While working at a coffeeshop today, I got to meet a veteran missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ from Turkey.  (Hopefully "Crusade" doesn't have the implications in a predominantly Muslim nation that it does here.)  After talking with him, it struck me that he could be who God would have me give the approximately $60 in my pocket from the Lighthouse $1 Cause.  So I did.

And he thanked me and told me that they had just gone through a very low 2 months of support.  (What does $60 get you in Turkey?)  Anyways, our little cause had an international impact.  Sort of like the established churches we grew up in who supported missionaries.  I know.  It's almost like we're an actual church!

So another $1 Cause installment went out to someone not just "in need" but in ministry globally.  A good choice to be led to.  It's that easy, Steve.

Author Philip Yancey is one who has pointed out for me that the victories of the Kingdom of God look so much like defeats....and usually come out of defeats. 

It reminds me of the classic line in the movie Apollo 13 when everything about the NASA mission was falling apart and the 3 astronauts were stranded in space with little life support and navigation abilities.  The NASA Director moans that this could be the worst disaster NASA has ever faced.  The mission commander, played by Ed Harris, responds, "With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour." 

That scene reminds me of the earlier, and nonfictional, words of Winston Churchill on June 18, 1940 in the face of the fury and ease of Hitler's blitzkrieg and defeat of all of western Europe:

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

More profoundly, it reminds me of a moment for a group of freed slaves on the banks of an inland sea on the southeastern border of Egypt....or another moment on an executioner's hill on the outskirts of a Palestinian city.

God's finest hours come out of the deepest darknesses.

{A friend sent me a link to an article on how those in their 20’s continue to find church to be something to stay away from.  It is a Wall Street Journal online article excerpted from a recently published book by Brett McCracken called “Hipster Christianity: Where Church and Cool Collide.”}

In his book, "The Courage to Be Protestant," David Wells writes:"The born-again, marketing church has calculated that unless it makes deep, serious cultural adaptations, it will go out of business, especially with the younger generations. What it has not considered carefully enough is that it may well be putting itself out of business with God.

"And the further irony," he adds, "is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them."

If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that "cool Christianity" is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. It's because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same.

{As a pastor of a church that wrestles with “cool kid Christianity,” as well as its image in the eyes of our community, I know that the answer is not to strive to be “uncool” or unpopular, backward or irrelevant as some sort of martyr’s badge of holiness.  But we also have to ask that while the hipster church makeover, marketing and messaging (I know...alliteration) can attract people and even make converts, what sort of Christianity are they being converted to, as McCracken asks?  What I’m really convinced of is that God is known to allow things that draw us to first be relevant to God, “in business” with him, and concerned with what he thinks of us, regardless of how appealing that is to anyone.  As Paul defiantly spits on in his letter to the Galatians, “Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.”}

{Here is an e-mail interaction Mark had with the recipient of our $60 last week.  Thurm}

Greg...

I was the guy who dropped the $60 into your guitar case today on Washington Ave. As I walked away, I was thinking you might think I am a generous individual who likes street guitar playing. Although I would like to think that both of those assumptions are true, they do not adequately explain my actions.

I am part of Lighthouse Community Church in Williamston ( www.outofthehouse.net ) and we, as a church, have taken a challenge to be generous in our giving to others for no other reason other than to be a blessing. It is out of that challenge and on behalf of many of us at Lighthouse that I gave you the money today.

I don't know exactly why I was led to do that today with you. I also am a guitar player, (I play both acoustic and electric at Lighthouse on Sundays) so I am always attracted to guitars, but I also was intrigued with the passion with which you played. Whether anyone appeared to be listening or not, you gave it your best. That attracted me as well, as it echos my own desire as I play. And this is not the first day I've seen you play.

Anyway, just wanted you to know that there are those who just want to encourage others, and hope you were encouraged today.

Keep playing that which fills your soul, and may the Maker-of-your-soul be pleased with what He hears.

Mark

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Mark,

Thanks a bunch and thanks for following the Lord's leading.  He knows how I am getting along and i won't burden you with that, but your heart is doing right.  I didn't realize it was $60 til I counted up; was excited about just the twenty!!!

I have been very blessed lately in that my father, who was a folksinger in the 50's and from whom I've been separated since my first birthday has been connected to me via this amazing internet technology (and 50 years of prayers).

Your blessing is just that.  Thank you for your generosity.  I try not to worry about things like that for doesn't the bible teach us about the sparrow and his feathers , that God knows them all and how much more will he care for us.  But I am in such a situation where that $60 represents a majority portion of my regular weekly income.  I usually do about 15-20 at a session ( I'll play for about a couple hours) and I can play about four or five times only a week.  My 'day job' hurts me cuzza my health condition (heart) so today's blessing was a good one.

It is my hope that you are blessed by the music.  I have been working on it for a bit and in the past year or so, this whole new album has taken shape; quite a different shape that I thought it would!  So all the material on the website has been put on free download so you and you friends may enjoy it if you like.  There is folk; there is rock; there is gospel; there is something of wide variety for anyone.

Hoping you enjoy it,

I am blessed. Peace,

G