These are interesting religious times in America. As I officiated a funeral yesterday, communicating hope and comfort to a roomful of people unacquainted with God, I was reminded of the peculiar era we find ourselves in as a country. If there ever was a time where we needed churches thinking differently, courageously and contextually it is now.

What are your thoughts?

Are you concerned?

It is old news?

How should we respond appropriately?

The strangest thing happened to me.

Unbeknownst to me, I ended up in a Michael W. Smith worship video.

A friend of mine contacted me on facebook telling me he saw a MWS video that has a picture of me in it. He sent me the link. I had heard rumors of this a few years ago from friends and thought, “Yeah, right. It’s just somebody that looks like me…” but I saw the video and yup, sure enough, there I am.

I’m not mad about it but I find it rather bizarre…

What’s even more bizarre is that I didn’t give permission to anyone to have my image used in the video – or any video. And I can’t, for the life of me, remember when anybody would have taken my picture to use this stock photo! I know its me, that’s for sure (and I still have that brown T-shirt I’m wearing in the video, too).

I have mixed feelings about it.

I’m not upset that I’m in a public video. (I was once on the reality TV show: TLC’s “A Wedding Story” with a viewership of five million people women per episode. It was the first wedding I ever officiated. Now that’s a lot of pressure for your first one).

And I’m not upset that I’m in a video with the CCM king of music, Michael W. Smith, himself (Megan and I met and mingled with Smitty at a friends’ house in the area a few years ago) although friends have already cracked on me for it. I just have mixed feelings that I’m in one and I didn’t know I would be in it and that nobody asked my permission.

At least my face didn’t pop up when Michael was singing about “unfaithful” or “uncaring.” That would have been awkward…

For the record, no, I am not going to sue that company and yes, several have already (hopefully jokingly) told me I should.

Well, we all have fifteen minutes of fame. It just looks like mine is inextricably linked to Michael W. Smith.

You can watch it here. I show up at the 03:15 mark.

I hear comments from people – sometimes on a weekly basis – such as, "I've never been to seminary…I'm lost in the Bible" or "I don't even know where to start" or "I just flip open my Bible and start reading, but I don't even know what I am supposed to be doing." With great regularity I hear this significant and foundational question: "How do I study my Bible?"

If you have asked these questions before, you are not alone.

For the past several years I have used five basic questions when I read the Bible.
I forget where I got these questions but they have been valuable tools for studying Scripture.
I think it works for me – and others – because of their simplicity.

These questions can be used by seminarians and scholars, as well as with those confused about the Bible and those who have never studied the Bible before. (A few weeks ago I taught a new believer to use these five questions when he reads his Bible).
They can be asked when reading a few verses or entire chapters.
They can be utilized in personal study times or in a Bible study, house church or faith community.

Consider using these questions as you explore the Scriptures:

Fresh language and expression. It sets our kingdom imaginations running. I'm challenged by Jesus' costly but worthwhile invitation to step into his way of life.

Here are some excerpts from Matthew seven:

"These
words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life,
homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are
foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words
into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on
solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but
nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. But
if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your
life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy
beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like
a house of cards."

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into
practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The
rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against
that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the
rock. But everyone who
hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a
foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
-Matthew 7:24-28

That’ll preach.

-prayer
-Scripture
-the Kingdom of God
-the resurrection of Jesus
-commonality/generosity among the believers
-a call to repentance
-addition of numbers
-teaching (mostly spontaneous)
-courage and boldness

But the most repeated words/concepts were:

-Holy Spirit (a gift of)
-Witness(es)
-Jesus
-chaos (i.e. words such bewildered, amazed, awe, astonised, perplexed, wonder, questions, great fear, etc)

It makes me wonder: are these repeated words, themes and concepts in my own life? my leadership? my preaching? our faith community? If not, it most certainly should be…

I have been particularly struck by the concept of chaos and surprise in the first church, rather than order and predictability. Hmmmmm…. I am not sure what to make of it.

More on this on a future blog post…

If you’re a teacher of the Bible – or an avid student of it – there is a great resource tool I stumbled across recently that is put by Google (Google had done it once again).

It’s called Bible Maps.
It allows you to type in any book and chapter in the Bible and uses Google earth to locate that Biblical place on the globe today.

It is still in Beta form, but its absolutely fascinating.
It has already enhanced my teaching preparation.
Check it out here.

I just bought a new Teaching Bible – a brand new bible that I plan on using just when I preach and teach.
It was hard to part with my old Bible because it had years of notes written in the margin and certain key words circled or underlined to aid my teaching.

I was doing teaching preparation in my brand new bible and started to turn to 1 Corinthians 15.
As I was turning there, I realized I went too far – ended up in Ephesians.
And I backtracked too far and ended up in Acts.
Then I started to get frustrated as I clumsily fumbled through the pages of the New Testament.
Aren’t I a little more familiar with my Bible than this? I thought. This is ridiculous.
And, even though I was by myself, I started to feel a flush of embarrassment because here I am, a pastor, and I can’t find a rather significant and large letter in the New Testament.
At this time, I was getting frustrated at myself. Really frustrated.

Until I noticed something I had never seen before: I flipped through the end of Acts…and then noticed that the next page jumped to…2 Corinthians chapter 4?

What?!?!

No wonder I struggled to find 1 Corinthians 15. The entire books of Romans, 1 Corinthians and the first three chapters of 2 Corinthians were missing from my brand new teaching Bible. It just jumped from page 1034 to page 1067.

Good thing I was just doing teaching prep in my office by myself.
Can you imagine standing up in front of a group of people teaching and saying, "Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 15 and let me read from it…well, give me a minute here…hold on…um… Well, look at that…isn’t that the weirdest thing…I don’t think I have that…in my Bible…"
Yeah, that would go over really well.
Nobody would believe me.
They would just think I’m an uneducated pastor who can’t find 1 Corinthians in his own Bible and was making up some lame excuse.
How embarrassing.

As I realized the issue with my new teaching Bible my mind was racing, asking all sorts of questions about biblical inerrancy and the theology of the authority of Scripture…and then I realized that it was probably just some absent-minded minimum wage employee at the printer who probably fell asleep on the job or pushed the wrong button or something. It’s kind of a big deal, I thought, to forget 30 plus pages out of  God’s good book…I hope he didn’t lose his job.

I wondered if someone’s salvation would be thwarted because of this guy at the printer who wasn’t doing his job. Then I started thinking about predestination and free will in regards to someone’s salvation being thwarted because of an incomplete Bible because of a mistake by some employee at the printer – but then I was thinking so hard that my brain started smoking…so I stopped thinking about it.  

I’ve contacted the publishing company and they are in the process of replacing my old, incomplete Bible with a new, complete canon very shortly.

As funny as the entire ordeal was, it really made me think: don’t we do that with our Bibles from time to time?
We stay away from the scary, confusing, hard to understand passages of Scripture that don’t fit into our theology and just disregard certain parts altogether.
It may not be 1 Corinthians, but maybe Leviticus or parts of the Psalms or that freaky book of Revelation that make us blush or whatever — fill in the blank. We sort of create a subconscious canon inside of the canon.

I’ve thought often of doing a teaching series called "The Bible We Don’t Read: Studying the Un-highlighted Parts of Scripture."

It makes me wonder: if we’re honest enough to admit it, what parts of Scripture do we disregard because its just too confusing/uncomfortable/difficult/scary?