Posted on

Rebuilding the Gates—Together

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow

by Larry Short, Elder Chair 

I’ve been reading the book of Nehemiah, and I’m struck by the parallels between that story and our own story here at Elim as well as the Church beyond our corner of 94th and 128th. 

In 586 BC, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians and the Jews were exiled to Babylon. They lived there in captivity (“locked down”) until 539 BC, when Persia invaded and defeated Babylon. The next year, the first straggling contingent of Jews was able to return to a devastated Jerusalem. 

About 22 years later, under the ministries of Haggai and Zechariah, the Temple was restored. But 58 years after this, when Ezra led another group of Jews back in a second return to Jerusalem, they discovered the gates and walls of the city were still in ruins. 

This is where Nehemiah’s story starts. He was a cupbearer to the King of Persia and a devout Jew. When he learned of the situation in Jerusalem, he was devastated. We can learn much from how Nehemiah responded to this difficult news: 

When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. (Nehemiah 1:4) 

Jerusalem was not “finished.” God had a plan to restore Israel as His nation! But due to the cluelessness, callousness, and wickedness of his people, some deconstruction had to occur before the rebuilding could begin. 

After his season of humbling himself, repenting, and interceding for his people, Nehemiah determined to take an enormous risk: he would approach the King of Persia with his request to visit Jerusalem and take stock of the situation there. 

And Nehemiah was shown favor by God. Not only did the king give him permission, but he also sent his own police force to secure Nehemiah for the journey as well as a “credit card” with which Nehemiah could secure lumber and other materials needed for the restoration! 

Lessons from Nehemiah 

This past year, Elim (along with thousands of other churches globally) has experienced some deconstruction of our own. And in addition to the COVID plague as well as political and social unrest, we’ve faced the enormous challenge of finding new leadership to guide us. 

I think we’ve all been tempted to give up. Indeed, some have given up on Elim and left, for a variety of stated reasons. 

But for those of us who believe God still has a purpose and plan for Elim and the global Church, I draw these important principles from Nehemiah’s story: 

  • Our first responsibility is to humble ourselves before our God, repent (2 Chronicles 7:14), and intercede for one another. This has been a hard year for all of us, and as we await a new lead pastor, it has been easy to give in to impatience or simply excuse ourselves from gospel ministry and service until “the new guy gets here.” Perhaps some have fallen into despair as the pandemic has kept us from gathering in person or reacted with anger as we tried to wrestle through some of 2020’s challenging events. Or maybe we’ve even experienced some ungodly pride as we’ve compared our handling of the pandemic to that of others! But as always, though our sins may be excusable, that does not make them right. Let’s ask God to search our hearts to “see if there if any offensive way” in us and lead us in His ways (Psalm 139:23–24). 
  • Next, let’s seek His vision for the days ahead. How does He want us to change before we can rebuild better? He may be calling us to step out in faith and take a risk. To re-engage. To reach out and share Christ’s love with a neighbor. To figure out where God wants us to plug in and throw ourselves into that task, even if it seems a little scary! 
  • Third, we need to count the cost. When Nehemiah first arrived at Jerusalem, he surveyed the damage to the walls and gates of the city. We must conduct an accurate assessment of where we are and count the cost (Luke 14:28–30). Who is with us? What are our resources? What do we need to rebuild? 
  • Fourth, every family among us must swing into action and own their part in the rebuilding. We can be mere spectators no longer. I find it fascinating how Nehemiah 3 lists each family or group by name and tells what part of the walls and gates they were responsible to rebuild. God is watching. Will our names be recorded in the legacy of building back better? 
  • Finally, we must be prepared for opposition. When the men of Jerusalem began the rebuilding process, they did so with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other (4:23). But while they stood again foes of flesh and blood, Paul makes clear that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but “against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Our weapon of choice is prayer, and in divine warfare, the occasional half-hearted supplication will not do. If we wish to reach our neighbors with the love of Christ and His gospel, we must ask our Father for His power, wisdom, and help, for hell itself hates our lifesaving work. 

Are You with Us? 

The task will take commitment and tenacity. But we know the end of the story. Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). We are a part of that Church, and He is not finished with us yet! As elders, staff, and leaders of Elim, we sense the Lord is leading Elim with kindness and love through a tough season and toward better days ahead. 

Are you with us, sword and trowel at the ready? Let’s rebuild those gates—together! 

Views – 258
If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow
Posted on

The Last Family on Earth

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow

By Larry Short

I was struck today by Pastor Steve’s thought-provoking Oasis: Elim at Home message about isolation and Noah’s Ark. You may already know that I’m a huge fan of the Noah’s ark story (Genesis 6-8). My entire office at home is decorated with Noah’s ark artwork. When I was in my 20s, I wrote a novel about the situation in Noah’s day. I’ve always found thinking about this biblical-historical account extremely fascinating. And despite the critics of the story, I have no doubt it’s literally true—because Jesus Himself said so.

In fact, I was super excited a few years back when Russell Crowe (an actor I respect) starred in a new movie called Noah. Darlene and I found the nicest theater we could watch it in and rushed to see one of the first showings.

And we were bitterly disappointed. To the point of anger, even. How could anyone possibly mess up such a beautiful, compelling story so badly?

Anyway, I won’t give my critical review here. Suffice it to say, if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t bother.

But with all my thinking over the years about Noah and his story, I had never really thought about what it must have felt like to actually BE the last family on earth—isolated with a menagerie in a huge barge, being tossed about on the waves in a world gone mad.

Steve asked some perceptive questions that got me going:

What was the downside of being on the ark?

Well, at first you think of all the obvious things. The smell must have been special. No power, no running water, no real sanitation—and I doubt you’d want to build a fire on a big wooden boat made of pitch, so how would you cook? Meals must have been rather dull.

But beyond that, there are the incalculables more difficult to imagine. How would you actually feel knowing that you were the last family on earth? How would you feel knowing that everyone else you had ever met and cared for was now dead? Talk about a feeling of isolation!

And how would you think about the future? Would you wonder, as the days dragged on, if you might have to live out the rest of your life on that big, stinky boat? How they must have longed for dry land.

What do you think Noah and his family were missing?

I am a person who loves to spend time in the mountains. Normally April would be the start of my morel mushroom-hunting season, and my son Nathan and I would head out to the Eastern Cascades, probably meeting my sister Kay and her husband Tom there, to launch out into our state’s beautiful forests in search of our elusive prey. But now, all the national forestlands, national and state parks, and camping facilities have been closed. I can still walk through the little wooded areas near my home, such as the Tacoma Watershed, which is nice, but it’s not the same. I’m itching to get back out into the mountains and hunt some mushrooms again!

And I also feel guilty when I feel this way, because I know it’s far worse for many others, such as for our friends Larry and Marilyn Nelson, who are confined in their small apartment in a retirement home, and for those who have been exposed to the virus and live in fear or who are sick and are not yet sure why. I am thankful every day not to be in that boat.

But I wonder how Noah’s sons and daughters-in-law felt when they looked out over the rail onto that endless, churning sea. Would a day ever come when things would be different? When the hope they had for a new and better world would become a reality?

Finally, what were the advantages of being isolated on the ark?

I think the biggest and most obvious advantage was that they were alive! In His mercy, God spared them from His incredible judgment against a rebellious world.

And this knowledge would have given rise to an incredible sense of hope. God had a plan. He intended to restart civilization. They would see it through. They had a second chance!

In many ways, I feel the same way about the current crisis. Yes, we are at home, isolated. But we are alive! God in His grace and mercy has spared us from this plague. And, while a resurgence is always possible and we must be diligent to guard against it, Washington State Department of Health data shows that infections and deaths in our state are on a downslope. Things will get better! God has a plan. There is hope.

Hope is incredibly important to the human condition. Many people misunderstand the word hope because it has been diluted by our culture’s current abuse of the term. But really, in my view, it is more akin to the term vision.

And the Bible says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18 KJV).

I think the same thing is true of hope. It is a gift from God to renew us (Isaiah 40:31) and keep us focused on His plan (Jeremiah 29:11). It’s hope that arises because He has saved us and has called us to love Him and live committed to His purposes (Romans 8:28)—hope that we are on a journey, and at the end of that journey will be a new and better world!

There are many good things about our current isolation: It is keeping us safe. It gives us time to think, time to get our priorities straight, time to readjust our focus. And it brings to us hope for a coming day when we will see the goodness of our beautiful Savior in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13)!

Views – 239
If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow
Posted on

Communication

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow

By Larry Short

Have you ever wondered why John 1 refers to Jesus Christ as “The Word?” That’s a very unusual way to describe Someone, when you think about it.

I suspect that in calling Christ “The Word,” John is giving us an important clue as to the nature of God. He is telling us that it is in God’s nature to reveal, to express Himself to His creation, to communicate. Christ is the “image of the invisible God.” As we gaze upon Jesus, we come to understand what God is like. He is God’s expression or communication of His nature to us.

Communication is extremely important to our lives, to our survival, to our health and happiness. Through communication we experience the world around us and come to understand our purpose.

As the Strategy Team was considering how to move our church toward the vision God has for us, we recognized the important role that accurate, timely, and compelling communication would play in achieving our goals. Hence effective communication became the first of five key objectives we decided would require focus in our five-year plan.

In order to identify and achieve key SMART goals within the first year, we have formed a team comprised of our webmaster, Dan Amos, our associate pastor, Brian Sharpe, our church secretary, Julie Pace, and myself. This team has begun meeting and working on a number of SMART goals, including:

  • Devising and conducting a survey of our membership to better understand how effective our current communications efforts are, and how we could develop more effective communications efforts.
  • Evaluate and enhance our church’s web presence (including homepage and Facebook) to communicate more effectively.
  • Evaluate other forms of communication, such as our email newsletter, pulpit and audiovisual communications, printed brochures, and signage.
  • Explore new avenues of communication made possible by recent technologies (such as text messaging and social networking platforms).

What is a SMART goal? It is one that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. Ministry leaders will be setting SMART goals for each of the five objective areas: Communication, Assimilation, Community, Spiritual Transformation, and Holistic Outreach.

In upcoming Last Words, we will dig into each of the remaining four objectives separately. So, if you are interested in how “assimilation” will make a lasting impact on the life of our church, tune in next week!

In the meantime, I want to leave you with two thoughts about effective communication:

  1. It is redundant. Different types of communication affects different people differently. In our church the pulpit is a key tool of effective communication. But we employ other forms of communication as well to support the message we are seeking to communicate. We encourage you to avail yourself of all the tools we are seeking to create in order to communicate effectively.
  2. It is two-way. Accurate communication depends on willingness to both give and receive feedback. Without feedback, we might assume we’ve communicated something well; but the person to whom we have “communicated” has no idea what we’ve been trying to convey. Please bless those who lead the various ministries at our church by providing them with constructive and timely feedback.

We’d love to hear your feedback about the direction that our church is going, about our vision and strategy. What questions do you have? How is God working the “KNOW, GROW, GO” vision into your life? Please share your thoughts on email or talk with any elder.

Views – 124

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow
Posted on

Knowing God

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow

By Larry Short

Our new vision statement has three parts:

KNOW God,

GROW together in Christ,

GO and serve, South Hill and beyond

In these next few editions of “The Last Word,” we’re going to look at our new vision statement, and how it (and the strategy which will guide our efforts over the next 1 – 3 – 5 years) has been informed by the “Reveal” survey instrument which we took a year ago this month.

The first part of our vision statement (“KNOW God”), which we will focus on this week, sounds incredibly simple. Our vision is to KNOW God. Sounds like a good, very basic goal for a church, right?

But in reality, I think this part of the vision statement is one of those things that truly is much deeper than it appears at first glance. We often act as if we think that “knowing God” is simply a matter of “knowing more about God” … or perhaps, put another way, believing specific truths about God. But Scripture assures us that when it comes to believing truths about God, that is not the whole story. James 2:19 says: “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that — and shudder.” Believing that there is One God is a fundamental tenet of Judaeo-Christian faith (Deut. 6:4). It’s a good thing to believe there is one God. But it’s not the whole thing. Believing God is One is not the same thing as knowing God.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 says:

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the LORD.”

Truly knowing God is not a philosophical knowing … it is a relational knowing. Many people may know about my wife, that she is a wise and wonderful woman. But they do not know her in the way that I know her, in that unique covenant love relationship that we have as husband and wife. When we truly know God, He also knows us. We understand His character. We seek His desires. We seek and respond in obedience to His leading. We allow Him to change our lives.

For us here at Elim, the primary tool for knowing God is our weekend worship service. In it we submit ourselves to God, saying to Him, “We want to know You!” All the elements of this service … worship, teaching, tithing, prayer … fit together for the purpose of helping us to know God better, to deepen our relationship to Him.

We consider this FUNDAMENTAL. That means, it’s the first thing that we do, the most important thing, before all else. Knowing God must lie at the foundation of everything else that we do: of growing together in Christ, and of going and serving, South Hill and beyond. If we do not first know God, we should not proceed with those other worthy goals. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200!

Please allow me to challenge you today. Can you say in all honesty, “I know God!” I don’t mean, do you know everything there is to know about God? None of us do, none of us ever will. We do not have the capacity. We will spend eternity exploring the delights of God’s character, and will never tire of it. What I mean is this: When you stand before Christ at the final judgment, what will He say to you? Will He say to you, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matt. 25:34)? Or rather, will he say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” For, ultimately, knowing God is being known by God. It is a two-way relationship.

Because knowing God is a relationship, this also means we MUST be willing to invest in the relationship in order to see it grow. The Reveal survey says we are very weak in such important spiritual practices as daily Bible reading (only 21%), prayer to seek guidance (31%) and confess sins (29%), and reflection on Scripture (a mere 17%). If only one out of five of us is seeking to hear from God daily, can we truly say we are growing in our knowledge of God? I would challenge us to greater fervency and passion in our pursuit of knowing God! Such effort should not be confused with good works; rather, it is a demonstration of a sincere faith. Hebrews 11:6 nails it on the head:

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Reveal also revealed some other interesting things about us as a congregation. It revealed that we know much ABOUT God. We embrace the right doctrines. For instance, 97% of respondents embrace the doctrine of the Trinity. However, this percentage seems to decrease as you start moving the knowledge from head to heart. For instance, only 71% of respondents placed high value on the statement, “God is personal.” Only 66% placed high value on the statement, “Christ is first.” Only 64% expressed value and understanding of their identity in Christ.

Reveal showed us that we need to make the important transition from being primarily a “head” church, to a “heart” church as well. Knowing God is not simply knowing doctrine, not simply knowing about Him. Knowing God is having a personal and life-changing redemptive experience with the Creator of the universe.

This is our primary vision for the members of this church, that we would know God and be known by Him. If there is some way that we as staff, ministry leaders, pastors, and elders can help you in your journey toward knowing God more fully, please talk with us today and let us know what that is. We promise that we will drop everything to help you make this vision become a reality in your life!

NEXT WEEK: Growing together in Christ. What role do small groups play in our church? How can we grow together in our common identity as believers, children of God, who are committed to Christ’s will for our church and our lives and who are growing into that commitment on a daily basis? How will we transition believers from worship services, where they are getting to know God, into small groups, where they are growing together in Christ?

Views – 154

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow
Posted on

We need to hear from you!

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow

By Larry Short

A group of Elim ministry leaders has been meeting, facilitated by Cindy Waple, with the goal of creating strategic ministry plans for Elim for the next 1, 3, and 5 years. In order to create these plans, we need to conduct a “SWOT” (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of Elim and its programs. In order to conduct this SWOT Analysis, starting tomorrow (February 6) we will begin a two-phase survey of our friends and members, designed to help us gauge Elim’s current health and ministry effectiveness.

The first phase is a survey instrument called “Reveal,” which has been used recently by thousands of churches to help evaluate their spiritual health and ministry functions. Phase 2, which will launch a few weeks after phase 1 is completed, will be a customized survey instrument (“SurveyMonkey”) which we are designing to fill gaps for specific information not covered in the Reveal survey, helping us to understand needs and opportunities more relevant to our specific programs.

Believe me when I say we understand that everyone is very busy, and I know how challenging it is to take time out of the day to complete an online survey! But your participation in this process will be incredibly valuable to this planning team as we seek to prayerfully prioritize our ministry efforts and resources. We need a minimum of 60% of our friends and members to complete both instruments in order for them to be statistically valid and provide useful information … but we would like everyone to help us by completing both phases. Therefore we ask you to please set aside the time required to complete both surveys, the first one (Reveal), within the next two weeks; and the second (SurveyMonkey) a few weeks later.

If we have your email address, you will receive a link by email to each survey. (If we do not have your e-mail address, it is very important that you email it to our church office at office@elimefc.org.)

Note that we are asking all members of your household who attend Elim and are 18 years of age, or older, to each take this survey on their own.

If you do not have email or internet access, we still encourage you to complete the survey. We will have computers set up at church on February 7, 14, and 21, during both services, for you to take the survey. You can either take the survey during first service and attend second, or you can take the survey during second service and attend first. Our desire is to have all people who call Elim their church home take this survey. If these times don’t work for you please call the church office and we will set up a time that does work. (Phase 1 of this survey will take roughly 25-35 minutes to complete.)

Let me close with a word about why we are doing this. In last week’s The Last Word, Pastor Martin wrote describing the job responsibilities of elders. One of those key responsibilities is “guarding the vision,” which requires us as leaders to discern what God’s vision is for the Body of believers here at Elim, and to assess accurately where we are at in achieving that vision. As elders we take this responsibility very seriously, and eagerly look forward to receiving the information that will be provided by this two-phase survey, which will help us as we seek to be responsive to your needs and to the Lord’s calling on this Body.

Also, please be praying for us (the staff and elders, and the strategic planning team) and for our Body as we go through this process, that God would use it to help us discern accurately what He is doing and desires to do in our midst.

Views – 111

If you liked this post, say thanks by sharing it.
Email, RSS Follow