First Thing I've Learned @ CHBC

HOSPITALITY!

"Relate – have conversations after church; take people out to lunch during the week; exercise hospitality by inviting people to your home for a meal; take an interest in people, and be open to answering their questions about you; offer to read a book with a younger Christian man; offer to have someone accompany you for conversation as you run errands. Give people a relational context in which they can develop love and trust for you as a fellow Christian (pg. 46 of The Deliberate Church).”

If you're anything like me you have read this kind of thing in a book and thought, "Well, of course. This is what a group of believers should do as they live in community with one another." Well, guess what...CHBC actually does this. Actually Waukee Baptist Church (in Waukee, IA) does this too. But CHBC is a little different. It is difficult to figure out etiquette because folks are so hospitable around here. People just bring you right into their homes. I'm not saying that if you are ever here that you should just "walk in" to their homes, but this is really the kind of feel that exists out here as an intern.

We are seriously in the pastors houses all the time. Not to mention that we are constantly invited to homes, lunches, etc. with the members in the congregation. In Iowa I thought that we'd be annoying if we were just sitting around in people's homes uninvited...but these guys make you feel like it's cool to just invite yourself in. Certainly there are limits; however, Michael Lawrence put it like this to the interns, "We are running a race...You are more than welcome to come and run along side us, but don't just sit at home and expect us to pull you along...but you are invited to run with us." That basically means that they totally meant the quote above. Crazy! It's actually really humbling. There are rules of etiquette, but the etiquette is basically: "invite yourself over...and if we say no, that means no...but most of the time you'll be welcomed to come in and be around them and the others that are there." I don't think I've been encouraged to just invite myself over to someone's place in my life.

It's really amazing! Something that is as simple as the quote above is actually practiced out here. From an intern's perspective how most folks view a cell phone is how the Mark views his home study (he doesn't have one). Kind of a cool twist against the culture.

Get rid of your cell phones, and open up your homes... Let people into your lives... There's a profound thought!

Anyhow, that's the first apparent observation I've learned from at CHBC so far. Basically, it is a great model of how people in a church are to love one another...founded on a commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Examining Questions from D. A. Carson

FYI: I'm editing them out of the original paragraph format into a list.

Perhaps some practical examples will help clarify Paul's prayer [in Philippians 1:9-11]

1) What do you do with your time?
2) How many hours a week do you spend with your children?
3) Have you spent any time in the past two months witnessing to someone about the gospel?
4) How much time have you spent watching television or in other forms of personal relaxation?
5) Are you committed, in your use of time, to what is best?
6) What have you read in the past six months?
7) If you have found time for newspapers or news magazines, a couple of whodunits, a novel or two or perhaps a trade journal, have you also found time for reading a commentary or some other Christian literature that will help you better understand the Bible or improve your spiritual discipline or broaden your horizons?
8) Are you committed, in you reading habits, to what is best?
9) How are your relationships doing within your family?
10) Do you pause now and then and reflectively think through what you can do to strengthen ties with your spouse and with your children?
11) Do you make time for personal prayer?
12) For prayer meetings?
13) Have you taken steps to improve in this regard?
14) How do you decide what to do with your money?
15) Do you give a set percentage, say, 10 percent, of your income to the Lord's work, however begrudgingly, and then regard the rest of your income as your own?
16) Or do you regard yourself as the Lord's steward, so that all the money you earn is ultimately his?
17) Are you delighted when you find yourself able to put much more of your money into strategic ministry, simply because you love to invest in eternity?
18) Has your compassion deepend over the years, so that, far from becoming more cynical, you try to take concrete steps to serve those who have less than you do?
19) Is your reading and study of the Bible so improving your knowledge of God that your wholehearted worship of the Almighty grows in spontaneity, devotion, and joy?
20) At what points in your life do you cheerfully decide, for no other reason than that you are a Christian, to step outside your "comfort zone," living and serving in painful or difficult self-denial?

From D. A. Carson's book A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 128-9.

How humbling. Lord have mercy on us.

Whitefield's Self-Examination

"The ocean-hopping evangelist of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield, is best remembered for his inimitable, passionate preaching. Like his contemporary Edwards, Whitefield’s Diary reveals that his spirituality was at least as deep as his influence was wide. The book begins with a list of criteria that he used each night as a basis of self-examination.

Have I,

1. Been fervent in prayer?
2. Used stated hours of prayer?
3. Used ejaculatory prayer each hour?
4. After or before every deliberate conversation or action considered how it might tend to God’s glory?
5. After any pleasure, immediately given thanks?
6. Planned business for the day?
7. Been simple and recollected in everything?
8. Been zealous in undertaking and active in doing what good I could?
9. Been meek, cheerful, affable in everything I said or did?
10. Been proud, vain, unchaste, or enviable of others?
11. Recollected in eating and drinking? Thankful? Temperate in sleep?
12. Taken time for giving thanks according to (William) Law’s rules?
13. Been diligent in studies?
14. Thought or spoken unkindly of anyone?
15. Confessed all sins?

Each day’s entry in Whitefield’s Diary is in two parts, one page per part. On the first page he would list the specific activities of his day, then evaluate each on the basis of his fifteen questions. On the second page, according to his biographer, Arnold Dallimore, “He records any unusual activity throughout the day, but above all, gives expression to his inner self. The longings of his soul, a searching of his motives, severe self-reproach for the slightest wrong and bursts of praise to God, are all recorded without inhibition.”

How did men like Edwards and Whitefield become so unusually conformed to the image of Christ? Part of their secret was their use of the Spiritual Discipline of journaling to maintain self-accountability for their spiritual goals and priorities. Before we give all the reasons why we cannot be the kind of disciples they were, let us try doing what they did."

From Don Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (Colorado Springs: Navpress,1991), Pp. 214-215.