are we that narcissistic?

The scenes of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan are apocalyptic and the more I watch them the more my heart breaks. Over and over the scenes become worse and as I listen to the commentary a question hit me. Are we really this narcissistic? It seems everything that we talk about when it comes to Japan inevitably points back to [the United States]. Gas prices, Nuclear fallout, wondering if that “could happen here”, the falling [US] dollar, etc. I am not pointing the finger just at you but myself also and I am just asking you to please take 8 minutes, watch the video, read the prayer, and just reflect and pray on those [directly] affected by this crisis and not ourselves. Before you begin please take a second and clear your head…let the images affects your heart and compel you to pray deeply.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG8vLbYxmpQ&feature=player_embedded]

The power of moving water is greater than most of us can imagine. Nothing stands before it. We are driven to our knees:

Father in heaven, you are the absolute Sovereign over the shaking of the earth, the rising of the sea, and the raging of the waves. We tremble at your power and bow before your unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways. We cover our faces and kiss your omnipotent hand. We fall helpless to the floor in prayer and feel how fragile the very ground is beneath our knees.

O God, we humble ourselves under your holy majesty and repent. In a moment—in the twinkling of an eye—we too could be swept away. We are not more deserving of firm ground than our fellowmen in Japan. We too are flesh. We have bodies and homes and cars and family and precious places. We know that if we were treated according to our sins, who could stand? All of it would be gone in a moment. So in this dark hour we turn against our sins, not against you.

And we cry for mercy for Japan. Mercy, Father. Not for what they or we deserve. But mercy.

Have you not encouraged us in this? Have we not heard a hundred times in your Word the riches of your kindness, forbearance, and patience? Do you not a thousand times withhold your judgments, leading your rebellious world toward repentance? Yes, Lord. For your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts.

Grant, O God, that the wicked will forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Grant us, your sinful creatures, to return to you, that you may have compassion. For surely you will abundantly pardon. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus, your beloved Son, will be saved.

May every heart-breaking loss—millions upon millions of losses—be healed by the wounded hands of the risen Christ. You are not unacquainted with your creatures’ pain. You did not spare your own Son, but gave him up for us all.

In Jesus you tasted loss. In Jesus you shared the overwhelming flood of our sorrows and suffering. In Jesus you are a sympathetic Priest in the midst of our pain.

Deal tenderly now, Father, with this fragile people. Woo them. Win them. Save them.

And may the floods they so much dread make blessings break upon their head.

O let them not judge you with feeble sense, but trust you for your grace. And so behind this providence, soon find a smiling face.

In Jesus’ merciful name, Amen.

HT: Desiring God

Black History Month 2011 Facts

February 1^st:

Carter Woodson started “Negro History Week”. He chose the second week of February because it marked the birthday of 2 people Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass.
Langston Hughes accomplished writer, poet, and journalist of the Harlem Renaissance was born February 1, 1902
“I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.” – Morgan Freeman

February 2^nd:

Muhammad Ali the “greatest [boxer] of all time” was originally named after the 19th century abolitionist & politician Cassius Marcellus Clay
The banjo originated in Africa and up until the 1800’s was considered an instrument only played by blacks.

February 3^rd:

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by an Black woman in 1958 while attending his book signing at a department store in Harlem.

February 5^th:

Madame C.J. Walker invented specialized hair products 4 African-American hair & became the first American woman 2 become a millionaire.

February 6^th:

Madame C.J. Walker invented specialized hair products 4 African-American hair & became the first American woman 2 become a millionaire.

February 7^th

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell: One of the 1st African American models in the US & was the first AA woman to start a Modeling Agency.

February 8^th

“Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.” – Nikki Giovanni.

February 9^th

During the Attack on Pearl Harbor, an African American cook named Dorie Miller shot down 2 Japanese Planes w/ anti-aircraft machine gun.
“The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

February 10^th

“Racism is man’s gravest threat 2 man-the maximum of hatred 4 a minimum of reason.” ~Abraham J. Heschel
“Your willingness to look at your darkness is what empowers you to change.” ~Iyanla Van Zant

February 11^th

“Strange Fruit” the song about lynching in the south made famous by Billie Holiday was originally a poem by a Jewish schoolteacher
On this day in 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from prison in Cape Town, South Africa after being a political prisoner for 27 years.

February 12^th

Judy W. Reed was the first African-American woman to receive a patent in 1884 for a hand-operated machine used to knead and roll dough.
Bessie Coleman (1893-1926) was the first licensed African-American pilot in the world. She received aviation instruction in France.

February 13^th

Ben Carson led the 1st successful operation 2 separate a pair of Siamese twin infants who were joined @ the back of the head in 1987.

February 14^th

In 1992, 35-year-old athlete Evelyn Ashford became the oldest woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track-and-field.
On 2/8/88 Debi Thomas became the 1st African American to win a bronze medal during the Winter Olympics & went on to become a surgeon.

February 15^th

Today we Spotlight Thomas Jennings who was the First African American inventor to receive a patent for an invention.
George T Sampson invented a clothes dryer that used heat from a stove in 1892.

February 16^th:

Charlotte Ray graduated from Howard University in 1872 to become the first African American female lawyer.
Did you know that Dizzy Gillespie was one of the founding fathers of Jazz and one of the inventors of bebop?!

February 17^th

In the mid 1800s Philadelphia was known as “The Black Capital of Anti–Slavery” ’cause of the strong abolitionist presence there.
Alfred Anderson, Father of Black Aviation, trained black aviators for 6 decades. First black to acquire a Transport License.

February 18^th

Ashmun Institute was founded in 1854 as the first institution of higher learning for African American’s. It was later renamed Lincoln University.
Ruth Simmons was the first Black female President of a top-ranked college (Smith) in ’95 & of an Ivy League University (Brown) in ’01.

February 19^th

Dr. Patricia. E. Bath (1949–) invented a method of eye surgery that has helped many blind people to see.
Jan Ernst Matzeliger (1852–1889) invented a shoe-making machine that increased shoe-making speed by 900%!

February 20^th

In 1909, Matthew A. Henson accompanied Robert E. Peary on the first successful U.S. expedition to the North Pole.
William Wells Brown was the first African-American to publish a novel, a play, and a travel book.

February 21^st

Phillis Wheatley was the first published African American poet & the first African-American woman whose writings were published.
African-American surgical technician Vivien Theodore Thomas developed the procedures used to treat blue baby syndrome in the 1940s.

February 22^nd

After retiring from baseball, hall-of-famer Jackie Robinson helped establish the African-American owned and controlled Freedom Bank.
Frederick Jones held over 60 patents, most of them pertained to refrigeration. One of them was used in WWII to preserve medicine.

February 23^rd

Garrett Morgan an African American inventor created the gas mask and then he created the ability to separate blood from plasma.
In 1855 John Mercer Langston became one of the first AA ppl in the US elected to public office when elected as a town clerk in OH.

February 24^th

Elbert F Cox was the first African-American to earn a PhD in Mathematics in 1925 from Cornell University
CHARLIE SIFFORD was the first African-American athlete to compete in the PGA tour. (1961)

February 25^th

African-American surgeon Charles R. Drew is often credited with the invention of the first large-scale blood bank.
January 1949, James Robert Gladden becomes first African American certified in orthopedic surgery.

February 26^th

Wendell Scott broke the color barrier in stock car racing (1952) & is the only black driver to win a race in the Sprint Cup (1964).
Madam C.J. Walker was the first female millionaire and she just happened to be an African American.

February 27^th

Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American woman to win an Oscar in 1940 for Gone With the Wind
W.E.B. DuBois was the 1st A-A 2 earn a doctorate @ Harvard. He also attempted virtually every possible solution 2 the problem of racism

February 28^th

In 1850 Lucy Stanton of Cleveland becomes the first African American woman to graduate from an American college or university.
Alain LeRoy Locke was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar. There have been many since him!
In 1901: Bert Williams & George Walker record their music for the Victor Talking Machine Co. and become the first black recording artists
Henry Blair invented the corn seed planter in 1834, & cotton planter in 1836. He couldn’t read or write so he signed his patent with an X.
Frederick Jones held over 60 patents, most of them pertained to refrigeration. 1 of them was used in WWII to preserve medicine.
Louis Armstrong bought his first coronet at the age of 7 with money he borrowed. He taught himself to play while living in a home for delinquents.
Politician and educator Shirley Chisholm survived 3 assassination attempts during her campaign for the 1972 U.S. presidential election.
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said he was punished for misbehavior in school by being forced 2 write copies of the Constitution.
Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was a classmate of writer Langston Hughes during their studies at Lincoln University.
A serious student, Condoleezza Rice entered college at the age of 15, and was an assistant professor at Stanford by age 26.
Most of the homes architect Paul Williams designed were built on land whose deeds barred blacks from being able to purchase them.
On Jan 20, 2009 Barack Hussein Obama took office as our nations first Black President a feat I didn’t think I’d see in my lifetime.

Lent

Lent begins March 9th of this year and marks the period of the liturgical year leading up to Easter. This practice was virtually universal in Christendom until the Protestant Reformation. Although some Protestant churches do not observe Lent, many protestants do (like my wife and I).

The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer, through prayer, penitence,almsgiving and self-denial, for the annual commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

Conventionally, it is described as being forty days long, though different denominations calculate the forty days differently. The forty days represent the time that, according to the Bible, Jesusspent in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by Satan.

There are traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting, both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance or refraining. The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed vigour during Lent are prayer , fasting, and almsgiving. Today, some people give up a vice of theirs, add something that will bring them closer to God. For example many people give the time or money wasted to give to charitable purposes or organizations.

[polldaddy poll=4666388]

Homogeneous Unit Principle: Real World

I have worked within the service industry in some way, shape or form for (almost) all of my working life. With this experience I have had the opportunity to encounter most expressions of culture here in the U.S. These experiences seem hit a road block at most expressions of Christs’ family that I see. It is truly difficult to see and understand how this principle works in the real world.

In the book entitles “The Bridges of God” McGavern states: ‘People become Christian fastest when least change of race or clan is involved’. Additionally, in Understanding Church Growth, which he co-wrote with C. Peter Wagner, this observation has become the ‘Homogeneous Unit Principle’ which we have been discussing for the last few weeks. Empirical evidence, they argue, ‘people like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers’. As a result homogenous churches grow fastest. Homogeneous churches are those in which all the members are from a similar social, ethnic or cultural background. People prefer to associate with people like themselves – ‘I like people like me’. So we should create homogenous churches to be effective in reaching people.

McGavran’s analysis was largely based on rural missions in India where the caste system is normative, and where neighborhoods (villages) are usually cultural homogenous. He was observing how groups are transformed by the gospel. The transference of cultural homogeneity to urban contexts were neighborhoods are not culturally homogenous becomes more problematic.

Most churches are homogenous to some extent. People choose churches on the basis of worship-style, denominational allegiance, theological emphasis and even cultural background. As soon as you choose to operate in one language you have created an homogenous group to some extent. The real world result of this in the UK has been to leave significant sectors of the population untouched by the gospel. Likewise evangelicalism in America is largely middle-class, as a result our evangelism revolves around our friendships so excluding those outside our circle of acquaintance. More significantly still, our church life and evangelism reflect a middle-class culture. Homogeneous groups do seem to be effective in evangelism, but they are by definition exclusive rather than inclusive.

Outside of the church this is not a normative practice. Take for instance McDonald’s, $5bucks (a.k.a. Starbucks), or you fill in the blank you do not see people choosing said restaurants solely by there ,musical-style, food emphasis or even cultural background. People go to these places to simply eat food. I see most races represented at restaurants with messages much weaker than the Gospel yet they attract the diversity that the church lacks. My main criticism of the homogenous unit principle is that it denies the reconciling nature of the gospel and the church. It weakens the demands of Christian discipleship and it leaves the church vulnerable to partiality in ethnic or social conflict. It has been said that ‘the homogenous unit principles is fine in practice, but not in theory. So my question for you is simply this:

Do you agree or disagree with the H.U.P.?
Why or why not?

Slavery: a brief history Part 3

In case you missed the first part of this post or the second part of this post please check it out before reading this one.

Now that we have discussed the difference between the grid by which we see slavery and how slavery is viewed in the Scriptures, let me just go through a couple of biblical insights for you regarding slavery. This will begin to show us the trajectory of God eliminating once and for all the injustice of particularly one people group, one ethnicity suppressing and relegating as lesser than other ethnicities. Notice in the creation narrative (cf. Genesis 1 – 3) when it’s not good for man to be alone and man has a lot of work to do, God doesn’t give the man slaves; He gives man a wife and says, ‘have babies. Fill the earth, subdue it. It’s going to be a lot of work. You’re going to need some babies.’ So men,grow up, get a skill, find a wife, have babies, fill the earth and subdue it. It is not, “Here are seven [insert people group here] to help you. They basically inferior anyways so have at it”. That is not what happened and it would be safe to say it will never happen. You begin to see God in the theocracy use Israel as an agent of His righteous wrath against some people in the ancient world (which is a subject for another day I promise). Once a people group was conquered those brought into the nation were enslaved but in a way that respected there humanity completely. Check out the passages in Leviticus that begin to unpack the Sabbath, New Moon Festivals, Festivals of New Grain and Wine, it was commanded in all those festivals that the Israelites were not allowed to shut down and party while the slaves continued to work. He said, “Everybody parties or I kill everybody.” So on the Sabbath, the slave gets off too. On the New Moon, the slave is off too. In the Grain and Wine Festival, they are shutting down the field, they are putting down the oxen and no one works. They all celebrate together. In both Old and New Testament, provisions are made for the slave to be a part of religious festivals and rituals. This is completely different than how even Rome viewed the presence of a slave in a religious ceremony. If a slave were to be there somehow the presence made the ceremony unclean. So they were good enough to run the empire; they just were not good enough to participate in the religious practices. God explicitly tells Israel, “No, they are coming in to the temple and they are worshiping Me.”

Another very interesting distinction is the Biblical injuction of “No interest loans” within Israel. These were an attempt by God to reduce the amount of slave debt. So if I owed you $100,000 and I came to you and said, “I can’t pay $100 grand. Please don’t send me to prison. Please don’t have me arrested. Let me work off my debt,” you could not biblically go, “Okay, but at 20% interest per year.” You were not allowed to put interest on my debt if I put myself into slavery under you to work off a debt. That was also not heard of in the ancient Near East.

Although there is not text in the Bible that universally condemns slavery as a whole, colonial slavery and the modern day sex slavery that you’re beginning to see specials on and Christian groups are beginning to fight against is explicitly condemned in the Scriptures repeatedly. The idea of stealing someone from this country or kidnapping someone from this place and forcing them into slavery was viewed as wicked, and God [in the OT] used the nation of Israel to punish those countries and, even in some cases, destroy those countries outright.

In the end let us please be honest with ourselves, we don’t want to do that work. Most people don’t want to really wrestle with it what I have just finished writing or the many other things that can be said. People rather just use this as an excuse and then build around that excuse with the hypocrisy of people they know and then go, “See? God can’t be trusted. The Bible can’t be trusted.” But in reality, if we’re honest, we are lazy and watch the Discovery or History Channel [way] too much.

There is one last thing that I want to mention before. In a radical departure from the prevalent views of the day, Israel became a safety zone for runaway slaves. So if you escaped Gaza, if you escaped Tyre, if you escaped any of the neighboring countries and made it into Israel, Israel had not extradition treaties with any of those countries. If you made it into Israel, you were a free man or woman. They would not send you back to your master, and they would not enslave you when you got in. What you will see over and over again in the Old and New Testaments is the command put on God’s people to serve, to feed, to love and to embrace the alien stranger and sojourner. So think of the redemptive themes that are already being the redemptive seeds that are being sown when God says, “If you make it into Israel, you’re free. If you make it into My people, you are free.” This is a shadow of what is to come.

Slavery: a brief history Part 2

In case you missed the first part of this post please check it out before reading this one.

“Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, no by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” – Colossians 3: 22 – 4:1

Even after yesterdays post I still cringe a little when I read those verses. I’m sure it will wear off over time. Well I wanted to pick up where I left off yesterday.

In the ancient Near East, education of slaves was seen as smart business practice. Slaves were educated by their masters, most times they were to a point that they were smarter than and more educated than their owners. Let me give you two examples of where this plays out in the Bible itself. Joseph was a slave who ended up being second in power only to Pharaoh in Egypt. Daniel was a slave who ended up second in power to Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. These were slaves who were so educated and so trained and so smart in how they did things that there was an acknowledgment among their owners that, ‘this is an extremely gifted individual. Let’s let him rise all the way up to the top if they can.’ This was not the case colonial America as we all well know. There is no black man who is a congressman in the 1700’s, in fact, we’re late into the 1900’s before that occurs. In the ancient Near East, it’s not uncommon to see a slave rise to an unbelievable amount of power to be able to own land himself and even have slaves that work for him. You had the ability to save your own money, purchase yourself out from slavery and then run the business with the slaves that you had purchased, which you are educating. Because persons owned slaves across a range of economic levels, they developed no conscious awareness of being a class or a group of people. So in colonial America, they are black men and women. There are elements of Chinese men and women who were enslaved in those early centuries of American history, but primarily they were black men and black women who were dressed similarly, they began to develop their own culture, they began to develop their own class and they began to recognize that, “We are an oppressed people.” Like Israel in Egypt, they began to sense the heavy hand of their master as a group. That is not nearly the case in the ancient Near East, because you could be a millionaire and have a slave as your neighbor living in a house nicer than your own and not even be able to tell by how they dressed, where they lived, how they walked or how they talked that they were a slave. In deep contrast to New World slavery, ancient owners did not regard their adult slaves paternalistically. You’ll find littered through our shameful history this idea that the black man and woman are so ignorant that the white master, would need to parent them, “lest they destroy themselves”, and some of even Christianity’s brightest minds bought into this nonsense.

Within the ancient world it was not uncommon for an indebted person to sell himself or herself into slavery to pay debt or to avoid poverty. So on the socioeconomic scale, the slave was not the bottom level, the day laborer was. The slave could be the prince of Persia; or he could be sitting on a throne next to Nebuchadnezzar. The slave might be working at the left hand of Caesar himself, whereas the day laborer is forced every day to try to find something to do to make money to feed his family. So that bottom rung would often offer themselves up to slavery in the hopes that they might be educated, trained and then released in the year of Jubilee. Or if they owed debts, they would offer up themselves to work off those debts. They were not kidnapped from another land and forced into labor. They sold themselves into slavery to cover debt or to learn a trade and make a better life for them. No African did that.

No African said to themselves, ‘I’d like to try to survive a long six weeks at sea in the hopes that I would be forced into an ungodly amount of labor until I died. I would like that as opposed to running free in the beautiful, Africa.’ I don’t know that there is any historical record of an African going, ‘I’ll take slavery in the New World.’

In the end there is a large historical difference between American Colonial slavery and Near Eastern slavery (especially of the Semitic cultures in the Bible). When you address this subject please do so historically and not by lumping differing cultures and context together. I know I can not stop some of you from just being bitter against the Bible but the fact is on this subject there is a difference.

For further information on this subject check out a sermon preached at a church called Redeemer Fellowship (click here for the link).

Slavery: a brief history Part 1

“Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, no by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” – Colossians 3: 22 – 4:1

Can we just be honest for a minute? When I first read this passage I immediately had flash backs to when, as a child, I read or heard about slavery in America. How verses like this and many others were used to suppress the freedoms of a whole people groups. I used to become angry when I knew that people took this out of context and it quickly sent me to find the historical context and I was very surprised by what I found. So this week I wanted to focus on the historical aspect of the idea of slavery in the Scriptures.

Today I wanted to compare and contrast two different ideas of slavery. For you and I, our idea of slavery is built around European colonialism. What we think of when we think of slavery is the Africans being abducted or traded for, in Africa and then brought over to work the cotton fields where they were mistreated and oppressed and beaten. That is our framework for slavery. It is accurate. But historically, the British were the last ones to get involved in the slave trade, it was deplorable to them. The first historical record of the British being involved in the slave trade was actually an act of piracy in 1540. A man hijacked a slave ship and, instead of setting the slaves free, he sailed it to the Caribbean and sold the slaves, as a result Queen Elizabeth was furious. From this point there is a progression of events. The British overthrow Spain and Portugal in the Caribbean. As a result the British take over the all the sugar cane fields. At the time the English are so opposed to the slave trade that they send the Irish down to work the fields. Now what’s the problem with a bunch of Irish people working the fields in the Caribbean? Over a period of about 100 years, England learns that the

Irish could not do the work there because of climate, temperatures and the rigors of working the fields. So slowly but surely, they begin to utilize and use the Africans for their sugar. Now it’s important to know that really at no point does slavery really take root in England. It’s always distant from them so it quickly became easy to justify it because you don’t see the horrors of it. Contrary to popular notions the slave trade was not built on cotton; it was built on sugar. Now when it comes to the colonization of the New World, what we now know as the United States of America, specifically in the South you have both cotton and tobacco. Furthermore, the British had learned in the Caribbean is that the Africans were legitimate workers. So they began to really build up the “New World” with slaves.

So the differences between colonial slavery and what the Scriptures are speaking to when they address slaves. And I acknowledge out of the gate that the Bible is clear that one human being can own another human being but there are some pieces that help us process this and watch the line of redemption. An enslaved person in the Bible could not be identified by clothing, ethnicity or socioeconomic background, whereas in colonial America, the slaves [simply] were Africans, or those of African decent. If you saw a black in South Carolina in the 1600’s, he wasn’t in business he was a slave. An certain ethnic group marked colonial slavery which is substantially different than “slavery” that was extant in the ancient Near East. Literally, anybody could be a slave. Within the near east the cultural and religious traditions of slaves were usually that of their masters or owners, in other words they were integrated into society. Juxed opposed to the slavery that we are familiar with in which the Africans, until the gospel really began to penetrate and move through the U.S., had a completely different religious cultural structure than their white owners. They had a completely different way of living, a completely different way of eating (i.e. Soul Food), and a completely different way of interacting with God. They were just completely different, that was not the case in the ancient world.

Well before this gets completely out of hand I need to stop for today but I really hope that this is helpful so far and I look forward to continuing the post tomorrow (click here for next post)…..

Homogeneous Unit Principle: Jesus

** This post was supposed to go up yesterday and I scheduled it for the wrong day. Sorry about the delay.**

“These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” – Matthew 10:5 – 6

Why did Jesus asked his disciples not to go to the Gentiles? At this point of His ministry was He stressing Homogeneous Unit Principle it or was it simply that the time for the Gentiles to hear the gospel had not come yet? This specific instruction was made within a historical context rather than a cultural context, because Jesus himself was the first one to break the homogeneous line as we see Him at the very beginning of his ministry sharing the gospel with the Samaritan woman (cf John 4).

Historically Jews and Samaritans hated one another, and both Jesus and the woman knew it from the beginning of their dialogue. Jesus’ action consists in destroying the wall of separation, in raising the centuries-old [self imposed] ban, in making communication possible between people separated by their ethnic, cultural and religious traditions. Another great example of Jesus breaking this barrier was through His family line (cf Matthew 1:1 – 17).

Much to the astonishment of his disciples, Jesus deliberately broke all walls of separation. Interesting enough, Jesus went to Samaria after his meeting with Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee and member of the Jewish ruling council. He belonged to the people to whom Jesus came; however, Jesus did not revealed Himself to Nicodemus as the Messiah. Actually, the first time in His ministry He declared to be the Messiah and He did it to a person completely different from His homogeneous unit, to a person outside the chosen people and outside of her own society.

Another event that calls our attention is when Jesus openly declares what his ministry ought to be in Luke 4:14-30. Luke says that Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue as was his custom. Jesus was not doing something unusual, people from that city knew him very well. However, when he declared to them that he is the Messiah, what happened? His homogeneous group, the people of his hometown (more than any people in Israel, this was his people) sought to kill him. This event shows that homogeneous unit is not enough for the acceptance of Christ.

Jesus began his ministry among the Jews in order to fulfill the covenant God made with Israel. He initiated his movement in Galilee in order to fulfill the promise made in Isaiah 9:1-2.

Did Jesus worked along homogeneous unit? Studying his ministry (action) and teaching (words), there are strong evidences where homogeneous unit principle cannot stand.

We find in Matthew 8:21,22 and 10:35-39, that love for Jesus must be far superior to love for existing social ties. Love for family or people of origin is not equal than love for Jesus.

I Looked For Love in Your Eyes

A few weeks ago I received an Facebook message from a friend and someone that I have had the chance to do some premarital sessions. We have had a few discussions on the subject of pornography and its [destructive] effect on relationships. Honestly, it is so powerful that it initially brought me to tears and I have been thinking through a time that would be appropriate to share it with you.

Furthermore, this is National Porn Sunday along with Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl, along with being a HUGE event, is where tens of thousands of sex trafficking victims were brought to Texas to service the increased demand for commercial sex around the games. No one knows how many children will be trafficked to Dallas/Ft. Worth for this year’s Super Bowl, but considering that Texas has one of the biggest human trafficking problems in the country, and that last year’s Super Bowl saw an increase in the amount of child trafficking around the event, the issue is potentially explosive. Additionally, multiple studies show that there is a direct connection with the use of porn and human trafficking.

Anyways, the poem is a bit graphic, but only so far as it needs to be. I think it’s particularly heartbreaking in drawing out the clear connection between pornography and violence. And it’s just a realistic look at how so many men are damaging and destroying their wives and families. It’s reality.

I saved my best for you.
Other girls may have given themselves away,
But I believed in the dream.
A husband, a wife, united as one forever.

Nervous, first time, needing assurance of your love,
I looked for it in your eyes
Mere inches from mine.
But what I saw made my soul run and hide.

Gone was the tenderness I’d come to know
I saw a stranger, cold and hard
Distant, evil, revolting.
I looked for love in your eyes
And my soul wept.

Who am I that you cannot make love to me?
Why do I feel as if I’m not even here?
I don’t matter.
I’m a prop in a filthy play.
Not an object of tender devotion.

Where are you?

Years pass
But the hardness in your eyes does not.
You think I’m cold
But how can I warm to eyes that are making hate to someone else
Instead of making love to me?

I know where you are.
I’ve seen the pictures.
I know now what it takes to turn you on.
Women…people like me
Tortured, humiliated, hated, used
Discarded.
Images burned into your brain.
How could you think they would not show in your eyes?

Did you ever imagine,
The first time you picked up a dirty picture
That you were dooming all intimacy between us
Shipwrecking your marriage
Breaking the heart of a wife you wouldn’t meet for many years?

If it stopped here, I could bear it.
But you brought the evil into our home
And our little boys found it.
Six and eight years old.
I heard them laughing, I found them ogling.

Hands bound, mouth gagged.
Fisheye photo, contorting reality
Distorting the woman into exaggerated breasts.
The haunted eyes, windows of a tormented soul
Warped by the lens into the background,
Because souls don’t matter, only bodies do
To men who consume them.

Little boys
My little boys
Laughing and ogling the sexual torture
Of a woman, a woman like me.
Someone like me.

An image burned into their brains.

Will their wives’ souls have to run and hide like mine does?
When does it end?

I can tell you this. It has not ended in your soul.
It has eaten you up. It is cancer.
Do you think you can feed on a diet of hatred
And come out of your locked room to love?

You say the words, but love has no meaning in your mouth
When hatred rules in your heart.
Your cruelty has eaten up every vestige of the man
I thought I was marrying.
Did you ever dream it would so consume you
That your wife and children would live in fear of your rage?

That is what you have become
Feeding your soul on poison.

I’ve never used porn.
But it has devastated my marriage, my family, my world.

Was it worth it?

HT: Zach D. and Tim Challies

Homogeneous Unit Principle: Origins

I am a natural skeptic and as I came to Christ in 2002 and quickly began asking questions of any and everything I saw around me. One question that I asked my pastor was “Why isn’t there more diversity of races within out church?” You see I was one of the few black faces that I saw most Sundays. At the time Johnson County [KS] was about 90% Caucasian but that still drove me to wonder about the lack of diversity within my church. My pastor surprised me when he said, “Jon, it’s a thing called the ‘homogeneous unit principle’ that drives whether or not minorities come to our church.” At the time this statement did not really bother me but as I began to research more about the [American] church and her history I became troubled. This is the prod that began my juices flowing

Interviewer: “[Dr. King] Don’t you feel that integration can only be started and realized in the Christian church, not in schools or by other means? This would be a means of seeing just who are true Christians.”

Martin Luther King: “As a preacher, I would certainly have to agree with this. I must admit that I have gone through those moments when I was greatly disappointed with the church and what it has done in this period of social change. We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this….”

This began my research into the Homogeneous Unit Principle and its origin. Donald A. McGavran (1897–1990) was former Senior Professor of Mission, church growth, and South Asian studies at the School of World Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. A 3^rd generation child of missionaries in India, and later a missionary himself. Dr. Mc Gavran spent much of his life trying to overcome social barriers to Christian conversion. While in India McGaveran tried to understand , what forms people by economics and caste, substantially hinders the spread of Christianity. From that work McGavran created a church growth text called, Understanding Church Growth, this book is still influential because of essays and lectures at missionary conferences in which he identified differences of caste and economic social position as major barriers to the spread of Christianity. His work substantially changed the methods by which missionaries identify and prioritize groups of persons for missionary work and stimulated the church growth movement.

The homogeneous unit is simply a section of society in which all the members have some characteristics in common. Thus a homogeneous unit might be a political unit (liberal/ conservatives) or sub-unit, the characteristic in common being that all the members live within certain geographical confines.

In his book McGavean says, “the homogeneous unit is an elastic concept, its meaning depending on the context in which it is used. However, it is a most useful tool for understanding church growth”.

Honestly his definition is not very clear mainly because he says that HUP is an elastic concept. It is a broad definition. However it has been defined much more clearly.

“Such a section of society (HU) can be a culture or language, a tribe or caste, a clan or geographical unit. The members of a homogeneous unit think of themselves as enjoying a common bond of unity, simultaneously feeling different from other. The term is also frequently used as an adjective, such as in homogeneous unit church, meaning a church characterized by having members of just one social group.”

The HUP was born in McGavran’s mind out of the Indian system of caste. He experienced castes coming to Christ and still remaining a separated group. Also, behind his work in India there is the American culture with the individualistic worldview and the superiority of certain classes. This led him to say, “men like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic, or class barriers.”

Does your church abide by this?
What do you think of this concept?