Thinking Christian

3union is a band of three teenaged brothers I ran sound for in concert last Wednesday and again last night.* (They had an 18-year-old bass player with them temporarily on this tour, too). Here is an open letter to the band.

It’s not just for them, though. If you are a believer in Christ who has a gift from God you dream of using for his glory, I invite you look over their shoulders, so to speak, and read this letter along with them. Most of what I say here applies to you, too. If you are not a believer with a gift you dream of using for his glory, then I offer you a different message of encouragement.

To Brandon, Shaun, and Ryan,

Thank you for the privilege of working with you this week. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much fun in concert! As you know, my early career (before I got into all this strategy and writing stuff) was in music, and it was in those days that my wife and I became friends with your parents. What I have to say now is very similar to what I spoke as you were about to head home to Indiana this morning — things you already knew, but seemed important to say anyway. You were gracious to listen to me, considering that for a rock-and-roll sound tech, I must have looked pretty uncool wearing my granny-style, old-guy reading glasses at that middle-school concert!

I hope you don’t mind if I share this publicly. Your gifts are unusually strong: your musicianship, stage presence, communication skills, and even your “look” are all remarkable. I do not say this just because of my connection to your family and your music. You (and Alesha with you) put on an incredible concert. I’ve known a lot of musicians, but very few with your mix of talents, and none to whom I have said this before: I think you have What It Takes. (To those of you reading over their shoulders, keep your eyes open for 3union: check out their website; then find them in concert near you, or if you can’t find them, call the band and book them yourself!)

I am really most impressed with your hearts. You love the Lord, and you understand that Making It Big is not the point, but rather using your gifts in service to others for Christ. Not that you shouldn’t dream big: one of your messages is to resist low expectations and dare to “Do Hard Things” (based on a book written by two other remarkable teenaged brothers). You understand, though, that God will not give his glory to others (Isaiah 42:8; Isaiah 48:11); and that to seek great things is fine, but not for ourselves (Jeremiah 45:5), for God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5-6).

Success has its snares. Some are obvious; I will speak here of a couple that might be less so. These are not things I observed in you, rather they are occupational hazards you face. Those who are publicly successful must resist feeling entitled to special service from others; for Christ himself came not to be served but to serve, and to give all he had to give, even his own life (Mark 10:45). Temptation can also approach in the guise of feeling you are better than others, forgetting that what you are is not from yourselves but from God. The most insidious form of attack is the one wherein any of you starts to feel more important than another member of the band, or envious of one of your brothers. I urge you to guard your name: your 3union-ness.

Come to think of it, those dangers aren’t limited just to public successes.

In spite of the hazards, I pray you will follow your calling to its fullest extent, seeking God’s glory as your signpost of success. John the Baptist is a great example: always humble (John 1:15, John 1:26-31, John 3:25-30), yet fulfilling all that God had called him to be and to do (John 1:19-23). The world desperately needs the message you bring, and it needs your example, which I fervently pray will remain as excellent as it is today.

Thank you again. Say hi to your folks for us. Our family and church are missing you already!

Yours,

Tom Gilson

*That concert link is valid as of the date of writing; it may be re-purposed in a few weeks.

Tweet This Post

My friend Duane Zook, who heads up the humanitarian aid agency Global Aid Network (GAiN), phones in a report from Haiti:

GAiN has already distributed several hundred thousand meals in Haiti this week. Please help them continue their work.

You could even help with the work in GAiN’s U.S. distribution center, as our church has done many times. This is a church-friendly, family-friendly project that makes a huge difference for needy people not just in Haiti, but around the world.

Tweet This Post

Just a quick note to say that some friends of mine have been involved in leading the charge on this in Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry:

Ministries pave a spiritual path to help veterans with PTSD – USATODAY.com

Tweet This Post

As a Thinking Christian reader, if you’re one of our readers who is a believer in Christ, you may have just what it takes to help change the world from right where you are. Global Media Outreach gives you the opportunity to touch lives anywhere in the world:

Have you ever wondered what your personal ministry to others might be?
Millions of seekers come from every nation on earth with a great desire for God.
They experience the gospel through our websites and want to know the next step….

“One of the most exciting areas of ministry I’ve been involved with has been volunteering with Global Media Outreach. I’ve been amazed at the people I’ve been able to connect with from every corner of the world while sitting at my desk, in a coffee shop or my couch at home. I just love it!” — Scott, online volunteer

You can show them “the next step,” by responding to emails sent in through the Global Media Outreach website. You’ll have resources available at your fingertips to help you. Find out what it’s like to see people from all over the world respond to the love of Jesus Christ—with your help!

Check out the volunteer page at Global Media Outreach.

Tweet This Post

Book Review

“One of the most haunting things about living in Rwanda after the genocide is that killers still walk among the survivors.” (From page 249.)

I have just experienced one of the most remarkable books of my life: As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Prison Fellowship senior writer and editor Catherine Claire Larson.

Next Thursday evening at 9:00 pm EDT, here on this blog, you will have the opportunity to meet Catherine and interact with her in an online chat. I urge you to mark it on your calendar. If you can get your hands on the book before then, I urge you to do that too.

This posting will not be a complete book review. I intend to extend that out over several posts between now and Thursday. What I have to offer right now is an initial reaction.

In about 100 days in 1994, between 500,000 and 1 million Rwandan Tutsis were massacred by their neighbors, the Hutus. Murder on this scale is beyond imagining. Larson tells seven very personal stories of victims’ and survivors’ experiences—stories not for those with weak stomachs. Her reporting succeeds in walking the fine line between expressing the heart of the pain, and sensationalizing it. I’ll come back to some of that later.

The real core of her book is not about the massacre, but about what has come since. Rwandan prisons could never hold all the murderers. Large numbers of them were released. Killers walk among the survivors. And in the stories she brings us in this book, reconciliation has been possible.

Personal Reflections
I come from a very small town, from very middle-class roots. My mother’s parents were both immigrants from Norway, homesteaders in North Dakota, hard-working, God-fearing people. They moved their large family to Michigan late in the 1920s, to a small town south of Flint, which at the time was very much a thriving community. All of their children—my mother and aunts and uncles—lived out their values of hard work, love, and respect. You wouldn’t think that two of their grandchildren would meet their ends through murder.

My cousin Jeanette was jogging in a park in Lansing. It took fifteen years to identify her murderer, which finally happened through some outstanding detective work aided by a virtual miracle of evidence found after all those years. Her case was featured on the A&E channel’s Cold Case Files show. I didn’t see it when it first aired. I happened on it while alone in a hotel room on a business trip, surfing through channels with the remote control. Let me give you this advice I hope you never need: if you are ever going to see the story of a relative’s murder on TV, don’t do it while alone far from home. I could hardly bear to watch it. It wasn’t that the story was new to me; I had been keeping up with it all along through the family. But it was brutal to see it played out before me on the television screen. I could hardly stand watching it, but there was no way I could turn it off, either. This was family. At the end they interviewed my Aunt Muriel and my cousin Joe, Jeannette’s brother. I sat there watching, crying, alone.

My cousin Brian was walking his dog in an upscale gated community just west of Orlando. A car drove by, going too fast, and he called out to them to slow down. Somebody got out of the car with a gun and shot him for it. I saw him in the hospital a few weeks later, again while traveling alone on a business trip. The first time I saw him—well, to describe his condition would be to go beyond the bounds of what I ought to write. He hardly looked human. The second time I saw him, a few months later, there appeared to be hope. He was able to sit up in bed, and was in good spirits. But he succumbed to a final infection. His killer was never identified.

Massively Multiplied Pain
Experiences like these carry a pain that will never go away. They can also carry an anger that lasts. Compared to Rwanda, though, they are as nothing. Neighbors killed neighbors by the scores. Survivors lost mother, father, siblings, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends. I do not know the multiplier that would take my experiences and feelings, and match them to those of the survivors in Rwanda.

Reconciliation
But these are stories of reconciliation and forgiveness, of anger that ends even though the pain lasts—even of friendship being restored. They are stories of the work of Jesus Christ in the most battered hearts imaginable. There are even stories of the work of Christ in repentant killers’ hearts.

It took me a long time to read this book. (I hope that you will be able to read it more quickly than I did.) On virtually every page–especially in the first several chapters—I had to stop and think and pray, to recover: to recover from facing the reality of how brutal we can be to each other. Even more than that I had to pause often to recover (in a way) from the astonishing wonder of how God could work to bring forgiveness and reconciliation nevertheless.

I can forgive my cousins’ killers as far as it is my place to do so (for the loss or pain I have experienced through what they did), but to do so is to pass a far lesser test than Rwandans have faced. One of the killers is in jail for life, and since I wasn’t at trial I’ve never seen or met him. The other is unknown, and will probably never be identified. Forgiveness is no mere academic point in that case, but it is nothing like forgiving a genocidaire who targeted most of one’s own family—and then living as neighbors with him in the same village.

Could the Gospel really be that good, that really powerful, to effect such deep change in the most difficult of real situations? Then it is even better than I had realized. Not any easier, but better.

There will be more to come. Please be ready to join us for our chat on Thursday night.

As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation From Rwanda, by Catherine Claire Larson. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. Paperback, 284 pages. Amazon Price US$12.47.

Tweet This Post

You wouldn’t expect a talk on Jesus and the University to start in Calcutta, India, but that’s the context in which Mary Poplin presented her thoughts on this topic. Poplin was at one time Dean of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University in southern California, and continues today working on social justice issues related to education. She took a lengthy sabbatical in Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa there, and relays part of that story in this talk. How does that tie in to the university? I’ll let you discover that for yourself. I think you’ll find it well worthwhile.

What especially caught my attention in this message was how well it illustrates four strategic principles I’ve been emphasizing for deep social change:

1. Discover God afresh
2. Call on him through extraordinary prayer
3. Expand our acts of sacrificial love
4. Increase our intellectual engagement

Apparently she also gave a followup talk, which I just discovered while writing this blog post (iTunes didn’t pick it up for some reason). Here too is a lengthy list of other talks she has given.

P.S. If you haven’t subscribed to the Veritas Media podcast yet, what are you waiting for?

Tweet This Post

Four Strategies for Christians In a Changing World
A talk given this morning at the Chapel at Kingsmill, Williamsburg, VA.

Sometimes the culture wars are about specific topics in dispute: defense of marriage, sanctity of life, what’s portrayed in the media, and so on. For Christians, there’s also another, completely different front in the battle: experiencing God and living his life to its deepest, and demonstrating that life in its full attractiveness to the rest of the world.

Click To Play:

Or Download Here

Links to articles mentioned in the talk:
The Coming Evangelical Collapse
Christianity Today’s Response
Deep Social Change

At about 26 minutes I communicated visually in such a way that, with audio only, it’s hard to guess what I meant by the word “this” at that point. It was a reference to God’s Word, the Bible.

Tweet This Post