Some of you may be wondering how my “interrupted” COVID-invaded week went. The short answer is that by Wednesday I was symptom-free, and I did make my lunch appointment Friday! Praise the Lord.

The longer answer, a nice segue from our two blogs on prayer, is that we were called out of the blue on Tuesday by our friend Wale from Nigeria. (Wale is pronounced like the movie cartoon character Wall-EE.) Wale and June connected at a women’s retreat at Glen Eyrie a few years ago, and June led her through the 2:7 series by phone. Wale is a woman of great faith and prayer, and when she heard that I had COVID she insisted on praying for me. June put her on speaker, and Wale asked us to agree together that I should be healed. She claimed:

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. (Matthew 18.19, ESV)

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up... (James 5.14, 15, ESV)

Look at the June 13 blog comments: others of you prayed as well, including some I heard from directly who didn’t leave a blog comment. Thank you all, and thank you, Jesus.

Continuing our reminder of Paul’s example in prayer, we look today at the Ephesians 3 prayer.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

• that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
• so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—
• that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
• may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and
• to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3.14 – 21, ESV, bulleted for clarity)

We shouldn’t leave Ephesians chapters 1 – 3 without a reminder of Paul’s prayers. I’ve written about these before, but as a friend said, “Just because I’ve heard something before doesn’t mean I’m thinking about it now!”

If someone wants you to pray for them, these prayers are a bit more specific and “big picture” than “Lord, bless ________.” I offer the Ephesians 1 prayer today and the Ephesians 3 prayer tomorrow.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,

• that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,
• having the eyes of your hearts enlightened,
• that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you,
• what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and
• what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1.15 – 23, ESV, bulleted for clarity)

I’ve always had trouble with parts of Ephesians 3, especially:

…so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 3.10, ESV)

What’s the manifold wisdom of God and how is it communicated “through the church…to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places”? But I think the answer is in plain sight, and it has to do with the second half of Ephesians 2 that we wrote about yesterday. Here’s how Paul describes the “one new man” composed of Jews and Gentiles in chapter 3:

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (Ephesians 3.4 – 6, ESV, emphasis mine)

If our churches are reflecting this reality, individually and collectively, we are making a statement to the world and to the “rulers and authorities.” Alas, we are often plagued by the same racial unrest as everyone else. And if someone or a group of folks try to do something about it, they’re perceived by others to be on the wrong side of one political agenda or another. I refer you to Tony Evans’ plea for us to be reconcilers, not combatants.

If Jews and Gentiles can get along, so can the rest of us.

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, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 7.9 – 12, ESV)

Last week in Fort Payne, Alabama, when I wasn’t observing weird signs and being exposed to COVID, I was discussing with the leadership team at Wills Valley Community Church the important question: how can we be better at making disciples?

Along the way, I introduced something I haven’t used in a while: the A, B, C, D, E scale from Regi’s Campbell’s workplace ministry book, About My Father’s Business. A lot of folks like the Modified Engel Scale which visualizes people moving toward saving faith and maturity from a position of no God framework at all (-12) to Conversion (0) to spiritual leadership (+4). I agree with Regi, that the Engel Scale is too hard to remember to be useful to the average person. Regi uses this 5-point scale:

• A: Apathetic
• B: Beginning to seek
• C: Confessing Christian
• D: Developing disciple
• E: Excelling reproducer

I use it as a teaching tool pointing out things like:

• You don’t invite an “A” to church. You invite an “A” to breakfast.
• You can invite a “B” to some church activities.
• We don’t want to stick at “C.” I’ve heard pastors say, “Get ’em saved, get ’em baptized. That’s why we exist!”
• We don’t want to stick at “D” either. A “D” goes from one Bible study to another with no real fruit. Sometimes when people know that there’s life beyond C or D, that’s enough to get them moving.

The pastor in Fort Payne asked, “Are there “A” folks in church? Answer: yes, absolutely. It’s hard to tell the difference between an “A” and “C” in the church since neither is really doing anything! Regi Campbell told me he’s always adjusting his list of people he’s praying for from C to A.

After our discussion, I read Ephesians (the book after Romans in our 2022 reading plan). There’s a paragraph in chapter 2 that speaks to this issue. Paul writes:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2.13 – 18, ESV)

In Paul’s day, it was Jews and Gentiles, Jewish unbelievers who at least had the right book (see Romans 3.1 – 4), and outsiders. Today, the application is those lost inside the church and those lost outside.

Like in the story of the two sons, both need to be reconciled to God, both need peace with God, both need access. Navigators used to talk about the “far” lost and some looked down on church ministries as not being to the far lost. But lost is lost. We were discussing in Fort Payne what percent of people in churches are actually regenerate. It’s a hard-to-measure question, but a good one. Tim Keller writes in Prodigal God (strongly recommend):

The elder brother’s problem is his self-righteousness, the way he uses his moral record to put God and others in his debt to control them and get them to do what he wants.  His spiritual problem is the radical insecurity that comes from basing his self-image on achievements and performance, so he must endlessly prop up his sense of righteousness by putting others down and finding fault.  As one of my teachers in seminary put it, the main barrier between Pharisees and God is “not their sins, but their damnable good works.” – Tim Keller

Churches are filled with older brothers that are lost inside. There are also plenty of folks in our cities lost on the outside. We need to reach them both, making as Paul said: “One new man.” More about that tomorrow.

We interrupt this blog series for a special announcement…

It looks like I came home from Fort Payne, Alabama, with more than a few goofy sign pictures. The pastor was talking about all the folks in the church who had come down with COVID, and after I got home, I heard that the pastor himself has it. And now…so do I.

I’d never used the home test kit, so I followed the instructions carefully, including the part that said something like, “Put in the three drops and wait 15 minutes. The C line means it’s a valid test. The T line means you have COVID. The T line may be faint.” Well, my lines came up within two minutes, and they weren’t faint!

The good news is I don’t feel all that bad, no fever, just cold-like symptoms. The bad news is we missed lunch today with long-time friends and faithful blog reader Laura McGlothlin and her husband Brant, who were on a road trip from their home on the Texas coast. Sorry, Brant and Laura! June won’t be able to teach piano this week, and she will have to bump Saturday’s planned recital. Another blog reader, Tom Shaw, and I had a round of golf scheduled for Wednesday, but that’s an easy reschedule. We won’t be able to see some good friends who are hosting an open-house before they leave town Thursday. I hope to be well enough to keep Friday’s lunch appointment.

I can’t complain. We haven’t been sick since February 2019, and what I have appears significantly milder than the previous strains. However, I don’t pretend to be as tough as my friend Rick from the Phoenix area. He was planning on doing a 100-mile bike ride with his son from Denver when he got COVID. He was so sick he had to cut his ride from the 100-mile course down to the 62-mile course! (Like me, Rick turned 75 last December.)

So June and I have “found time.” June will use some of hers to practice piano in preparation for an upcoming wedding she’s playing for. I’ll continue to get ahead on these blogs since we have a trip coming up in two weeks. I have two Zoom meetings Tuesday and two phone appointments Thursday. Along the way, plenty of rest!

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps. (Proverbs 16.9, NLT)

I just returned from a whirlwind ministry trip to Fort Payne, Alabama, just southwest of Chattanooga. The trip went well, all things considered, but in retrospect, flying out of Denver at 7a, Wednesday, with a return flight from Atlanta at 7a, Friday, wasn’t such a good idea. I think I’m older than I used to be! My former Air Force boss and good friend the late colonel Jack Flannery used to say, “You should bump your limits every now and then so you’ll know what they are!” I just did, and now I know.

Anyway, in addition to fruitful meetings with the leadership of Wills Valley Community Church, I picked up fodder for a whimsical blog. My lodgings in Fort Payne, a hotel chain that shall remain nameless, boasted a Fitness Center. I finally found it, on the second floor as advertised, smaller than a standard room with a mirror on one side to make it appear twice as big. There were two pieces of equipment: a stationary bicycle that you sit down to use (they hurt my back) and a treadmill (I can walk just as easily outside). But I couldn’t have used it anyway, given the signage.

Do you see the problem? One sign says, “DO NOT USE ALONE.” The other sign, at the opposite end of the room, says, “LIMIT ONE GUEST AT A TIME.” No wonder it was empty!

So I’m out walking in the general vicinity of the hotel, and I come to this street sign:

Ruby Tuesday Lane…except there is no Ruby Tuesday on Ruby Tuesday Lane!

Lesson learned? I guess you can’t take signs too seriously in Fort Payne.

Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5.37, ESV)

No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? (James 3.8 – 11, ESV)

We all know, whether we read about it or observe it, that church attendance is down relative to what it was before the pandemic. That’s why this quick paragraph from RobinHood caught my eye:

…the Boston Celtics prepare to face the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. The second-most-watched US sports league [NBA] sold out 59 consecutive games last month, rebounding after the number of paid fans at arenas had dropped 7% during the regular season. Postseason viewership is up 14% from last year.

It’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison but there are similarities:

• Both sports and church had zero in-person attendance for a time.
• During that time, both presented programs via technology (of course, sports viewing has always been available via technology).
• Now in-person is available for both as well as viewing on a screen at home. 

Unlike churches, sports are still packing out their arenas. Why not churches? Lifeway reports that attendance is down 27% (my observation and that of the pastors I’ve talked with is that “down 27%” is generous).

Dave Wyrtzen posted an analysis:

Now that the Covid Plague is waning, the crowds are packing out basketball arenas, and here in Texas the new Ranger baseball field in Arlington is starting to fill up. We can watch everything on big screen TV but there’s still nothing like being able to see the real thing in person...Whether it’s an athletic game or a spiritual gathering, when the real thing happens, it’s not hard to get a crowd. When we gather as believers, if there’s no power of authenticity, then all the state-of-the-art media won’t be enough to get folks to stay. –Dave Wyrtzen, June 1, 2022

“Power of authenticity” – that’s what Dave Wyrtzen believes the early church had that maybe some of our churches don’t. Dave’s blog refers to the healing of the lame man in Acts 3. So is it authentic power we lack? Or authentic community? (See Acts 2.42 – 47) Or what?

I was watching the Colorado Avalanche Hockey team last Saturday night, and the Avalanche’s home, Ball Arena in Denver, appeared full…but the Avalanche was playing in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! Was the Denver gathering authentic community? I don’t think so, but the fans surely had a common and authentic devotion to the Avalanche. Maybe what needs to be authentic is our commitment to Jesus…and each other.

I’m just thinking out loud. But something is certainly different between people’s commitment to and enthusiasm for their sports teams and their commitment to Jesus or church attendance. Or, as I have quoted Annie Dillard before:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ― Annie Dillard, “An Expedition to the Pole” from Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)

I wrote a follow-up blog to the Annie Dillard quote back in February 2020. That blog contained a letter I sent to World Magazine when they published a picture of a church with seven people in attendance.

The photo of the United Methodist Church in Kansas says it all. It’s not just that there are only seven people in the building; it’s that they are using a form designed for large groups. When people expect, even demand, a particular form and refuse to change even when it must appear to be madness to any objective onlookers, it’s no wonder people looking for any sign of life and relevance can’t leave fast enough. – Bob Ewell, 2005

Maybe that’s part of the reason people aren’t coming back. They’ve discovered that in some cases, there is nothing to come back to.

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: “The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. ‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.'” (Revelation 3.1, 2, ESV)

Our pastor recently shared some powerful reasons why we should be lovers and students of God’s Word, the Bible. The great early church father Augustine was far from God, despite the prayers of his mother, when he heard God’s voice speaking through children:

Take and read. Take and read.

So he did, and the Bible changed his life. Our pastor went on to quote John Ortberg. Thank God for the Internet, it was a long list, but I found it. I present it without further comment:

John Ortberg: why read the Bible

• It generates life. 
• It creates faith.
• It provides guidance.
• It makes the foolish wise.
• It makes the faltering strong.
• It makes the discouraged hopeful.
• It is the first book to read to a little child.
• It is the last best book to read to a dying man. 
• It is so simple and yet so deep that the early church fathers and mothers used to say, “A gnat could swim in it, but an elephant could drown in it.”
• It corrects the erring.
• It inspires the daring.
• It encourages the despairing.
• It humbles those who are overbearing. 
• Reading the Bible honors God and worries the Devil.
• It reminds the lonely they have love for this life and heaven in the next.
• I promise you on your deathbed there is no book that will speak to you the way this book will. 
• If that were not enough, in this book you will meet Jesus who alone mastered life and conquered death. The story of his actions, the unmatched brilliance of his teachings, the eyewitness account of his death on a cross and his resurrection are simply found nowhere else but this book.
• Nowhere else.
• You will not find the truth your soul is longing for outside of the Bible.

So, please, for the good of your soul and the good of the souls of your family and friends, read the Bible. – John Ortberg

⁷  The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
⁸  the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
⁹  the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.
¹⁰  More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
¹¹  Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19.7 – 11, ESV)

This is the last in our series of blogs on following the pattern from 1 Timothy 4.12:

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example

• in speech,
• in conduct,
• in love,
• in faith,
• in purity. (1 Timothy 4.12, ESV), bulleted for clarity)

I wish I didn’t have to write this one. It’s so simple: Set the example…in purity.

The Apostle Paul was explicit elsewhere:

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. (Ephesians 5.3, ESV)

So I’m not going to name any examples of sexual immorality and impurity within the church although it’s a target-rich environment out there. Recently a major US denomination was in the news for the usual: pastors and other church staff taking advantage of women, and, as usual, covering it up. One blogger was especially exercised, using Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees as a guide.

I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you [denominational leaders]! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either...

You can’t squirm out of this: Every [precious victim’s reputation and health that you destroyed], beginning with the [first victim who ever came forward to report abuse] whom you [accused of threatening the work of my kingdom—how dare you!], is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation. – Judy Wu Dominick, May 24, 2022, adapted from Matthew 23.13 – 39, MSG

But no one has a corner on the sexual impurity market: every flavor of church from Roman Catholic to charismatic, conservative, liberal, Calvinist, Arminian – one’s polity or theology doesn’t seem to provide any protection. The temptation to sin is the same as well as the desire to excuse it or cover it up. 

A long time ago I was serving in the famous Building 500 at Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. I was in charge of a 24-7 communication center (long before the days of email!). Sometimes on the midnight shift, my guys would load a large steel cart with trash and take it to another part of the building. Occasionally, they would be a little careless and run it into the wall, leaving a gash. Around the corner from my office was a full colonel, chief of administration. He called me in and asked me to tell my guys to be careful and not do that anymore. “Yes, sir.” Unfortunately, a few days later, they did it again. The colonel called me in again. “Ewell, I thought I told you not to bang into my wall with that cart anymore.” “Yes, sir. I talked with the guys…” Then he stood up, all 5-foot, 3 inches of him: “Ewell, I’m telling you as a colonel to a captain. Cut that stuff out!!” “Yes, sir.” 

I think God is tired of our excuses. “Cut that stuff out!”

Set the believers an example…in purity. (1 Timothy 4.12, ESV)