” (as David Platt characterizes most churches in his excellent little book A Radical Idea), would we use the church’s gathered time to equip the folks for their scattered time?

I wrote back in 2014, when my grandson graduated from Marine boot camp, that Marines know what they’re about: they make Marines and win battles. Boot camp is the first transformation that a young Marine experiences. “Every Marine is a rifleman” is another mantra I heard then.

Marines are intentional about making Marines who will win battles.

May we in the church be as intentional!

And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach… (Mark 3.14, ESV)

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. (Ephesians 4.11, 12, ESV)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

Seth Godin wrote on July 9 about an airport gate agent he observed handling a variety of issues in a very personable and professional manner. Seth concluded that the agent is worth far more to the airline than he’s being paid! And he cited former Marine Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak who wrote, “In many cases, the individual Marine will be the most conspicuous symbol of American foreign policy and will potentially influence not only the immediate tactical situation, but the operational and strategic levels as well.” Seth’s version of “Krulak’s Law” is: “The future of an organization is in the hands of the privates in the field, not the generals back home.” Others in the business world say it this way:

The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand.

Is this not true of Jesus’ church? People form their opinions of Christianity not only from their observations of highly visible leaders: the Pope, pastors of large churches, etc., but also from their everyday interactions with ordinary people who identify as Christian. 

I will write more about this tomorrow, but for today, if Krulak’s Law is true, and I think it is, we all should be generating all the Holy Moments we can! How we live before a watching world matters.

[Jesus said, ] “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5.14 – 16, NKJV)

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, (Philippians 2.14, 15 (NKJV)

[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

At the risk of overusing the space theme, please permit me one more story about Buzz Aldrin, a personal one.

I was doing some work for the US Space Foundation in the 90s, and one of their clients was a brand new elementary school in Reston, VA, that was going to name itself after Buzz Aldrin. We were providing them space-related education materials.

The school opened in September 1994 and was formally dedicated April 25, 1995. I was there for the dedication. As part of the dedication ceremonies, Buzz Aldrin, who was 65 years old at the time, was to pose for a picture with every class as is shown in this newspaper article:

The plan was that each class would position itself around Buzz on the risers, the picture would be taken, and then the next class would come in. But that’s not quite what happened. After the picture, Buzz shook hands with every kid. Every kid in every class. 600+ kids. They still talk about that on their web site. I am moved every time I think about it.

Today I would call that a Holy Moment. He didn’t have to do that.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. (Matthew 18.1 – 5, ESV)

Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave. (Matthew 20.26, 27, ESV)