Randy Greenwald

The elders of Hope Church have been wrestling with some weighty issues recently, and so this last Wednesday night we discussed a new, honest, evangelistic strategy. It goes like this: “Come to Jesus, and someday, you, too, may be able to become an elder and suffer and bleed, just like us.”

We decided that was a bit too honest, and probably not very effective.

A pastor friend wrote me a great note to go along with this. I alluded to him that our elders are facing some difficult things, but I have not told him a thing about the details. Nevertheless he said, “Read Psalm 62. This is just the crap that humans do to each other without realizing feelings are at stake. They act out of fear. All of us. Hang in there.”

He can speak accurately because he has been there. He’s walked down the path that leaders in the church must walk.

I share this not to garner sympathy for me, but to encourage prayer for leaders in the church. Those who take ministry seriously bear burdens they cannot share with even their own families. Pray that God will grant them grace and perseverance.

Pray mostly for their encouragement.

And who knows. Someday maybe you, too….

One of life’s imponderables for me has been this: how can a highly trained athlete, at the elite college or professional level miss an unhindered and unobstructed shot from fifteen feet directly in front of the basket? Shouldn’t these guys make it every time?

Seems so to me. Here is though a fascinating article on the stats and history of the shot.

The article contends that a team’s free throw ability does not correlate with its win-loss record. I understand that for a team that dominates its opponents, winning by fifteen to twenty points per game. I’d like to see the stats which correlate a team’s free throw average and games won by five points or less.

I still have little respect for teams and players with a low free throw average.

March madness comes. I think I’ll fill out my bracket based on free throw percentages.

I received this e-mail message yesterday from a friend. The entire message, as follows, arrived unscathed in my inbox.

“Our email is not working.”

I confess that I’m still puzzling over this.

Sunday, I was reading about an obscure 17th Century puritan pastor and scholar Jeremiah Whitaker. He was renowned for his preaching, but it was something about his life that people remembered. Perhaps it was that his preaching, mediated as it was through the suffering of the preacher’s life, was magnified in its power.

Edmund Calamy, a colleague and friend, said this regarding Whitaker:

Such as were best acquainted with him reckoned, that it was disputable, whether he preached more by the heavenliness of his doctrine, or by the holiness of his life. But they conclude, that it is certain, he preached as effectually by his sickness and death, as by either his doctrine or his life.

I like grits, and I have actually attended a NASCAR event (the 2007 Pepsi 400 at Daytona), and so I should have a favorite NASCAR guy, right?

For me, that would be Mark Martin, a Christian guy with a lot of class, and a terrible pile of bad luck. He’s fifty, and has never won the ‘Cup’ or the Daytona 500, racing’s biggest prizes. He was coaxed into racing a full year this year, despite his age, by an offer from NASCAR’s most elite racing team, Hendrick Motorsports. Everything was going his way. In three races, his cars have suffered two blown engines and a blown tire.

“I do have a history of not being the luckiest guy out there,” he said Monday, softly chuckling a day after yet another malfunction ruined what was on pace to be a top-five run.

Jenna Fryer, AP motorsports reporter writes that “His unbridled optimism at the start of the season was so out of character for the 50-year-old pessimist.”

A 50-year-old pessimist? I’ve never known one of those….

“I’ve been so bad over the years at judging my self-worth off of the results,” he said. “I told everyone that I am mentally tougher now than I’ve ever been in my life, and I am working at living up to that. I could run off behind the house and slash my wrists, but I’ve got some good things to focus on. I am disappointed, but I am not down in the dumps and I don’t feel worthless. I feel like I have helped make a contribution to the (No.) 5 team and I will continue to work as hard.”

Judging self-worth off results? Mark, you are my hero.

Not yet able to return to writing my own entries.

However, if I may borrow that of another, this is worthy.

It’s been a busy week and so I’ve not been able to post.

I don’t have the time now, really. However, the NYT just featured this review of one of my favorite movies of all time. If you’ve seen the movie, enjoy the review. If you’ve NOT seen the movie, you must remedy that situation as soon as possible.

See the review here.

The following is from J.I. Packer’s wonderful little book with the imposing title: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Please and indulge me in reading the entire quote, and then comment, if comments are stimulated by it.

“There is a famous old book on personal evangelism by C. G. Trumbull, entitled Taking Men Alive. In the third chapter of that book, the author tells us of the rule that his father, H. C. Trumbull, made for himself in this mater. It was as follows: ‘Whenever I am justified in choosing my subject of conversation with another, the theme of themes (Christ) shall have prominence between us, so that I may learn of his need, and, if possible, meet it.’ The key words here are: ‘whenever I am justified in choosing my subject of conversation with another’. They remind us, first, that personal evangelism, like all our dealings with our fellow-men, should be courteous. And they remind us, second, that personal evangelism needs normally to be founded on friendship. You are not usually justified in choosing the subject of conversation with another till you have already begun to give yourself to him in friendship and established a relationship with him in which he feels that you respect him, and are interested in him, and are treating him as a human being, and not just as some kid of ‘case’. With some people, you may establish such a relationship in five minutes, whereas with others it may take months. But the principle remains the same. The right to talk intimately to another person about the Lord Jesus Christ has to be earned, and you earn it by convincing him that you are his friend, and really care about him. And therefore the indiscriminate buttonholing, the intrusive barging in to the privacy of other people’s souls, the thick-skinned insistence on expounding the things of God to reluctant strangers who are longing to get away—these modes of behaviour, in which strong and loquacious personalities have sometimes indulged in the name of personal evangelism, should be written off as a travesty of personal evangelism. Impersonal evangelism would be a better name for them! In fact, rudeness of this sort dishonors God; morevover, it creates resentment, and prejudices people against the Christ whose professed followers act so objectionably. The truth is that real personal evangelism is very costly, just because it demands of us a really personal relationship with the other man. We have to give ourselves in honest friendship to people, if ever our relationship with them is to reach the point at which we are justified in choosing to talk to them about Christ, and can speak to them about their own spiritual needs without being either discourteous or offensive. If you wish to do personal evangelism, then—and I hope you do; you ought to—pray for the gift of friendship. A genuine friendliness is in any case a prime mark of the man who is learning to love his neighbour as himself.”

Toward the end of Book Three of The Lord of the Rings (which comes 1/2 way through the second volume in the series, The Two Towers) Pippin is sorely tempted to steal a treasure which the wizard Saruman had lost and which the wizard Gandalf was guarding in his sleep. This treasure was a powerfully magic stone which in Pippin’s hands threatened to cause him great harm. It was for him and all his companions a terribly frightening time.

Later, Gandalf takes some time to explain to Pippin what the stone was and to alert him to the danger he had faced. Their conversation is revealing when pondered in the light of how we sin, and how God uses consequences and pain in growing us up.

‘I wish I had known all this before,’ said Pippin. ‘I had no notion of what I as doing.’

‘Oh yes, you had,’ said Gandalf. ‘You knew you were behaving wrongly and foolishly; and you told yourself so, though you did not listen. I did not tell you all this before, because it is only by musing on all that has happened that I have at last understood, even as we ride together. But if I had spoken sooner, it would not have lessened your desire, or made it easier to resist. On the contrary! No, the burned hand teaches best. After that advice about fire goes to the heart.’