The Constancy of Change

They say that there only two inevitable things in life – death and taxes.  I would like to add another – change.  Just when you think that you have learned how something works or gotten into a comfortable routine, things change.  Sometimes we cause this change ourselves, but many times it is the circumstances around us that change.  This has never been truer in the world of books, missions and publishing that I live in daily.

If you listen to the prevailing pundits you can get pretty confused about what is actually changing.  Some are postulating that e-Books will replace the printed page in five years and others are predicting that e-Books will never overtake physical books.  There are surveys pointing out that reading is on a decline and that people are reading smaller and smaller amounts of content when they do chose to read.  Ironically there are other surveys that make the case that we have never had more access to written content and that more books are being written, published and read than at any time in history.

Recently there has been a lot written questioning the value of short term mission trips for both the participants and the countries where these people go to serve.  At the same time, more churches are funding and sending short term missions teams than at any time in the history of missions.  The value of indigenous missions (utilizing national workers) and business as mission have been the hot trends in recent years and yet business people in the church are still unclear about their role and nationals don’t always understand the concept of being a missionary.

Book publishing has a long and storied history where change has been incremental until the last few years.  It used to be that the only way an author could get his or her books into the hands of the public was by getting signed by a publishing house to a book contract.  This had a considerable impact on limiting the number of books that got published.  Today, virtually anyone can get a book published in print via the many self-publishing companies that have made a name for themselves.  Authors can even chose to avoid getting a book printed at all and go straight to the e-Book format and make it available for sale worldwide on their own.

In the face of this constant and confusing world, it would be easy to simply curl up into a fetal position and wish it would all go back to the way that it was.  I for one have come to the conclusion that this is not an option and that embracing change and thriving in this new world are what God is calling us to.  Just like the men of Issachar  “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do”, we are called to become knowledgeable about what is really going on around us and then formulate plans that are forward thinking.

One of the best ways that I have found to learn about the conversations that are taking place that will affect me and my ministry is to be an avid reader of blogs.  Carefully choosing a handful of blogs to read by intelligent and thoughtful Christians has helped me to stay informed of what God is doing and to hear the rumblings of change that are often right around the corner.  While I love to read books, they are better suited to in depth analysis of an issue than immediate clarification of a burgeoning controversy.  A great example of this was the recent ruckus surrounding the issue of the two views of Christian marriage – the Egalitarian perspective versus the Complementarian perspective that erupted after a blog post by Jared Wilson on the Gospel Coalition website.  Candidly, I had no idea what these two views were before this and would likely still be in the dark if not for this recent debate.

On another front, I really enjoy discovering new books that are coming out that will have an impact on the thinking and direction of the evangelical church in years to come.  One of the best ways I have found to get this information is to visit blogs that do effective book reviews and are broad in their coverage of the evangelical world.  Christianity Today magazine and their website do an excellent job of this, but my favorite blog to visit when I am looking for new books is the Booknotes Blog on the Hearts and Minds website written by Byron Borger.  I do not know how he has the time to review all these books, but I greatly appreciate his insights and perspective.

As I prepare for a new season of ministry that kicks off after Labor Day when people return from vacation, kids go back to school and churches launch new initiatives, I am excited about prayerfully taking the time to see what God is doing in our world as described on the blogosphere.  I have learned the hard way that it is a lot better for me to discern what God is doing and then get on His plan than to develop my plans and pray that God will bless them.  In a future blog post, I intend to highlight some of these coming trends and likely changes as well as new books that I can’t wait to get my hands on.

What a wonderful reassurance it is that no matter what change is coming, we serve a God who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

The Christian Resources Movement

Some time ago, John Piper wrote an excellent book called, Brother, We Are Not Professionals, with the intent of helping the clergy to understand their God given role as His shepherds and not just professional religious people.  As a missionary who is committed to the use of the written word as a God given tool for life transformation,  I sometimes need this reminder as well.  That was certainly true this past week.

In a fit of madness or simply fiscal frugality, I had decided some time ago to drive from Pennsylvania to Florida with a colleague to attend the annual International Christian Retail Show.   I now realize that road trips down I-95 can actually be fun, but Florida is still a long way from home.  As we arrived at the home of the Magic Kingdom, I was praying for divine appointments and that God would direct our paths as we met with dozens of people from all over the world.

This particular trade show has been in Orlando several times and I have been at these shows every year for the last 15 or so years.  My how things have changed.  After setting up our booth, I began exploring the various aisles and realized how much smaller the exhibit floor was than just a few years ago.  One friend that I met said that he could remember a time when there were 38 aisles and now there were just 16.  I could actually see from one end of the convention floor to the other in one sweeping glance.  Almost unknowingly, I fell into a pattern of commenting about how “things used to be” to my CLC colleague who had never been to one of these events before.

One of the benefits of weeks like this is the opportunity to meet old friends and to make new connections.  At a breakfast I was attending, several people commented that this should no longer be a show just for Christian Retailers and vendors, but should instead be a show that focused more broadly on the Christian products industry.  As I was pondering this comment, I remembered a prominent statement on the front of one of our trade magazines that reads something like “serving the 4.6 Billion dollar Christian products industry”.

I had already begun to get an uneasy feeling in my stomach about viewing what I do as simply a part of the Christian products industry when I came across a Facebook post the same day from one of my friends.  There are always some strange, fun, unusual and occasionally tacky vendors at this event.  His Facebook post was commenting on a machine that was being sold called the “Grilled Chessus” that actually makes grilled cheese sandwiches with the face of Jesus on it.  While this probably takes the concept of making no graven images of our God to a whole new level, it also woke me up to a new reality – some people really do view Christians as simply a market opportunity.

I wondered what the founders of this event 63 years ago would have thought about not just the strange things that are being peddled as Christian products these days but also about the whole idea of a Christian products industry.  While, I am certainly delighted about the variety and quality of materials that are being produced by committed vendor partners, I was struck by the thought that maybe we all need another paradigm shift.

Instead of viewing what we do as a part of some monolithic Christian products industry, we might be better off thinking of the Christian Resources Movement that got this whole thing started in the first place.  Passionate men and women were called by God to give of their time, talent and treasure to produce and distribute life giving resources that would enable the church and God’s people to reach a lost a dying world.  I am sure that when Ken Taylor first produced The Living Letters, he was not thinking about their market potential or spin off products.  His passion for his kids to understand the word of God in an English vernacular that made sense to them led to a Bible that continues to impact the nations decades later.

As the “industry” has changed over the years, we have seen a significant contraction in the number of people providing these resources in traditional brick and mortar stores and more and more being sold by secular vendors and retailors.  While this may provide some greater distribution for a select number of products, it has resulted in a diminished capacity for people to get access to the breadth of these life changing resources in various parts of the world.  I am convinced that what we need is a new understanding of our role as part of a God ordained movement and one that is dedicated to seeing a “fresh wind and fresh fire” in our generation.  We need new people (and probably younger ones) to join us in this cause and we certainly need to see more kingdom investors committed to financing this movement as they have for generations.  This will not happen if we simply produce new items designed for a market that continues to drift away from God on a daily basis.

At the end of this week, I was deeply challenged to look at my own role and ask what I might do to foster a re-commitment to a move of God in our country and the world through great Christian resources.  As a third generation Christian resources provider, I am keenly aware of the reality that I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me.  May I choose to produce and distribute books and other resources that point people to Jesus and the power of the cross so that we may even see a revival on our generation.

Thinking Inside the Box

So often the best ideas for growth and change are right in front of us waiting to be implemented.  For some reason, however, our human tendency is to see obstacles as insurmountable and to resist change at all costs.  Several years ago I was doing a training class for Christian retailers on potential events that they could implement in their stores to increase traffic and grow their ministries. (I consider all Christian retail stores to be ministries doing business).  At the end of the class, a women came up to me and thanked me for what I had shared and then went on to say that she wished she could do some of these things but simply did not have the time or energy.  While I empathized with her as I had often been tired and wishing there were more than 24 hours in a day, I had also discovered a secret.  I did not have to do everything myself.

In this age of needing to do more with less in order to have sustainable businesses and ministries, learning to utilize your visible resources to accomplish extraordinary things is more important than ever.  A friend of mine who I consider to be a mentor challenged me once when I was complaining about wanting to do some new things but did not have the time, money or people to make it happen.  He reminded me of the story of Moses who was asked by God to do miracles before Pharaoh.  When he asked God what he was going to do these miracles with, God told him to look at what he had in his hand.  The rod he has been using as a walking stick turned into a snake before his eyes.

This week, one of our bookstore teams did this very thing.  They recognized that July is a slow month and a time when we need to be creative to get people to come in.  They already had been participating in a national Wear It Wednesday Christian T-Shirt program to promote the wearing of “witness wear” all over the country on the same day.  In addition, this is a young and enthusiastic team who utilizes social media personally and wears lots of t-shirts themselves.   As a result they came up with the idea of hosting a Wear It Week in their store and engaging their customers in an innovative social media campaign.

What started out as a simple idea became a weeklong event that I will not soon forget.  After promoting the concept via e-blasts, posters, in store flyers and word of mouth they started the week by posting pictures of their customers who had bought t-shirts on Facebook.  These posts were highly relational and mentioned specific details of the people involved, why they bought the shirts and something unique about who they were.  What started out as a great idea to attract new customers into the store quickly evolved into a community building event that demonstrated the power of the personal touch and knowing your customers by name.

I was deeply impacted as I followed the growing activity on their Facebook page and saw that people from as far away a Russia were coming into our store to buy t-shirts who then discovered that we also had a store in Moscow.  Entire families came in and bought shirts for each member of the family and parents came in to buy shirts for their kids.  As the week came to a close, it became apparent that with some creative thinking inside the box of our four walls and a commitment to using what was in our hands, amazing things could happen.   To see more about what took place, be sure to like CLC Center City on Facebook.

Breaking the Routine

We celebrated Independence Day (or as my UK friends call it “Colonial Rebellion Day”) on a Wednesday this year and it felt kind of weird.  Many US holidays fall on a Monday (Memorial Day and Labor Day) or Friday (Good Friday) or even on a Thursday (Thanksgiving).  A few special days like Christmas, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Independence Day are celebrated on a specific date each year regardless of where that day falls in the week.  Of these date specific occasions, however, only Christmas, New Year’s Day and Independence Day, are truly treated as National Holidays where everything stops and we all take the day off.

Taking a day off in the middle of a work week to remember the birth of our nation, have picnics, watch fireworks and celebrate with friends was more memorable than normal for me this year.  Partly this was because we were able to enjoy the day with my brother and his family and partly because it was a break in our routine.

I think that this concept of a break in our routine is something that God intended and even built into the Jewish calendar in the form of a Sabbath each week, the sabbatical concept and the year of Jubilee.  It is something that I take far too lightly and feels pretty counter cultural.  I think that I am like a lot of people that really enjoy routine and develop habits even unknowingly.  Trying to getting me to order something new at my favorite restaurant is a pretty futile effort (my wife will certainly attest to this).

Some habits like exercise and daily times of Bible reading and prayer can be very healthy while others like eating snack foods after 9PM and watching hours of television can be harmful.  For many of us it takes something unusual for us to break our routines.  Maybe it is that moment of truth when we step on the scale after avoiding it for several weeks and we discover that we have gained far more weight than we had realized.  For others it is that moment when someone close to us discloses a hard truth about their frustration with a habit we did not even know we had (or have simply been ignoring) like leaving our clothes all over the bedroom rather than in the hamper where they belong.  Sometimes it is a big event like losing a job or loved one that causes us to sit up and evaluate our daily behaviors.

As a person that likes things to be fairly predictable, God has had to do some pretty dramatic things in my life at times to get my attention and help me see that my routines in a particular area of my life were not healthy.  In other instances, He woke me up to the reality that His plan for me might not be so predictable, but would ultimately be far more satisfying.  Leaving the secular business world and becoming a missionary was a big step of faith and took me way outside my comfort zone in my late 20s.  All the familiar patterns of climbing the corporate ladder and working towards the next promotion were totally disrupted.  Joining CLC and working in a Christian bookstore, however, brought new norms and patterns into my life that replaced the old ones, but nonetheless became habit forming again.  In recent years, God has placed me in a role where travel around the world is required and no two weeks seem to be the same.

As I watched the fireworks exploding over my head on Wednesday, it struck me that I need to embrace these moments of celebration and joy whenever they happen to arrive even if it is in the middle of the week.  As I looked around at the crowd, I noticed so many kids looking into the night sky with wonder and awe.  They did not care what day it was, it was just awesome to see things blow up, hear the booming sounds and watch the dazzling colors of the light show above them.  This simple spirit of childlike acceptance of whatever God brings into my life has the potential to change routine events into the extraordinary as He sets the agenda for each new day.

The Sacrifice of Praise

It was the third night of the Creation Festival this past week and I was tired.  I had done my best to be cheerful, helpful and generally positive at this week long music festival and outdoor camping event with my boys, but I was not happy.  For some reason, I was mad at God for changing the weather forecast at the last minute.  Just a few days before the festival, I had checked the 10 day forecast and it said that the weather was going to be beautiful; not too hot, low humidity and no rain.  How things change in just a few days.  At this point I had suffered through two days of blistering heat and storms were just about to arrive.  The night before, I was woken up in the middle of the night by one of the loudest and longest thunderstorms I had ever endured outside (actually it was also the only one I lived through outside in a tent).

The speaker on Friday night was a guy named Nick Vujicic, who is the founder of ministry, called Life without Limbs and was born without arms and legs.  Given his physical limitations, I was already prepared to be empathic, but I was not prepared to for what he had to say.  He was the most effective speaker that I have heard at three years of attending the Creation Festival.  Rather than dwell on his obvious physical challenges, he spent the entire time he spoke dealing with issues that young people (and old ones like me) deal with in our daily lives and confronting our misconceptions about the gospel and God’s power.  One of his comments was probably in response to the “Life is Good” t-shirts that seem to be sold everywhere these days.  He said, “Life is Hard, but God is good.”  Coming from a man with no limbs, I could not disagree, but was astounded at his faith and confidence in God and his sheer contentment with what he deals with on a daily basis.

Nick had really struggled as a young person with how God had allowed him to be born with no legs or arms and actually tried to commit suicide at age 10.  His parents were devout Christians and must have wondered how to understand God’s purpose for what many considered a tragedy.  One of the turning points for Nick was understanding the concept of God’s will in and through the suffering of people He created.  In a dream, God showed Nick a place in Heaven that could house hundreds of thousands of people and told him that if He gave him arms and legs (Nick’s will for his life) that this part of the heavenly city might not be populated at all.  Instead, God’s plan for his life has allowed Nick to speak to millions of people and see thousands accept Christ as their personal savior.

Ironically, just as Nick was finishing his altar call, lightning began to strike around the camp grounds and we had to evacuate the field we were sitting in.  At this point, I was continuing to be pretty upset with God as I wondered why he allowed this sacred moment to be interrupted and that more storms were on the way.  About an hour later I was standing under our group eating tent holding one of the poles so that the entire thing would not lift off the ground and be blown away.  For three hours we dealt with lightning, rain and high winds while the concerts were postponed.  My contentment meter was pretty low at that moment as I imagined trying to sleep for a few brief hours in the middle of a soggy field.

Later as I settled into my sleeping bag in a dry tent (praise the Lord), I could not help but reflect on how easy it is for me to become dissatisfied.  How like Jonah I really am.  This same week, people were losing their homes in devastating fires in Colorado and many are suffering around the world with daily challenges that I cannot imagine.  All it takes is some bad weather and I am all out sorts with the world.  On the final night of the festival, I got to hear the new version of the Newsboys sing some of my favorite worship songs (and the weather was beautiful).  As I looked around, I was struck by the immensity of the crowd and how many families were praising God side by side from so many different church backgrounds.  For one week, we were able to lay aside our theological disagreements and sing at the top of our lungs to the one who made us in the first place.  I could see how sacrificing some creature comforts made our worship experience that much richer and more meaningful.  God had our full attention as we stood in the midst of his grandeur and enjoyed the handiwork he had created in the star lit night sky and the lush wooded setting around us.  How wonderful our praise will be one day in heaven when their will be no more crying or pain and we will have heavenly bodies with all the arms and legs that we need.