Working Out... Reach

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
It is the nature of families and other groups to turn  inward toward familiarity, comfort, sanctuary, and safety. There is nothing inherently wrong about this; mostly, it’s just inevitable. In fact, what we find most rewarding in relationships is being deeply known and loved.

    But from the beginning, Jesus commanded his followers to complement the natural human tendency to turn inward, with a God-spurred, grace-filled reflex to turn outward: outward toward the stranger, outward toward the lonely and the wounded, outward the bewildered and the lost. The disciples were to share the Good News so others could enter God’s warm, welcoming embrace, and so are we.

    I’m training for one leg of a Mother’s Day Triathlon in Knoxville. Bambi will do the 10k walk, Whitney will do the 1.2 mile swim, and I’m to do the 25 mile bike ride. The point of this exercise is to raise money for the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center, a clinic that has been instrumental in the recovery of Whitney’s sister-in-law, Caroline, from a traumatic brain injury. While I enjoy running, I haven’t biked in years, but I’m moving out of my comfort zone to support a good cause and develop some atrophied muscles. Indeed, one of the benefits of cycling for runners, is that it develops the opposing muscles of the upper legs. Doing so contributes to leg strength and injury prevention.

    Churches that have overgrown outreach muscles, tend to be shallow and superficial. Churches that have overgrown inreach muscles tend to be sickly and declining. Churches that have strong and complementary muscles of inreach and outreach tend to be both deep and wide, thoughtful and passionate, warm and welcoming, in short, a lot like Jesus.

    With Easter almost upon us, now is a great time to give your outreach muscles a workout. Here’s some suggested exercises:

•    Invite a neighborhood child or family to join you for the Easter Egg hunt this Sunday

•    Make a special effort to bring an unchurched family member or friend to worship on Easter Sunday.

•    Circle something in this newsletter of interest to someone you know and pass it on to him or her (or forward the emailed version).

•    Tell someone going through a divorce about the help to be found in the Divorce Recovery Group starting Sunday, April 11 at 6:00 p.m. (see next page)

•    Share some java and good times with a coworker who needs a faith home at the Side Door Coffee House on Sunday Night April 11

    Again, building and celebrating community is essential to a living faith. But for an Easter people, the nesting instinct must always be balanced against the centrifugal force of love.

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Running Out of Gas

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
It’s probably been twenty years since I last ran out of gas. The last time I had plenty of excuses. That was before dashboards had idiot lights that blink, pulsate, and do everything but grab you by the lapels and scream, "You’re running on fumes, buddy. Stop, fill up, or else!"

Of course, after a while, the idiot lights become idiot proof. One starts thinking, "The last time that light was carrying on like this, and I filled up, I still had two gallons in the tank. Obviously, the light is rigged to lie. I can ignore it." So I did.

Early Wednesday morning, driving to work, the idiot light was glowing like hot, molten lava pouring out of a volcano. It seemed to get brighter and more insistent with each passing mile. Driving down Riverside, passing a number of gas stations, I thought, "I really ought to get gas today." By that point, I had ignored the idiot light for two whole days. It was time to pay homage to the gods of petrol.

Turning onto College Street from Riverside, full of good intentions, my car sputtered to a stop. I thought, "This can’t be happening to me." Looking up from my new curbside roost, I saw Jack Caldwell’s beautiful antebellum home looming large. Wonder how Jack would like me knocking on his door, unannounced at 7:30 in the morning. "Hey Jack, can you spare a cup of coffee . . . and some gasoline?"

I decided to pray instead. People far wiser and more sophisticated than I think it unseemly to pray in such circumstances. Me? In a crisis, I fire off prayers like a marooned sailor firing his last flare into the night sky, hoping against hope for a miracle.

Well, I got one. After saying my "Dear God, help!"　prayer, I turned the ignition and the car coughed its way to a shaky start. My vehicle started rolling, uncertainly, spastic and sputtering, toward the gas station at the corner of College and Hardeman. At a long red light (they’re all long when you’re running out of gas), I looked both ways and eased my way through the intersection. No blue lights or sirens. Home free! I crested the hill 100 yards from the gas station and figured, if needed, I could coast to refueling heaven. As it turned out, I made it just as my ‘96 Camry--suffering from the exact opposite problem of the ones making the news!--gave up the ghost.

Sunday, in our consideration of the 7 deadly sins, we’ll be pondering the sin of "sloth." It’s not what you think. Essentially, the sin of "sloth" is running out of gas. And the spiritual struggle is where to find the fuel you need to start up again.

Say your prayers and show up. Who knows? You might get a miracle too.

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Celebrating Grace

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Martin Luther marveled at music's power to tap into the hidden wellsprings of faith. With characteristic bluntness, he wrote, "If any (one) despises music, as all fanatics do, for him I have no liking; for music is a gift and grace of God. It drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. The devil flees before the sound of music almost as much as he does before the word of God." Thus, in addition to writing great tomes of theology, Luther also wrote hymns. He knew that for spiritual truth to reach people at the depths, they would have to sing it.

Another preacher and teacher who turned to music to immortalize his movement was Jesse Mercer, the Baptist leader for whom Mercer University was named. In the early 19th century, Jesse Mercer published a hymnal that gave shape and voice to the Baptist witness in his place and time.

Now at the dawn of a new century, a new generation of Baptists is birthing a new hymnal. Called Celebrating Grace , this hymnal debuted earlier this week at a two-day musical extravaganza at the Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in Atlanta. Members of our choir, along with several other church choirs, sang selections from the new hymnal. While I was not present for these inaugural concerts, several who were said the music was deeply moving and at times, unspeakably beautiful.

Three members of our church were key players in the creation of the Celebrating Grace hymnal. Tom McAfee was the visionary who gave shape to the project and shepherded it to completion. John Simons served as coordinating editor of the hymnal and Stanley Roberts served alongside Tom and John as part of the seven member editorial team that made the final selections for the hymnal. In one of the many articles published about the hymnal’s release, Stanley said the team longed to "provide a resource that our current generation and future generations could use for worship in the local church."

The new hymnal incorporates both a treasure trove of old favorites, as well as offering some of the best new hymns and worship songs. It will be complemented by an online resource providing additional helps for musicians and worship planners.

Due to the generosity of a family in our church, we are one of the first congregations to purchase the Celebrating Grace hymnal. We will be introducing the hymnals into our worship in the near future. And on a May Sunday morning, we will have our own First Baptist celebration of this wonderful new resource to enhance our congregation’s worship of the living God.

Long, long ago, the Apostle Paul urged the Ephesians to "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:19). Thankfully, with the debut of the Celebrating Grace hymnal, a new generation of Christians can take Paul’s counsel to heart and put it to song.

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Toyota and Truth

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Why has the Toyota recall garnered so much frenzied press coverage? Some pundits say it is because the baby boomers who pushed Toyotas into car sales stardom, are angry their heartfelt trust was betrayed.

I can’t speak for the press, but as for this baby boomer, I’d agree with that assessment.

Since I started driving at 16, there’s always been a Toyota in our family. The first was a ‘66 four-door with a straight drive on the column. My dad dubbed that little car the “Blue Bullet.” The name stuck out of humor, rather than accuracy. A “bullet” it was not. More like a golf cart on steroids.

I can still remember the smell of the clutch burning as my older sister learned to drive a manual transmission on that car. At least I think it was the clutch. It may have been my dad’s simmering temper boiling over. In fact, all three of the Setzer kids learned to drive in the Blue Bullet. Eventually, I took it to college and then to seminary. I drove it until--quite literally--the drive shaft fell off.

In the early 80s, Bambi and I bought our first new car: a 1983 Toyota Tercel. The interest rate was 17%! But it turned out to be a good buy because I kept that car forever. It had over 200,000 miles on it when I finally retired it 20 years later. The time came when fixing the AC would cost twice what the car was worth. I sold it for a few hundred bucks to some fellow who didn’t mind driving around Macon in July with the windows down.

Then there was the “Bean Mobile,” a ‘81 Tercel my dad gave me when we needed an extra car. Whitney coined that name after declaring I looked like Mr. Bean, the British comedian, driving around in his too-small car. Later, we bought a ‘96 and ‘06 Camry that we still drive. Every one of those cars has been a low-maintenance, high-value, long-lived wonder.

So do I, a baby boomer Toyota loyalist, feel betrayed by Toyota dragging its feet to address a serious safety defect? You bet I do. I thought here was a company where quality and integrity really counted. Turns out for the right price, those values can be compromised, if not sold out altogether.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said “Let your yes be yes and your no be no” (Matthew 5:33-37). In other words, be a person--or company--of such integrity, you don’t have to resort to swearing, or covert tactics, or eating humble pie during a Congressional hearing. Tell the truth, even when it hurts. I hope I am that kind of person. I know Jesus was. And with the Toyota exposé, I’ve been reminded yet again: there’s only one Name that will never let you down.

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'Tis So Tweet to Trust...

A “Twitter Bible,” anyone?

For the uninitiated, “Twitter” is a web-based service that allows users to send messages of up to 140 characters to whoever is “following” the sender via a computer or cell phone. A lot of folks love Twitter, and there have been times, such as the recent disaster in Haiti, when this technology proved invaluable. But as a rule, there’s no one I find sufficiently interesting--myself included!--that I wish to know whatever free-floating association passes through their mind every hour or two.

But what if one could receive “tweets” (messages via Twitter) throughout the day . . . from God?! That’s the idea behind the Twitter Bible.

Some German Christians summarized key passages from the Bible into terse, Twitter-sized messages. Some of the imagined tweets from Jesus include, "40 days without food. Satan doing a full court temptation press. Does he really think he can win?"; "5 loaves + 2 fishes x the power of God = Fish and Chips for 5,000! Thanks for your lunch kid!"; "Watching my disciples as I ascend to heaven. They look helpless. Will send Holy Spirit soon."

The German language “Twitter Bible” fits over 31,000 verses of the Bible into just under 4,000 rapid-fire messages. For someone who made it though high school, CliffsNotes in hand, I must confess a certain appeal. But if Mrs. Lithgo, my English teacher, was right--that reducing Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native to a soulless summary guts the work of its majesty and power--how much more so the Bible?

In fact, though Tweets are new, reducing the Bible to snippets of folk wisdom is not. Very few Christians have read so much as a single Gospel, much less the whole Bible. For far too many of us, our “Bible” consists of a few memorable sayings we think came from the Bible. Here’s a hint: “Time heals all wounds” and “Money is the root of evil” are not in the Bible.

For serious Christians, the Bible is our primary source of knowledge about Jesus. It is difficult to know, love, and follow Jesus without a working knowledge of the Gospels that tell his story, the New Testament letters that think through the implications of his claims, and the Old Testament that was Jesus’ Bible.

That’s why at the First Baptist Church of Christ, we are listening to the whole of the New Testament during the 40 days of Lent. And that’s why this Sunday night, we are beginning a three- Sunday night series on “How We Read the Bible about Moral Issues.” Because we want to do more than tweet the Bible. We want to learn how to plumb the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) in finding direction and meaning for our lives today.

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What's to Love About Macon?

Let me tell you a dirty little secret about Macon, Georgia.

No, let’s start over. Let me tell you some of the reasons I love Macon, Georgia. I love Macon because its people are warm and friendly, its southern cooking second-to-none, and its weather--the current winter a notable exception--is temperate year round. I love Macon because Sherman spared our fair city on his infamous “March to the Sea,” for reasons the historians continue to debate. At any rate, because Macon was spared, it is home to some of the most beautiful antebellum homes in Georgia. I love Macon because of its rich heritage of music, from Gospel to soul to southern rock. I love Macon because of the great stories locals tell about ghosts in the Hay House, Clark Gable learning to speak “southern” in Macon during the filming of “Gone with the Wind,” and such strange and tortured souls as Anjette Lyles who liked to add a dash of arsenic poison to buttermilk.

Yes, there’s a lot of reasons to love Macon, Georgia, and all of them swell my chest with pride.

But there is a shameful secret about Macon that needs to be said aloud, even in a “family newsletter” like this: our city is home to one of the most thriving “massage spa” cultures in the Southeast. Most such “Asian spas” have nothing to do with the therapeutic, medically sanctioned massage practiced by certified professionals. Many such self-proclaimed “spas” are simply fronts for seedy and illegal activity.

There are 25 “massage parlors” or “Asian spas” in Macon, a city of approximately 93,000 people. San Francisco, 10 times the size of Macon, has only 99. Why is Macon such a hotbed for this type of “establishment”? The fact that we are located at the intersection of two interstate arteries, plays a part, but the main reason is that Macon--unlike any other city of comparable size in Georgia--has no licensing or other requirements  regulating the “massage parlor” industry.

What goes on in illicit massage parlors is not a “victimless crime.” Underage minors and internationals who can barely speak English--lured into the “trade” under false pretenses--are routinely pressed into service as “massage therapists.” The Lord who began his ministry proclaiming “release to the captives” (Luke 4:18) would surely include such girls and women in his promised liberation for the oppressed.

There is a growing, interfaith coalition of clergy and lay leaders, of which I am a part, determined to address this blight in our community. Thankfully, the Bibb County Commissioners are poised to pass needed legislation at their March 2 meeting. God willing, the Mayor and Macon City Council will be next.

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Seven Deadly Sins

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Years ago, at the old Baptist hospital in downtown Atlanta, I learned something of the craft of pastoral counseling. One day a week, I sat with several other counselors-in-training, and wrestled with real-world cases of mental and emotional illness. Under the supervision of skilled professional counselors, we also practiced what we were learning at various out-patient clinics around Atlanta.

One of the tools I was given was the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders." It was an encyclopedia of knowledge about the diagnosis and treatment of emotional disorders and full-blown mental illness. By consulting this manual, a counselor could draw on the received wisdom of how a particular disorder functioned and was best treated.

Fifteen hundred years before the DSM made its debut, Christian tradition developed such a diagnostic tool: it was and is called the "Seven Deadly Sins." The Seven Deadly Sins were not so much bad things to be avoided as they are windows on the soul. They were keys to understanding why otherwise intelligent and well-meaning human beings, keep doing harm to themselves and one another.

One modern interpreter has dubbed the Seven Deadly Sins "Seven Habits of Highly Destructive People." That gets to the nub of the matter. These seven character disorders are "deadly" because they set us on a course of becoming someone we don’t want to be. If one persists blindly and doggedly in any of these paths, long enough, the end-game is moral and spiritual disintegration or "death"--certainly "death" to the kind of vibrantly alive, fully-formed person we see in Jesus.

With the possible exception of envy, each of the seven deadly sins has something good at its heart: pride (healthy self-esteem), anger (righteous indignation), sloth (renewing leisure), greed (motivation), gluttony (appetite), and lust (God-given sexual desire). Instead of viewing the "deadlies" as inherently bad, they are best understood as the extreme end of a spectrum beginning with something positive. But when otherwise natural and desirable dimensions of our humanity become all-consuming--in theological language, gods--they destroy us. For example, the problem with the glutton is not delighting in good food and drink; the Bible commends such enjoyment (Psalm 104:15-16) and Jesus practiced it (Matthew 11:19). The problem with gluttony is trying to satisfy with excessive food and drink the hunger and thirst for something, Someone, else.

Starting this Sunday and continuing through Lent, we’ll be asking, "What’s So Deadly about the Seven Deadly Sins?" Each Sunday, the sermon will address one of seven proven ways of doing serious damage to oneself and others. Why bother? Because 1,500 years of Christian reelection suggests recognizing the true shape of our bondage is the first step in getting free.

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