Planting is Fun!

It's spring, and in Pittsburgh it is only just now starting to get warm enough to plant and garden. BUT that's not the kind of planting I have in mind. I'm thinking of planting a church. A lot of people have trouble even wrapping their minds around the idea of "planting a church." What does that mean? How in the world do you plant a church? Why in the world would anyone plant a church? Aren't there already enough churches to go around?

Well, here's the scoop! Church planting means multiplying. It means doing exactly what Jesus said to do:

• Go and tell people about the Gospel so they come to be part of God's forever family, too.
• Then bring those people into a context where they can grow and strengthen and even bloom in their faith so this wonderful process duplicates itself in Kingdom multiplication over and over and over again until Jesus comes back to earth!

The truth is that all churches either need to be in revitalization mode or planting mode to keep from getting stagnant. Churches have life cycles just like people and even plants, and decline is a part of the life cycle unless active measures are taken to keep vitality going. AND sometimes even active measures don't stave off the effects of aging no matter what we do! But that's another blog post ...

A Restoration Church gathering in the South Hills of Pittsburgh is a church plant! Church planting like planting a garden is a lot of hard work, but it's also a lot of fun! I was thinking about that today as we were setting up for worship tomorrow and for our lunch gathering after. I bet there's no where else in the city of Pittsburgh that twin boys (age 5) were working hard to help arrange chairs, carry plastic bins, carry in groceries and just generally give a lot of life and energy to the project of setting up for tomorrow's worship. It's pretty cool! Tomorrow those same two boys will take a turn at helping take up the offering. Their sister who is a born teacher at 10 takes the children out for a brief time of explaining the children's page we have each week that goes along with the theme for that week. Where else but in a church plant would two five-year-olds and a ten-year-old have the opportunity to develop gifts of serving in the church at such young ages? It's fun!

I think the statistics say that less than 10% of all church attenders are really "comfortable" church planting. It takes a certain kind of "pioneer heart." In my case, however I'm in the 100% category because that's what I am doing! And it's spring, and my "pioneer heart" says, "Let's get on with it!"

Insomnia and/or Heart Trouble

In the Gospel of John (chapter 3) there is a fascinating account of the midnight encounter Jesus had with a man who had a troubled heart. His name was Nicodemus. He was a man of position and influence. So much so, he was probably sneeking in to see Jesus under cover of night. Perhaps his thoughts, ponderings and questions were keeping Nick awake at night. Perhaps he was tossing and turning on his bed until finally, this particular night, he just got up out of bed and snuck off to see Jesus.

When I was a little girl (four years old), we were visiting my grandparents. At one meal we were all sitting around the large dining table when the discussion turned to my grandmother's "heart trouble." In our terms today, she probably had angina. We just called it "heart trouble." She described it as heart trouble, too. I loved to listen to adult conversation, but finally I just couldn't stand it any longer so I piped up, "Grandmother, don't you know that the Bible says, 'Don't let your heart be troubled?'" Well, everyone got a jolt and a laugh and the family got a story to tell over and over!

The fact is that in John 14:1 Jesus spoke these very words, "Don't let your heart be troubled. Don't even let it be afraid. Trust in God. Trust also in Me." Jesus was talking to His disciples on the eve of His crucifixion. He knew they were in for the shock of their lives in the coming hours and days. These were the last words He would be able to give them to guide and comfort them. "Don't let THIS (My coming arrest, trial, death and burial) throw you. You trust God, don't you? Trust Me." (The Message)

I didn't understand anything about the medical implications of angina and didn't even know the word. But I did understand that behind the physical world of pain and trouble (even in my grandmother's heart), there is the King of All (God) Who is big enough to take care of any need and trouble. I got that because my parents (particularly my mother) had taught me John 14:1 and many other verses. I had tucked these verses deep in my own heart for times when I needed to take them out to think about and hang onto!

Well, back to Nick and his midnight meeting with Jesus. Nick needed a dose of heart medicine. Nick's heart needed Jesus! As he and Jesus sat and talked that night, Jesus explained to Nick that he needed to open his heart to God's truth. In that conversation Jesus spoke one of the most familiar verses in the Bible, "This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending His Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in Him is acquitted; ..." (The Message, John 3:16 - 18)

You may also suffer "heart trouble" like Nick did. You may have spiritual questions. OR your brand of "heart trouble" may be of a different sort. You may be troubled by some addiction in your life, something that has you in a choke hold - like drugs or alcohol or even an obsession with food. You may have financial worries or some physical illness like cancer or be pregnant and not want to be. Your home may be breaking up or you might be so miserable living there that you wish it would. Whatever your personal brand of "heart trouble," Jesus has the answer for you just like He did for Nick that night so long ago.

Whatever particular brand of "heart trouble" you face, you need to know that God loves you. God sees your heart. God knows your particular need. God will forgive you and give you a whole new life. God is in the restoration business. God specializes in new beginnings!

For Nick in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago and for you - the answer to "spiritual insomnia and heart trouble" is the same: Come to God through faith in His Son Jesus. It's simple! It's the only way to get into God's forever family! And it's the only path to God no matter what anyone else might tell you - through Jesus, the only Savior!

Actually that's what we're all about at A Restoration Church in the South Hills of Pittsburgh! Come gather with us if you have "spiritual insomnia and/or heart trouble." We have been there and done that, too! We are now in the process of God's restoring our hearts by His love and grace, and we'd love to have you come along with us on this exciting journey!

The BIG Question: WHY?

The BIG question is "WHY?" We have all asked it. Something happens that is just "over the top," and we turn our faces (and sometimes also our fists) heavenward and ask, "Why, God?" At the very least, we ask, "OK, God, what in the world do you mean to accomplish by this? Are You quite sure you know what You are doing?"

Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book addressing this question following the death of his son: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. When his book first hit the bookstores, I was going through my own personal struggle with pain. I found his book at the Christian bookstore near where we lived, bought and read it. Wow! What a sad book! Rabbi Kushner's conclusion is that there are some things just too big and bad for God to do anything about them. He actually states that God is impotent in certain situations.

When bad things were happening to me, I didn't find what Rabbi Kushner wrote very comforting!

In ancient times a man named Job faced an overwhelming wave of one disaster after another: He lost his considerable wealth (oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels) and all the servants he employed to take care of them. Then the message came to Job that all his seven sons and his three daughters were caught in the house where they were at a party. A huge tornado hit the house directly, destroyed the house and all Job's children perished.

In the final blow Job lost his health with a terrible disease that made him an outcast from society and covered his entire body with painful sores. He had to go live in the garbage dump. When bad things happen to good people? Job knew all about that!

Then Job endured the onslaught of his three closest friends (and eventually even his wife) as they all gave him very bad advice for how to respond to all this pain. Job dialogues with them, but he refuses to be influenced by their arguments. Then a brash young man named Elihu shows up at the city dump and imparts his angry "wisdom" to straighten Job out. Elihu basically tells Job he isn't spiritual enough, doesn't understand God's ways well enough, isn't wise enough to know and follow God from his heart.

It is very interesting to read the ancient book of Job in the Old Testament. In chapter 38 God speaks. God comes in a huge lightning storm, and God blasts them all with His truth. It is an amazing recitation from God of His power to create, control and bring restoration.

Job's response is humble before the face of God. Job says, "I'm convinced You can do anything and everything. Nothing can upset Your plans. ... I admit I once lived by rumors of You; now I have it all firsthand - from my own eyes and ears! I'm sorry - forgive me. ... I'll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor." (Job 42:1 - 6, The Message)

Job's God is not like Rabbi Kushner's. Job's God is not impotent. Job's God is powerful, great and good! Job plants his feet firmly on the Rock, and he declares, "I KNOW that my Redeemer lives!"

That is the answer to the "WHY ?" question: God is real! Jesus is risen from the dead! God has power to create and control all the affairs of men and all the circumstances of life! God is NEVER impotent! God is always both great and good ALL THE TIME! And that's the only answer to the question, "Why ?" - every time!

Jewish Job celebrated Easter long before Jesus rose from the dead in his declaration that "my Redeemer lives."

And the Bible records that in the end - when it was all said and done - that God gave Job back (restored what was broken and lost) all he had before times two. Job received (from God's gracious hand) twice as many sheep, camels, oxen and donkeys. And Job and his wife had ten more children. Their other ten were in heaven so they had 20 children in all - twice what they started with.

God is in the business of restoring the broken! God restored Job, and He can and will restore you and me in all our brokenness! Actually that's why there is a Restoration Church gathering in the South Hills of Pittsburgh - because God is in the business of restoration!

Broken-Hearted? !!!

"My heart is broken!" Those are not just words dramatically uttered by a teen "drama queen." "She/he has a broken heart ... . " Heard that or said that?

It is interesting that when someone goes for open heart surgery to repair some mal-function or mal-formation of the heart, no one talks about that person's heart being broken. (Or, at least, I have never heard it expressed that way.) Yet, in a physical sense, the person is going for heart surgery because something is "broken."

But, the broken heart is something else entirely. What are some of the things we attribute as causes for a broken heart? Loss of "true" love? Loss of someone special and dear? Loss of a pet? Loss of a valued possession? Loss of a job, child, spouse, parent or friend? Loss in some major aspect of life? It is a long list. This is only the beginning. The "causes" are almost as numerous as the hearts that are broken.

Indeed it is true that all of the above causes and many more do contribute to the condition we label "broken heart." It is a real condition, and it happens to just about everyone in life!

AND once one's heart is "broken," there is no glue that can fix it. Rather there's something even better!

We all experience the pain of a broken heart. Then we have a choice of what we do and where we go from there. Do we crash and burn? Do we crawl behind a wall of some sort, cover our heads and cower there licking our wounds? Do we spend time lashing out at others so they see our pain and experience pain we inflict? OR do we turn our focus toward the One (Jesus) who is in the business of fixing broken hearts? Only He can restore this kind of brokenness!

We come to Jesus. We simply tell Him that we are broken and broken-hearted and need His restoring love. We ask for His help.

He doesn't take away the brokenness. He helps us use our own brokenness in outward focus toward others. A "broken heart" in the hands of Jesus is a heart that can reach out and love others more deeply than ever before due to the very brokenness we experience.

It is a wild and crazy paradox that broken hearts and broken people can be the tools God uses to restore other broken hearts and broken people in this broken world we live in! It is God's plan for reaching our world, our community, our "space" one heart at a time in relationship with God first and then with other "broken hearts."

Dr. Bob Pierce who founded World Vision and later Samaritan's Purse (now the ministry of Franklin Graham) once wrote in the front of his Bible: "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God." If you know Bob Pierce's story, it is full of brokenness and pain. Dr. Richard Halverson, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in the greater Washington DC area and later Chaplain to the U.S. Senate once said, "Bob Pierce functioned from a broken heart." And the record is clear that Bob Pierce functioned very brokenly at times from that broken heart - which encourages me, but God still used him in a powerful way to build God's eternal kingdom.

Our own personal brokenness only has value as it reaches out to others to touch their brokenness and to point them to the only One who can take brokenness and bring restoration! That's what we are doing at a Restoration Church in the South Hills of Pittsburgh! If you are broken and you know it, then come gather with us as we all experience God's wonderful grace of restoration together!

Broken Beyond Repair? Too Lost to Be Found? Maybe or Maybe Not!

Oops! O, NO! ... Did you ever have something just slip out of your hands, crash to the floor and break into a gazillion pieces?

Did you ever do something so incredibly stupid that something is broken or someone is hurt in some life-changing way and it happened all in a moment? "OOOOOOO, NO!"

Did you ever get distracted for "just a second" and find something broken beyond mending just because you lost your concentration?

Did you ever lose something very valuable - never to be seen again - all because you failed to put it in a safe place?

Well, sorry to say, I've done all of these things and lots more. The end of the story in every case is exactly the same and equally sad - brokenness! Sometimes brokenness is "fixable" and sometimes not but brokenness never really goes away once it happens - not in this life.

Once long ago in just a second of tiredness coupled with haste my beautiful, huge cut glass punch bowl slipped through my soapy hands and cracked in two in the bottom of the sink. In that case, I found a master craftsman who could glue the punch bowl back together. I used it for years before it cracked again, but the crack was always there even if it was "fixed" so it didn't leak.

Once, just once, very long ago I had a beautiful ring, an heirloom. It was hot in our 4th floor walk-up apartment in Atlanta, GA that August evening. There was no air conditioning so the door to our little apartment was standing open to catch any flutter of a breeze. The apartment was only two small rooms. I took that beautiful ring off and laid it on the dresser in the most inside room. I'm sure that's what I did! I never saw the ring again. I don't know what happened to it. No amount of searching ever turned up that gorgeous ring - it is gone forever!

My grandfather lost both his legs in a freak accident with a gun. Being a careful man, I'm sure there were many moments over the years when he wished he had never borrowed that gun with an altered chamber and certainly never failed to check if it were entirely unloaded. But that didn't give him his legs back. That didn't change the next 55 or so years Granddaddy walked on artificial legs either. But, that particular brokenness (losing both legs in a depressed economy with a wife and four children and then losing home, business, and almost every possession in the aftermath of the accident), brought a wholeness of heart to both my grandparents they never would have had otherwise!

Brokenness and loss comes to us all. It is the "what happens next" that makes all the difference!

Jesus said, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they might have life and have it abundantly." (John 10:10)

Different "thieves" sneek in under cover of night into people's lives. Sometimes the thief is pain or chronic illness. Sometimes the thief is heartache and loss so severe it takes one's breath away. Sometimes the thief is an accident or loss of some other kind. Brokenness wears many masks, and all of them are scary!

And the life pattern for life in this world is brokenness! Nothing is fixed! Nothing is ever like God intended it to be in the beginning! And there is only one Fix!

God - in His great love - for broken people in a broken world made a Way for broken lives to be mended, healed and restored. God's Way is Jesus! He said it, "I came that they (you and me) can have life and have it abundantly!" (John 10:10)

Broken lives, broken hearts, broken relationships can all be mended, healed and restored by Jesus!

Actually we have Easter to remind us of brokenness - brokenness beyond repair, brokenness beyond the lost being found, brokenness beyond healing. BUT the wonderful message of Easter is not brokenness. The wonderful message of Easter is that God sent Jesus to make all things new - to bring healing and hope and health and life! God sent Jesus to find the lost and broken and restore us all! That's the Gospel! That's the wonderful message of Easter!

AND that's exactly why there is a new Restoration Church gathering in the South Hills of Pittsburgh! That's what we are all about - brokenness and loss in many forms and finding God's restoration and healing! If that sounds like what you need, come gather with us!