Tuesday Memo

Hi Five Oakers,

I have a couple of things I want to share with you today:

#1- You can review this last weekend's songs, readings, and prayers here.

#2- Here are your comments from the weekend service Communication Cards.

• Loved the music! Wow! 
• Loved the songs! 
• Loved the harmony! 
• THANK YOU FOR AN AWESOME HYMNAL SERVICE! My soul was fed this Sunday! Praise God!
• ...liked hymn service – next time the praise songs from Maranatha (for Dan only). [She explained to me this was to pull Dan Lukas' leg...she's talking about all songs from the 80's and 90's for a service.]
  
• Awesome music! I probably wouldn’t want it every week, but it’s a nice change once in a while. 
• Loved this special hymn time singing – wonderful change! 
• Loved the “choir” this morning – sounded beautiful. Thanks for changing up the worship. 
• Loved the music!
• Loved the music!
• What a great message today Henry! Your energy, insight, and hard-lined message hits home. God deserves all of us –thanks for the reminder! [For the record, I went too long on Saturday. One of those days where, after working all week on my message, I rewrote the entire thing on Saturday (every word from scratch). No time to edit it down and lost track of time. Sorry, folks.]
• Great job worship team! So bummed I didn’t have a guest here to see that. Never heard hymns so beautiful!
• Love the hymns, so honest and pure! 
• Really enjoyed this style of music. 
• Great songs! 
• Love the hymns!
• Loved the hymns this morning! I agree with Dan – it connects us to believers from the past – all worshipping the same God past, present, and future. Wonderful and peace filled. Powerful message and worship! Thank you!
• Really like the fact we’re doing benediction. Could we bring back non-gluten free wafers, PLEASE (can’t stand the taste of gluten free). [Here's the basics on gluten-free: It's taxing on volunteers who prepare communion (and staff who buy it, etc.) to offer options, and it's equally taxing to communicate those options when there is so much to communicate on a weekend. Keep the comments coming, though. It might change things. We might figure out a way to do this.]
• Henry – message notes still have the “Principle of the Path” series title. [Oops.]
• Let him love you as you are without a single plea for reform… it’s about grace! When I fully absorb the significance of His grace, I am inspired to be the BEST me! Thanks, for a great message, Henry! So nice to have you back! 
• So refreshing and free to sing the beautifully penned words of the great hymns! Thank you! 
• Loved the hymns – such great words and promises. 
• Awesome words of 100’s of years ago that still minister now. This is what I need not to be entertained. Thanks. A nice mix would be great not total of either.
• I absolutely loved this worship service – what a beautiful, reverent, simple, and powerful! Came to tears singing “It Is Well”. Love what you guys do in mixing things up. So meaningful today! Fantastic, fantastic message Henry. Thanks for being used! Welcome back. Loved the hymns. 
• Singing “It Is Well With My Soul” and “Great Is My Faithfulness” was a great comfort after hearing this morning that a close friend died last night.
• Loved the music. Maybe one “old hymn” a week. [Great idea. I've had it often. Even implemented it for a while years ago. Unfortunately it didn't work. It was like someone telling me I need to have a certain kind of story illustration in my message every week. It would feel forced and would often not fit the flow of my message. All of our songs have a purpose, the flow is different week to week and there a variety of other reasons it doesn't work well to mandate it. Anyway, that's why we don't do a hymn per week. Thanks, though, and keep the ideas coming. I completely resonate with the intention of it.]
  
• Welcome back Henry! 
• Welcome back Pastor Henry – you’ve been missed! Loved the hymn sing. Thanks for doing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” Justin. 
• Loved the music. Contemporary is great but traditional hymns are beautiful. 
• Wonderful music – thank you! 
• The hymns were so powerful today. The Holy Spirit was in our midst with the simplicity of words and melodies. Please do this again – the entire congregation was singing – beautiful! 
• Loved the ladies singing and the hymns! [I also loved that three of those ladies are high schoolers (actually, two just graduated, to be exact).]
  
• Thank you for the wonderful worship songs! Hymns were beautiful. 
• Enjoy the singing today, so nice to hear the congregation singing. 
• Love the hymns. 
• Loved they hymn sing! What great messages in the song’s. 
• The music was beautiful, loved the set up of the singers they did a fabulous job. I had chills and tears in my eyes. I was just very touched. Thank you. Great message. 
• FANTASTIC music this week.  Thank you for bringing the simplicity of the hymns and the voices.  LOVED it.  Of course I love the regular band setting too, but the change was great for something different. [I get the distinct impression that people liked how Justin and the team mixed things up this week with the hymns.................but I could be wrong.]

It was GREAT to be back. I love you all and I'm blessed by you, Pastor Henry

Weekend Message Q&A

I wish we could do a Q&A after every message but hopefully this is the next best thing.

Q - I think I heard you say that there was no bias in the Bible.  Although I do believe that the bible is divinely inspired and is in its original form; God's word, I have trouble believing that any interpretation that I read is not biased.   I do believe that the King James version was slanted to fit the church of England's objectives, and not necessarily exactly what God had in mind when the original was put into human control.  I know that I also interpret many passages to fit some of my beliefs...I do believe that God created all, but I think it took more than 7 days in what our current time measurement system would count as 7 days.  Please tell me how the Bible that I am able to read is not biased.

A - Not sure I can because I agree with your analysis. All translations and interpretations (and ALL translations interpret) are biased. There is, of course, a bias of belief and a godward bias even in the original, inspired text. This is a fascinating but very complex area of study. The fact is that bias is unavoidable, yet we are able to communicate with each other and God is able to communicate his message in his Word.

Some of the people who devote their lives to this kind of thing come to such wacky conclusions that they eventually lose touch with reality. I took a directed study in my doctoral program at Boston U from a professor/scholar who believes the original meaning texts like the Bible or the Constitution are impossible to recover, and the best we can do is speak of "what it means to me." It's called a "deconstructionist" approach to understanding and has its roots in linguistics and philosophy. In spite of his position, my professor (who was actually a brilliant man) expected me to understand his book on the subject. If I had said, "I hear you saying that the original meaning of ancient texts can be recovered," he would have said, "No, that's not what I said." Precisely!

Q - You referenced hades, or a holding place.  I have heard something like this from different sermons in different denominations with different names, but am not sure where any of these references come from in the bible.  I do believe in Heaven and Hell, I'm not sure where the Bible says that you go to one or the other the second that you die is, but I do believe that believers go straight to heaven upon their completion of life in this world.  Can you give me the biblical verses that describe this "inbetween place"?

A - Key texts to look at: 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and Revelation 20:11-15. The idea of "hades" goes way back in Greek mythology and is not used in the Old Testament. Other conceptions of life after death are used. Jewish literature begins using the term and general ideas around the term during the period between the Old and New Testaments, and the New Testament picks up on this to some degree but reinterprets it. As I look at this I try to remember that heaven and hell are in a dimension of reality that is most likely outside of my ability to truly understand. But God provides the truth that I need to know and that I can actually grasp, and he does it using our human language and culture to communicate it. So there are some very important facts about heaven and hell that he wants me to "get" (e.g., there is a heaven and a hell, you want to go to heaven and you don't want to go to hell, your choices in this life determine your eternal destiny, etc.), but he also wants me to humbly accept there's a lot I can't and won't ever really "get."

Q - How do I address the person who wants to believe in God, but has issues with organized religion? 

A - You might offer to read the Bible together. There's an interesting resource for doing this that you can pick up here. You could also invite them to join you for our Story of God small group experience in the fall. It's amazing what happens when someone simply reads the text and understands the framework of the bigger story the Bible tells.

Q - Can you send me the paper on remarriage/divorce? 

A - Download it here: Download DivRemarPolAug07.