Helpful things

It's summertime, so how 'bout a little diversion? Mary Lee and I get quite a bit of joy out of God's good earth and its lawns, bushes, trees, and gardens. Mary Lee does the perennial gardens, I cut the grass, and we both work on the other stuff (fruit trees, roses, berries, vegetables, etc.) Here then are a few of our favorite things.

Arbor Day: over the years, we've planted about 150 bare root trees and shrubs purchased from Arbor Day. The trees are inexpensive. If you take out a membership, you can buy shrubs and trees for between $5 and $10. Some of their trees are available in bulk, 50 for $40. At this price, I don't get all tense about keeping them alive, so somewhere less than half survive a full year. But that's many trees and bushes so that, by now, our yard has lots of trees and bushes that started as tiny whips. A few are over fifteen feet tall now. We've planted red oak, red maple, magnolia, sawtooth oak, cherry, apple... 

Just now (and by "now," I mean now) I finished writing The Grace of Shame. Tentatively subtitled, 7 Errors that Keep the Church from Loving Homosexuals (And What To Do About Them), the book is co-authored by son Joseph and Jurgen von Hagen. All three of us are pastors, but here's a hint: one of the three is not like the others.

Get a feel for it by going over to CrossPolitic and listening to today's podcast.

The three guys behind CrossPolitic, David Shannon, Gabriel Rench, and Toby Sumpter, were great to work with and you'll want to sign up to support their work. Tell them I sent you.

Then look for Grace of Shame's release in a few months after it's turned down by all the publishers and we rob the piggy bank to get it printed and released.

If you want to help with that, please give me a shout.

I've recommended a lot of things on this blog, from books to cars. It's been quite a while since I posted on a product I wasn't happy with, but now's the time. I've always bought Delta faucets because of their lifetime warranty. If your faucet breaks, it used to be you could call them and they would send the part you needed with instructions on how to install it. Bingo!

Not any more, so I recommend you stay away from Delta faucets with the Touch2O® Technology. Delta won't fix them and you'll end up paying somewhere between $175 retail and $80 discounted to Delta to send you the (second, third, or fourth) solenoid you need to get your faucet working again....

Yesterday, a lifelong friend mentioned he'd finally taken my advice and read Luther's commentary on Galatians. My advice? I didn't remember giving him any advice to read Luther on Galatians. Who "gives advice" to anyone to read Luther on Galatians? It's like recommending to someone that he breathe air or drink water. For centuries now, everyone has said you should read Luther on Galatians, but somehow my dear brother remembers me saying it. Anyhow, I'm glad he read it.

This gets me thinking about reading, so here are four rules for Christian readers.

Rule 1: Don’t waste your time reading what living men tell you the dead men said; read the primary sources.

What are primary sources?

Back in 1977 I was taking an upper-level history course at University of Wisconsin, Madison taught by the medievalist William J. Courtenay. Titled "Medieval Intellectual and Social History," the course's texts included several volumes of Copplestone's "History of Philosophy," so it was tough sledding. It was a large lecture class, but prior to the first lecture Prof. Courtenay announced he would hold a proseminar for all grad and honor students, as well as anyone else who cared to participate. I was the "cared to participate" student who showed up...

We had our largest attendance at a pastors conference yet, this year. Over a hundred and it was a joy to be together, although the work was hard. So this post doesn't come out of disappointment in our numbers.

Sometimes a pastor needs to say to his people, "you blew it."

So, permit me to say to those of you who should have been here for the conference on child abuse and incest, you blew it. And I'll go further than that: it's my conviction that some of you didn't attend, not because you thought the conference wouldn't be helpful, but because you knew it would be. You're a pastor, elder, elder's wife, or women's ministry director and you simply didn't want to spend time thinking about how best to discover and minister to those children in your congregation who are being raped by their father, uncle, brother, or molested by their sister. 

It's easier not to know, isn't it?

Well, you can take a mulligan...

Conference information.

Conference registration.

How many souls are suffering incest, child molestation, and other forms of sexual violence in your own family and church without you realizing it or helping them?

In our culture of sexual wickedness, we are missing opportunities to show the love of Jesus Christ to the least of these burdened with shame, tormented by fear, and distrustful of authority. When they suffered, no one in their church knew the signs of incest. No one heard their cries for help. No one protected them.

Your church has men and women, boys and girls who are suffering because of present and past incest and child abuse.

Do you know who they are? Do you know...

Much of modern theology is written by scholars for scholars, but John Frame and Vern Poythress are churchmen. Most of their writing is written for the Church and can be understood by layman. John and Vern's academic credentials and the brains God gave them would have allowed them to live with their heads in the clouds. Instead, they humbled themselves and taught people like you and me. 

This is the reason we suggested to John and Vern that they allow us to put all their works online at no cost to their readers. When they agreed, Tim asked if I would design and manage the site—which I’ve done, now, for just over a decade. Back in 2005 when we began, the site was functional and ugly, and unknown. By the beginning of this year, we had migrated everything over to Wordpress (which made my upkeep of the site much easier) and were getting about 30,000 hits a month. This past February I handed off the management of the site to Mark Ward, who was recently hired by Logos Bible Software as a writer and theological instructor. Mark is also the designer of the tri-perspectival glasses and has taken the design of the site to the next level, and will continue to keep it up for the foreseeable future.

After ten years of serving John and Vern, I’ve been thinking about the ways their work has blessed us...

This comment under a recent post about Christian health sharing ministries raises a very good point which should be addressed in greater detail. Here's the full comment:

The point I would stress here is that there seems to be a strange exception to the normal vetting process that occurs in dealing with these "ministries".

If a member of your church came to you for advice, and said they had been watching a televangelist with big hair at 2 a.m. on cable TV asking for money, and they had decided to send him $300 per month, you would raise an eyebrow, and politely start asking vetting questions about how the oversight board is appointed, actuarial audits, who is being paid how much, etc. These "health-sharing ministries" tend to get a free pass. Try getting real data, not summary un-audited financials--good luck. They shouldn't get less scrutiny than the company that insures your house, for pete's sake. The new law gives a break--finally!--to large families. Go to healthsherpa.org or kaiser subsidy calculator.org, and see for yourself.

"They shouldn't get less scrutiny than the company that insures your house" is right on, and that's why I decided to place a call to Samaritan Ministries...

(Many thanks to Joe Helt for contributing to this post.)

Samaritan Ministries (not to be confused with Samaritan's Purse) is not insurance. If you're going to understand Samaritan Ministries, you must simply put the model of "buying health insurance" out of your mind. In fact, the quickest way to understand the ministry is to understand that signing up for it, instead of signing up for a traditional health insurance plan, makes you a "self-pay" patient.

That's right. The bill for your medical expenses is on you.

That sure sounds scary, right? It does to me. But stick with me. There's good news, too...