Jeff Christian – Page 7 – Bering Drive Church of Christ

August 29, 2017August 30, 2017

Volunteers Needed Friday Morning at CCSC

We plan to work with Christian Community Service Center at 10:00 a.m. this Friday, September 1. They need 15-20 volunteers, so if you live in the Bering/Galleria/West University area and are able to volunteer, please come to CCSC at 3434 Branard, or come to Bering at around 9:15, and we will carpool over to CCSC (https://www.ccschouston.org).

Also, the Trotter YMCA near Bering on Augusta is serving as a donation collection center. If you have things to donate, please drop them by the Trotter YMCA (https://www.ymcahouston.org/locations/trotter-family-ymca)

August 28, 2017August 28, 2017

What can we do to help?

Like many churches, faith communities, and organizations around Houston, we want to do what we can to help in what will be an enormous recovery effort. Over the next few days we will coordinate with Christian Community Service Center (CCSC) and the YMCA near Bering, which is serving as a staging location for emergency shelters. Most likely we will soon have opportunities to volunteer, as well as bring clothing, water, and other items to these locations. However, since our Bering Family is spread out across the Metro Area from the Gulf Freeway to Sugar Land to Katy to Spring, not mention throughout the City of Houston, all of us who are able to work in our local neighborhoods will do so as we are able, and as needs arise.

For this week:

1) As the local authorities have noted, stay safe, check on your neighbors, and continue to do what Houston has done so well over the past couple of days in sticking together and taking care of one another. And of course, if you have a specific need, please let someone know.

2) Stay in touch with one another, even if it is something as simple as texting, calling, and/or posting on Facebook to let everyone know you are safe.

3) Prepare for the long haul effort it will take to address the needs of many who will need help with cleanup efforts, housing, clothing, and other basic needs. While we want to get to work as soon as possible, this will be a long process that will take weeks and months of working together.

4) Let’s cover this whole city in prayer, asking the Lord to equip us for good works that will build up everyone we can serve, whether friends and family, people coming into our city to help, or anyone we meet.

May the Lord bless you and keep you today.

August 21, 2017August 21, 2017

And God Always Shows Up

by Jeff Christian

Before the eyes open, it’s a deep breath. Maybe two. If I’m on my side, I roll over onto my back. Another breath. Crane my neck slightly up off the pillow to look across the dark room to the one light, the red light across that most often show three numbers, usually beginning with a 3 or 4, a 5 if I’m lucky.

I throw back the sheet gently so as not to wake Jen, slide my legs out, see my way in the dark into the bathroom to put on my glasses where I leave them every night. Grab a shirt, throw it on, walk to the door, open it, walk through it, close it softly behind me, and go downstairs where my not-so-subtle tomcat yells at me for food regardless of the time.

If I am up before the timer on the coffee pot is set to go off, and I usually am, I walk over to it first thing and push the button to launch it. A man’s gotta have his priorities. And most of the time I just stand there for a moment, leaning against the countertop in the quiet as the cat looks up at me adoringly the way an animal adores the hand that feeds. I wait. Stand and breathe and pray.

And God always shows up.

Ten minutes later I’m pouring the first cup, and then walking over to my recliner to read. It’s my favorite quiet alone-time morning activity. Sometimes I’ll check my email, but I am trying to break that addiction. Morning is a time for quiet without advertisements and images of shortsighted tyrants on the computer. Morning is my time of waiting in hope, waiting in anticipation that something great is about to happen today, even if that something great may not look great to the majority of the world. Rarely is the great thing a booming announcement with spotlights and fanfare. Most of the time the great thing is a breath, a feeling, a blessed assurance.

And God always shows up.

Two of the people I love the most in the whole wide world will eventually come downstairs, usually with a hi or good morning, often a hug or a kiss. That’s one of the first moments of great. That is one of the moments when I feel the presence of the one who sustains the universe.

And God always shows up.

Get past breakfast and cleaning up and packing lunch for the day and so on and so on. I know God is there too, but usually I’m too busy making other plans to notice. No offense, God.

But when the garage door closes and I roll onto the throttle on my way to my office where I will pray and hope and join the work of new creation… oh, man… let me tell you… sometimes it’s one hour, sometimes it’s five. Sometimes like when I was learning Greek and history and philosophy in college and I would completely lose track of time until the librarian would come over the speakers on the top floor and inform us that in ten minutes the library would close, it’s like that when you are waiting on God.

And God always shows up.

These are my Elijah moments, my 1 Kings 19 moments, and they are almost always in the morning. Don’t know why. But they are. Mornings are filled with greetings. Leah walking through the door with a “Good morning.” Don with his “Good morning, Jeff.” Cynthia with her, “Okay, you got a minute?” These are holy moments to me. Sunday mornings are even more concentrated. Noah taking my hand in his and saying “Thank you” whether the sermon is good or just regular. Gail’s sweet smile and her arm around my neck. Samira’s excitement on the day of the Lord. David’s faithful nod and acknowledgment that we are at church where we gather with the one who was, who is, and who is to come. These are the holy moments in the life of the church, in a community of faith, when all the other stuff that goes with church is suddenly worth it. Church is not all blue skies and rainbows. But when you gather, and when we remember why we gather, everything makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense.

And God always shows up.

It’s similar to restarting the computer when the computer is like a fresh pot of coffee before it sits for hours and starts rolling its eyes at all the inattention. After the little electronic device has spent its day opening apps to entertain, to inform, to titillate, to direct, it gets to a point where it wants to shut down like C3PO mysteriously asking Luke if he can go to sleep for a while. But when we all wake up, at least this is my experience, no bombardment of images and frustrations and negative comments have had time to distract us from that which matters the most.

And God always shows up.

These are my Elijah moments, my 1 Kings 19 moments when God decided one day to contact a dusty old prophet, telling him to go outside, wait and get ready for what’s what. The technical Bible language is “pass by.” God tells Elijah that God is about to pass by. Same thing Jesus did that night on the lake. Pass by. It’s scary because it’s unfamiliar. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Once you get used to it, you come to realize the same thing Elijah realized in 1 Kings 19 that all the earthquakes and fires and hurricanes are not the arrivals of God. The story goes that after the earthquake came a fire. But God was in neither the earthquake nor the fire. Because after the fire came a gentle whisper, which is when Elijah pulled his cloak over his head. For me, that’s the deep breath, the walking downstairs, the ride to work, the flipping on of the lightswitch in my office in great hope and anticipation and blessed assurance that God still has something to say to the people who want nothing more than to hear that God is there, and that God still cares. Every day I wait. Every day God is faithful. Usually just a gentle whisper.

And God always shows up.

August 16, 2017August 19, 2017

The Wrong Church

By Dr. Jeff Christian

With the public reemergence of racist groups in the United States, the church may think it is our job to return hate with hate. Not according to Jesus. If a given church is not already practicing the opposite of hatred, speaking out against violence merely comes across to non-church types as opportunistic. Moreover, if a church is not clearly at all times choosing mercy over sacrifice we have much bigger issues to address than what to say in the face of evil.

With that said, recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with not so recent events like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when four little girls died, all tie back to what results when a group of people choose sacrifice over mercy, talking over listening, and yes, hate over love. In no way is this the way of Jesus.

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus speaks to the higher calling of loving our enemies. It was unpopular when he said it, and it is obviously still unpopular. Jesus begins by alluding to the conventional wisdom that seems common to human practice. “You have heard that it was said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” I have a feeling that some people in the audience that day shouted a collectively hearty “Amen!” I picture Jesus pausing a moment for effect.

Wait for it.

And then… “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Abject silence. No “Amens” on that one.

Keep in mind that Jesus said this while his homeland was occupied by Rome. But I do not think Jesus’ statement was aimed at the Romans, or at least not merely at them. Not that simple. Jesus may have been telling his people to love and pray for their own who colluded with the Romans. Their brothers who collected taxes for Rome. Their children who reported unlawful behavior to the powers that be that got them in trouble. Roman sympathizers who wanted nothing more than to guarantee their own security. Men, women, and children who raised salutes as the occupying forces passed by in their perverse parades. Those who shouted in manufactured solidarity, “We have no king but Caesar!”

Love your enemies.

The church of Jesus in 2017 has a tough road ahead. Of course we must speak out against hatred. Of course we must never live in such a way that displays evil. But we have one more even tougher job than that.

We must learn how to be united in a world divided.

The church of Jesus has practiced division far more than we have practiced unity. Drive down any given thoroughfare in the United States and you are likely to see all kinds of Christian buildings with differing brand names. What kind of message does this send? It sends a message of division.

Our divisions are a direct result of we as churches spending our time answering questions that the world is not asking. We have divided over our own issues when most people are just trying to figure out whether God is actually there, and if so, does God actually care?

We have gone the way of the world on this one by thinking that we have to create just the right church. We have gone the way of the world by giving in to the Christian advertisements that tell us that we have to find the church that is just right for me. But in so doing, if you manage to find just the right church, then if you stay with that church for more than a few years, they will most likely say something or do something that you will not like, that you will disagree with and think, “Is this the wrong church for me?”

I am the chief of sinners on this one. I have spent my ministry career banging my heart against wall after wall. Only now am I beginning to realize that the church of Jesus needs to be about more than my own preferences, and maybe even more than my locked down interpretations on my favorite issues.

This is not to say that a church should not have standards. If a church chooses hatred over love, that is not the way of Jesus. If a church chooses sacrifice over mercy, that is not the way of Jesus. When a church is more concerned with itself than it is with living Jesus, well, then that is not a good thing at all.

And that is where we are called to engage the world.

If the church of Jesus wants to do something truly great, then perhaps we should start by not claiming to be so great. Humility over relevance. We probably owe the world an apology for allowing ourselves to become so divided in the name of Jesus.

We need to tell the world that we are sorry for those times when we have returned hate for hate.

We need to tell the world that we are sorry for those times when we have practiced law instead of grace.

And then, when the world asks what all of that means, our job will be something more than a display of yet more words. It will be on that day when we can say united, “Here, we may get this wrong at first, but let’s just try this together.”

June 20, 2017

The Presentation of the Gospel

Perhaps you noticed the new look of the website. A new look, a little more security, and more accessible web presence are the kinds of things we have to mind in this age of ever-important websites. But the reasons for our website, our church, and our life of welcome are all tied to a single purpose: We want to present the story of God’s salvation among us.

We live to tell the story of Jesus. Our church is a family-sized group of people who want to welcome everyone in the same way that Christ welcomes us. And when we say everyone is welcome, we mean it.

Enjoy the new look and new content of the website. But then join us on Sunday mornings to see what this looks like in person.

Our family has so much to share.

Classes for all ages begin at 9:00 a.m. every Sunday morning.

Worship on Sunday mornings begins at 10:15 a.m.

Other meetings include our small groups in homes on Sunday evenings, Women’s Bible Study at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday mornings during the fall and spring, and other get-togethers for lunches, retreats, and family events.

April 3, 2014June 15, 2017

My Lunch with Dwain Evans

You sit and listen across a couple of plates of Chinese food to the story of God. It was truly a sweet-and-sour communion as I sat with this preacher who dared to tell the story of God in the 1960s, a God whose gracious redemption refused even then to remain silent, no matter how many people try to reign it in and put it in a neat-and-tidy-easy-to-control box. Dwain talked about calling the church to renewal in the 1960s since many of our number were leaving at that time because of strictures that were holding us back. And here we are almost fifty years later… saying the exact same thing.

I am so thankful for people like Dwain and Barbara Evans and so many others who told the story of God when it was dangerous to tell the truth. Their work and many others like them paved the way for those of us in congregational ministry who get to say and do things they prayed would happen some day.

I am so thankful.

I mean, can you imagine a church these days where people are not allowed to lead prayers during worship because of the color of their skin?

Can you imagine a church these days that emphasizes what is wrong with all the other denominations?

Can you imagine a church these days that would not allow a woman to lead singing with a voice given to her as a gift from the living God?

Can you imagine a church these days that is concerned with anything other than God’s healing redemption?

We are finally past all that.

Right?

March 22, 2014

The One That Got Away

The title of this post is misleading. She didn’t get away. Not really. Sure, she left Churches of Christ and went Lutheran, a move that back in the day would have surely disqualified her from playing the real game. But thanks be to God, some of us who stayed and kept on trudging in the CoC look upon people like Nadia Bolz-Weber and hear a voice that has plenty to say from a tradition that might actually have something to contribute back to us.

But in some ways, she did get away. She does not preach in a Church of Christ, and there are only a handful that would even think about letting her guest preach. Not a special speaker at a retreat, either. I’m talking the big times, Sunday morning, during the worship hour, doing the thing called “the sermon.” (I can think of three off the top of my head.)

So a few of us from the Bering Drive Church of Christ went today to hear this woman who has a powerful voice in American Christianity, mainly because her voice continues to turn the conversation back to God, and how God is available to everyone. Bolz-Weber talks about God in a way that makes God accessible, as though God were actually interested in communion with all people. Sounds almost like something Jesus said.

I sat next to my daughter during the last session. It was wonderful to sit next to her and listen together to a woman who spoke the Gospel with such beautiful sincerity. I wondered what my 14-year-old girl was thinking as she heard Nadia speak–(notice that in the course of a paragraph we are now on a first-name basis)–and as my daughter has watched her own youth minister at our church–(a woman, mind you)–preach a few times herself on Sunday morning. Would my daughter ever get up and speak this good news? Who knows? But I’m hopeful that we are entering a future where more than three places would listen.

February 20, 2014June 15, 2017

Slow Ride, Clear Head, Pure Heart

It wasn’t just because the weather was perfect this morning. It wasn’t about short sleeves and comfortable boots and a throttle that just begs to be twisted. It was about the heart.

Non-motorcylists think that those of us who are crazy enough to put two wheels surrounded by metal filled with flammable liquids between our legs are speed freaks. And while there is no denying the thrill of acceleration that no car can hope to match, some days (like today) are all about a slow ride.

Slow ride. Take it easy.

Some days you need to take your time. Enjoy the smells, the sounds, the low clouds rolling in off the Gulf of Mexico as they lilt above you. Meditate on your joys, hopes, and fears, and then forget them all and just go. Clear head.

This has been a hard week, one of those weeks that choose you. You don’t have a say in the matter. But for the past few days, while trying to stave off the demons of anxiety and worry, I have held on tight to that 800 pound mass of metal, and to an ancient teaching about purity of heart.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8) Some more conservative Bible types than me would probably argue that Jesus is talking about a puritanical brand of morality here where everyone sits around drinking warm water, wearing polyester suits, and sitting in folding metal chairs. I have been in those settings. And trust me, they are no fun. I could never get into a religion of avoidance whose primary goal was to articulate how bad everything is.

No, I think “pure heart” means keeping it open to the possibilities that God is in more places than we think. It’s about maintaining the eyes of our childhood, eyes of wonder, belief in miracles, and the innocence of thinking God is always right around the corner. It’s about believing that God makes good on an ancient promise to always be with us, especially during those weeks when God’s silence is painfully overwhelming.

December 3, 2013June 15, 2017

To Dream Again

Church divides more than it unites. Streets in the southern United States especially are covered with different names of different churches that send messages to non-Christians and lapsed Christians that only reinforce their negative feelings about church. But I think we can change that.

Romans 13-14 imagines a world where everything starts coming together, where the world starts falling into place in a way that makes more sense than it does on most days. It is a world imagined where we put all of our focus on Jesus in such a way that welcomes more than it divides. We give one another the benefit of the doubt knowing that God is working to shape us in ways that go beyond our delusions of precision and control.

One line in Romans 13 paints a beautiful picture: “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.” God’s salvation is nearer to us today than it was yesterday. Now that’s not literal, book-chapter-and-verse truth, right? It’s poetry. It is a clever and beautiful way of saying something about God drawing us nearer and nearer each day. But that beautiful and poetic way of speaking about God’s salvation has an impact on both why and how we do church.

First, to the why. Why church?

The biggest reason has to start with Jesus, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. If not for Jesus, we would be nothing more than a very odd looking social club. But because of Jesus, our odd gatherings each week make sense.

And I am using the word “odd” on purpose. Because where else would you see the broad spectrum of ages that you see at many churches on Sunday mornings? And so the most important thing about our gatherings is that in the name of Jesus, we come together to tell the story of Jesus, and the way that story shapes our lives. The “why” of church is basically across the board in most Christian communities: Jesus is Lord.

But the “how” is another story. How do we do church? How do we be a church? That one is harder to answer. And it is the one that divides churches. But I’m wondering if the “how” unite us in Christ?

The most important answer how starts with our hearts. Scripture is quite clear that if you get the form down without the heart, God doesn’t care any more about the form. If you read the book of Amos, for example, it’s about a group of people who have the form of religion and worship down pat. But the one problem is that they do not love each other with the love of God from the heart.

So if we place our focus on being a Romans 14 church, it might affect the “how” with more intention. This is especially true in light of Romans 14:19—“Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual edification.”

What if we strive to reflect Romans 14:19 in all of Christianity? Because when we as Christians place our focus there, on the salvation of God through Jesus, it reminds us to keep dreaming, to keep looking for the ways God dreams new dreams for us as his people equipped for God’s service.

So let’s dream again. Let’s dream and pray. Let’s start by putting Romans 14:19 front and center on the front burner of the stove. What can we do to cultivate peace and building up each other?

Let’s dream again. Let’s put just as much passion and focus that we place on our Sunday morning time together into serving others outside of our churches. I love that the ministry of the Bering Drive Church of Christ spreads around our city, and believe that there are more opportunities for service that we have not even thought up yet.

Let’s dream again. Let’s continue to look for ways to welcome others into this wonderful story and community we share. We at Bering started praying a couple of years ago that God would bless us with ten new individuals and/or families. Remember that? Talk about an overflowing cup! God answered our prayers and then some! But sadly, we have also lost some families and people we dearly miss. So you know what? Let’s pray and dream some more. Because what we have here is worth sharing.

Let’s dream again. One of the reasons we are entertaining doing a massive remodel of the Bering building is for the primary reason that we can say “yes” to new dreams. So what’s your dream? What have you been praying about lately? Me, I have been praying that God will work among us in such a way that we can proclaim the truths of Jesus boldly and without reservation in such a way that those who walk through our doors will find a home for a lifetime.

Isn’t that what we all want? A place to call home that lives according to a story so powerful that it saves our lives. Guess what? That’s the story we have. The story of “God with us.”

So let’s dream again.

October 22, 2013

Falling Leaves

As I rode to my office this morning, the autumn coolness and overcast skies seemed all too appropriate. A Volkswagen Jetta crossed my path doing thirty with a flat tire, filling the air with smoke and the unmistakable smell of burning rubber. Granted, a Houston fall does not really hit until December or January when the leaves finally begin to change. But with the sudden death of two loved ones in my church, and the death of a couple of other friends of friends, the gray skies and strong smells of this morning’s ride somehow made sense.

In 1912, Alice Guy Blanché made a silent film called “Falling Leaves.” It is about a little girl whose older sister is very ill with Consumption, as they called it back then. Trixie, the little girl, overhears the doctor tell her parents that her sister will pass away before the last leaf falls before the winter. And in a move of innocence that would only occur to an unsullied child, Trixie sneaks out of her room into the front yard with a ball of string and begins tying fallen leaves back onto the trees.

I wish I could do that today. I am surrounded this morning by broken hearts and disorientation. Emails, phone calls, face-to-face interactions and hugs dominate these days of overcast skies. I dream about having the power to make everything better, to say the right things, to quote the right Scriptures. But sometimes, the best thing we can do is to make sure that we simply embrace. Be together. Support one another. And in so doing, as a kind of physical analogy, we will tie the leaves on the trees for those of us who are no longer innocent, but who hold out hope.