After a premature start in Deuteronomy, we’re back!

I was struck by Moses’ warnings in Deuteronomy 4, along with the repeated application. Let’s take a look:

And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-Peor, for the LORD your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the LORD your God are all alive today. (Deuteronomy 4.1 – 4, ESV)

Quick observations:

• Listen to the standard (“the statutes and rules”)
• Don’t change the standard by adding to it or taking from it
• Remember that one can be led astray into sexual immorality (“Baal-Peor“)

So what to do? Moses is clear:

Only keep yourself and keep your soul very carefully, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life… (Deuteronomy 4.9, LSB)

So keep your souls very carefully… (Deuteronomy 4.15, LSB)

So keep yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God which He cut with you and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which Yahweh your God has commanded you. (Deuteronomy 4.23, LSB)

“Keep yourselves,” “keep your souls very carefully,” “keep yourselves…”

The implication is clear: the culture will drag you down. “Keep yourselves” to the standard. And so there would be no mistake what the standard was, a copy of “The 10 Commandments,” written in stone, was in the Ark in the Tabernacle.

At that time the LORD said to me, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.” So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the Ten Commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made. And there they are, as the LORD commanded me. Deuteronomy 10.1 – 5, ESV, emphasis mine)

So there’s no confusion, we have the written word, and we have to “keep ourselves” to God’s standards. It takes watchfulness while entire denominations and influential churches like Andy Stanley’s NorthPoint church are accommodating the current cultural values. I think this is an accurate summary and critique of Andy’s position:

What Stanley considers as a failure to live up to an unattainable ideal, Scripture calls sinful. Nowhere in the messages was there any expectation that someone would turn from their same-sex relationship. This is an example of unbounded empathy that listens (which is good) but never invites toward transformation (which is not good). – Andrew Walker, author of God and the Transgender Debate

I believe Moses’ and Solomon’s warnings remain:

Only keep yourself and keep your soul very carefully, lest you forget… (Deuteronomy 4.9, LSB)

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4.23, ESV)

Andy Stanley likes to say that Jesus drew circles (of inclusion) rather than lines (of division). But Jesus drew both:

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1.17, NKJV, emphasis mine)

Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. (John 8.11, NKJV)

Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, NASB, emphasis mine)

I shared a few highlights from the National Staff Gathering of The Navigators, starting with The Man in Seat 12B on November 16. An over-arching theme was:

Navigators believe anyone can read the Bible, do what it says, and help others.

Therefore, it’s a good time to share this story about my long-time friend Rick Bereit, Air Force Academy graduate, retired Air Force colonel, and Navigator-trained disciple-maker. Rick wasn’t at the National Staff Gathering…because he’s not staff! An article by Timothy Cho, published October 16, 2023, opens this way:

While many who are impacted by The Navigators eventually come on staff…, many others carry on our mission right where the Lord has placed them in their everyday callings. This is a beautiful thing about our Navigator community and has been part of who we are from the very beginning.

Rick Bereit is one of those longtime everyday disciplemakers.

I recommend the article in its entirety, but here are some snippets:

Years ago, after serving in the military for over 20 years and having impactful relationships with Navigators…, Rick started to wonder if it was time to pursue full-time ministry. While at a couples’ retreat, he spoke with a fellow Navigator about this and received a surprising answer: “No! We want you to stay right where you’re at. In the military, you have more access to people than any Navigator staff could have!”

…Learning how to make disciples wherever we are is foundational for all followers of Christ and is part of our DNA as Navigators. As such, this is something Rick has instilled in those he has discipled for many decades. “We want to keep them in their occupations, in their locations, in their neighborhoods—where they’re insiders.”

Here is how it worked out for Rick:

At the Air Force Academy, he knocked on the doors of freshmen and started discipling 14 of them through a weekly Bible study. Over many decades, Rick has followed the Lord’s call, discipling people from all walks of life. They have gone on to advance the Kingdom in many ways—as a pastor in New England who helps other pastors incorporate disciple-making in their ministries; as an aviation mechanic who takes care of airplanes for missionaries in South America; one woman moved to South Africa to disciple women in college there; another couple is now making disciples in Poland, and so on.

When asked why making disciples is so important today, Rick shares: “I’ve done this for 60-some years, and I can point to people that are walking with God and the impact that those people are having in other people’s lives. I can’t think of anything more exciting than that in the Christian life—to spend a little time with someone and then just see them blossom and flourish and become fruitful themselves.”

I’ve quoted Rick in this space: he’s the “friend” in this blog about A Picture of the Church. The “pastor in New England,” referred to above is my friend Ray Bandi, who appears in these blogs from time to time. You might enjoy this picture of Rick, a widower, and his new bride. We are not sitting down, and he is not standing on a chair!

Everybody we saw was huge. Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers.” (Numbers 13.32 – 33, MSG)

Oops. Wrong verse…

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28.18 – 20, ESV)

Soon after the video encouraging ordinary people to invest in others, Marvin Campbell, The Navigators’ US President closed us out with a stirring challenge beginning from Matthew 9.36 – 38:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Matthew 9.36 – 38, NIV)

Marvin shared four principles. Here are the highlights:

Principle 1: The harvest is plentiful (9.37)

A plentiful harvest has a sense of urgency to it if we’re talking literal farming. The crops must be brought in when they are ready. Jesus used the same imagery in John 4.35:

Don’t you have a saying, “It’s still four months until harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. (NIV)

Principle 2: The urgent call is for workers (9.38)

Workers, not debaters, apologetics experts, theologians. Workers.

Principle 3: Jesus commissions everyday people

Jesus asked the disciples to pray for workers, and then they found out they were those workers. Not missionaries. Everyday people. You don’t need multiple degrees. Years of Hebrew and Greek. Professional clergy have often unintentionally truncated the spread of the gospel. Jesus gave spiritual authority to ordinary people.

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. (Matthew 10.1, NIV)

Principle 4: The mission will face challenges

The gospel is not a walk in the park. It’s a walk with King Jesus and his Kingdom. With authority come responsibility, persecution, and family strife. (Matthew 10.16 – 22)

Marvin closed with a summary:

• The harvest is still plentiful (Matthew 9.37)
• The urgent call is still for workers (Matthew 9.38)
• Jesus still commissions ordinary believers (Matthew 10.1 – 8)
• The mission will face challenges (Matthew 10.16 – 20)

Then Marvin reminded us that right before his ascension, he told his followers:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1.8, NIV)

…meaning:

His last command must remain our first concern. – Marvin Campbell, US President, The Navigators

A weird title…

At each plenary session of the National Staff Gathering of The Navigators that we attended last week, there was an informational or motivational video. I don’t remember any of them except the last one. If it ever becomes available for general distribution, I’ll direct you to it.

In the meantime, I’ll describe it. It was very simple, just a series of conversational snippets with ordinary people who are making disciples. People who are intentionally investing in the lives of others. Young, old, black, white…a diversity. Kind of like:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb… (Revelation 7.9, ESV)

The one exact quote I remember was an older lady summing up what we Navigators are trying to do:

Navigators believe anyone can read the Bible, do what it says, and help others.

Key words: anyone…help others.

Toward the end of the video, each participant pulled out their phone and showed a picture of one person they were investing in. Because that’s what it boils down to: one person intentionally helping someone else. If you’ve been taught how to do something, say, spend time with God daily through the Word and prayer, you can teach someone else. And that person has a face and a name. It’s individual, life-on-life.

After the video, the emcees asked us to pull up such a picture on our phones. Someone we have been investing in or are investing in. Then we all held up our phones. 1400 of us all over the auditorium. Each phone representing another potential disciple and disciple-maker. Very powerful.

In the old days, it was common for Navigators to ask people in their ministries, “Who’s your man?” or “Who’s your woman?” “Who are you investing in?” Today, we might say, “Pull out your phone…and show me the person you are investing in.” (By the way, kids and grandkids count!)

Who’s on your phone?

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.1, 2, NIV)

We have just returned from nearly a week with 1,400 other Navigators having our quadrennial gathering. This one was at the Irving Convention Center between Dallas and Fort Worth.

(Top left) The Convention Center, (top right) the outside sign advertising our presence (maybe that’s why we had security on every floor!), (bottom left) June and I posing at the massive Navigators sign, (bottom right) Navigators’ US President Marvin Campbell, addressing a small group of us before the large gathering started.

At the opening session Thursday night, US President Marvin Campbell told this amazing story from just a couple of months ago. This is the way I remember it:

I was returning from visiting one of our ministries, and I got on the plane heading for my favorite seat, 12C, on the aisle. And 12B was open. Great! But just before the doors closed a huge guy got on and headed for…you guessed it…12B. So I leaned out into the aisle a bit, got out my Bible and journal, and the guy said, “Are you a preacher?” I said, “Not exactly. I come alongside people and help them follow Jesus.” The guy said, “I’ve had a lot of hard times in my life. Illness of people around me, death. Two years ago, my wife started following Jesus so I left her.” I, drawing my wealth of experience in keeping conversations going said, “Tell me more.”

He continued, “I couldn’t live with someone who would follow a God who would treat me like God has treated me.” I said, “Tell me more.” He said, “But it’s been a miserable two years, I have kids, so I’m on my way back to try to reconcile.” I said, “Have you ever read the Bible?” “No.” “Well, I have a little diagram that helps people understand the message of the Bible. Would you like to see it?”

He said, “Tell me more!” so I took the little airplane napkin and drew the BRIDGE illustration in all of its detail. When I was finished, he was crying like a baby. He prayed to receive Christ. I left him my travel Bible, and we have been texting back and forth as he’s been reading the Gospel of Mark.

What a great story! But it’s not just about Marvin’s reaching out to a guy in need when he’d rather be resting. It’s about God. The guy told Marvin that he was dropped off at the airport by a pastor who said that he would pray that God would send him a man. The guy was flying standby and had been bumped from three flights before boarding Marvin’s flight and sitting in 12B.

I’m motivated to have my antenna up to come alongside the people God drops into my life! Who is my next 12B? Who is yours?

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect… (1 Peter 3.15, NIV)

PS Please pray for the guy in seat 12B. Marvin said that after talking with him regularly for several weeks, it’s been several weeks since he’s heard from him.

I intend to write a few blogs from our recent experience at the National Staff Gathering of The Navigators, held in Irving, Texas. But I have to share something we saw on the way down and back. We drove so that we could visit relatives and friends, and I noticed for the first time that Clarendon, Texas, not far from Amarillo, on US 287, is home to over 50 crosses:

The top two pictures are mine. The bottom one is from a news report in 2014 describing “the ongoing cross controversy.” It’s more than 10 years later, and the crosses are still there so I guess the town has come to terms with them.

I asked a fellow at a gas station, and he said that about 10 years ago, a resident had a near-death experience and felt the need (or a “call”) to make these crosses available to those who wanted them.

Clarendon resident Jim Griffin is putting up signs with different messages like the end is near and there are worse things coming than the 9/11 tragedy. He says he’s putting up 10-foot-tall crosses as well to remind people of their faith and inform others about Jesus.

There are about 50 crosses around Clarendon on Highway 287, and in residents’ yards and businesses who ask for them. Cross Controversy in Clarendon, September 12, 2012.

What’s interesting is that they’ve been up since 2012. I drove through Clarendon going to and coming from conferences in 2017, 2018, and 2019, and this is the first time I’ve seen them. And they are everywhere!

I don’t know what the lesson is. Has anyone come to faith because of them? I don’t know. They certainly have generated controversy and mixed reactions. Many Christians love ’em and are encouraged; others hate ’em. One mother (from out-of-town) was afraid of them.

So I guess that since the time of the Apostle Paul, nothing has changed:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God…For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1.18 – 24, NKJV)

This falls into the category of too good (and too challenging!) not to share. It’s from Sahil Bloom’s Friday, November 3, 2023, email. I reproduce the relevant portion in its entirety:

Reminder on the dangers of lifestyle creep: The Diderot Effect

Denis Diderot was an 18th century French philosopher and writer who gained a reputation as a deep thinker in elite circles.

Despite his intellectual prestige, Diderot found himself unable to pay the necessary dowry when his daughter was to be married.

Fortunately, his work had won him many fans, including, as it turns out, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia at the time. Hearing of his financial struggle, she offered to buy his library and solicit his services as her personal librarian, for which she would pay him handsomely.

Shortly after this turn of good financial fortune, Denis Diderot came to own a fancy new scarlet robe.

Diderot liked what the fancy robe appeared to confer on him, but felt the remainder of his possessions no longer stood up to the beauty and prestige of this new one. How could he be expected to dress in such a robe but then sit in such a shabby chair, walk in such tattered shoes, or write at such a spartan desk?

In quick succession, he purchased a new leather chair, shoes, and an elaborate wooden desk, all of which seemed a suitable match for his scarlet robe—or, perhaps more importantly, a suitable match for the type of person who wears such a fancy scarlet robe.

The chain reaction of purchases—where one begets many more—have become known as the Diderot Effect. [Link insertion mine]

The new robe had created a new identity, one that Denis Diderot became attached to the image of, and one that he became enveloped in further signaling to the world.

In an essay later in life, which he appropriately entitled, Regrets for My Old Dressing Gown, Diderot lamented, “I was the absolute master of my old robe. I have become the slave of the new one.”

The Diderot Effect is most damning when it surrounds status signaling purchases that are more about showing your position to others than improving yourself.

There are cases where it can work in your favor:

• Purchase a new gym membership
• Identify as a healthier person
• Encouraged to cement that identity with better food, fitness, and recovery purchases

As Diderot concluded, “Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles.”

Awareness is the key: Where are you allowing the Diderot Effect to control your behavior? – Sahil Bloom, November 3, 2023

As always, Jesus was ahead of the curve on this one:

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12.15, ESV)

I wrote yesterday about the need for innovation in ministry. But innovation is tough, and marketing Guru Seth Godin explained why in this piece from October 29, 2023. It’s short and makes only three points:

• New approaches will never be embraced by everyone at first. If you need unanimous consent, you’re not going to move forward.

• And it’s not convenient. If it were, someone would have done it already.

• Finally, it’s not sure to work.

I’ve seen all those things starting with the objection to a great idea for a Sunday morning: “That’s not church!”

We had a great idea back in the early 2000s to combine volunteer ministries with intentional disciple-making. It wouldn’t have been convenient. It would have been difficult, and, at the first sign of difficulty, we folded.

And it’s true that innovations are not sure to work, but we try anyway. And what does “work” mean? Often in the church context, there’s the expectation that success requires that we reach everyone. I was in a meeting with a pastor and one of his elders planning a discipleship initiative. The elder said something like, “Not everyone will want to do that.” The pastor wisely responded, “It will never be the case that everyone wants to do something. That’s no reason not to do it.”

So let’s innovate! We don’t have to keep running the same plays that no longer work. As I wrote last week, “If the horse is dead, dismount!”

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead… (Philippians 3.13, ESV)

Let’s transition out of “warning” mode into something that feels more positive! My friend Bill Mowry wrote an excellent article on the importance of innovation in ministry, adapted from his new book, The Ways of the Leader: Four Practices to Bring People Together and Break New Ground.

Bill opens by pointing out that the familiar Navigators verse pack was once a ministry innovation of the founder of The Navigators, Dawson Trotman:

Early in his Christian life, Trotman’s life was transformed by memorizing Scripture. As he ministered to sailors in the 1940s, he wanted to create a way to encourage Scripture memory. His imagination led him to create verse cards that fit into a packet that a sailor could slip into his chest pocket so he could review verses anytime of the day. To encourage memorization, Trotman grouped verses around topics. Nothing like this existed at the time.

This was the birth of the Topical Memory System (TMS), the most widely used tool for memorizing Scripture today.

Here was a local leader meeting a local challenge with an innovative solution. Life and ministry today need more ministry innovators! – Bill Mowry, Wanted: Ministry Innovators (I recommend Bill’s article in its entirety.)

Bill goes on to point out that while “local challenges demand local, innovative solutions,” church services, for example, seem to be the same all over the world.

I’ve written about this before. If someone does try to innovate, they’re often met with, “That’s not church.” Seth Godin, the marketing guru I quote from time to time, could have predicted that response. Stay tuned.

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43.18 – 19, ESV)

It’s Veterans Day, a day of remembrance, and I think it’s OK to recall what I’ve written before. A friend of mine said once, “Just because I’ve heard it before doesn’t mean I’m thinking about it now!”

Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder… (2 Peter 1.12, 13, ESV)

It’s important to remember that God values warriors. Consider:

• God is referred to in scripture as a warrior: But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior… (Jeremiah 20.11, NIV)
• One of the last pictures we have of Jesus is as a warrior.

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. (Revelation 19.11 – 14, ESV)

• Many of God’s key men were warriors:
  • Abraham led his men on an armed mission to rescue Lot. (Genesis 14.11 – 16)
  • Joshua was a general who led a series of campaigns to capture the promised land.
  • Gideon (and most of the judges) led the Israelites to conquer their oppressors.
  • David, of course, was a warrior demonstrated first in his defeat of Goliath. (1 Samuel 17.31 – 49)
  • A significant chunk of scripture is devoted to Davd’s mighty men. (1 Chronicles 11:10 – 12:22)
  • The first recorded Gentile convert was Cornelius, a Roman centurion. (Acts 10)

I’ve been challenged in adult Sunday School classes about being “too military.” But I don’t write this stuff…I just report it! If God didn’t value warriors both for what they do and for the fact that warriors remind us of spiritual warfare, God wouldn’t have devoted so much space to honoring warriors. Here are some snippets of 1 Chronicles 11:

• He wielded his spear against 300 whom he killed at one time.
• He took his stand in the midst of the plot and defended it and killed the Philistines. And the Lord saved them by a great victory.
• He wielded his spear against 300 men and killed them.
• He struck down two heroes of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. And he struck down an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits tall. The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver’s beam, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.

Those were some tough men!

This is a day to honor all the men and women who have served and are serving in our armed forces. God bless them.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. (Ephesians 6.10 – 13, ESV)