I'm very grateful to you this evening for being
here, and I look out and I see a lot
of faces that are smiling, and that's
encouraging because in my business and in this position
tonight, you really appreciate people smiling
at you.
I want to thank Royce and I want to thank Bill
Young in a special way for this invitation.
And I'm really honored tonight that all of you
who are elders and deacons, those of you
who preach the Word of God are here tonight.
I feel very much like the old story that I love
to tell, and some of you have heard it
several times, but I feel very much like the
Iowa farmer who had all of his farm destroyed
by the spring flood, not unlike the ones that
hit Iowa this past year.
And he never got over it.
He told that story over and over his entire
life, died, went to Heaven, Peter met him
at the gate and said, we have a tradition here,
and it is that you get to tell one story
of one thing that happened on the earth while
you were there.
And he said, no question what I'll tell.
I'll tell the story of the Iowa flood, at which
Peter then said, let me remind you of
one thing.
Noah is in the audience.
And of course, you can see right where I'm
headed with that, because I really feel that
Noah's are all over this audience tonight.
I want to say how grateful I am that my own
elders from Prestoncrest are here tonight.
They told me they were armed.
They said they'd be sitting by the doors,
either to block them or to run, depending
on what I did with this speech.
But I really love those men, and I appreciate
very, very much them coming tonight from Dallas
to be with us just for this occasion.
I love this university, but tonight I don't
want to talk about the university.
I want to talk about the church.
I do so as one who has come through the
churches of Christ since my earliest memory.
My earliest memory is of my mother putting me
to sleep and telling me some of the wonderful
stories that all of you have told and have
heard since your childhood of people like
Samson and Esther and David.
My memory is of my father, who tonight is 82
and has now served for 30 years as an elder
of the Hillsborough Church in Nashville.
He is not in this audience, but tonight I would
like to dedicate this speech to him.
This is the way it goes.
In 1984, on the Pepperdine University campus,
Norman Cousins, who had overcome cancer in
a most thrilling way, made a great speech in
which he said, no one knows enough to be
a pessimist.
Norman said that in recent years he had noticed
in the United States an increasing mood of
despair and helplessness.
Let me quote his speech.
The notion that life is beyond us, or at least
the problems of life are, and the best we
can do is draw a circle around us in order to
keep the world out.
One of the difficulties, Cousins said, of
despair is that it leads to helplessness,
and helplessness leads to panic, and panic
leads to disaster.
I got a letter last week.
It's from a deacon of one of the largest
churches in the Southeast.
He has come through Christian universities.
He's in his mid-forties right now.
The letter was one in which he was describing
some of the confusion going on in this large
congregation and of how some of the younger
people were asking questions and some of the
older people were thinking that those questions
were challenging the faith and the doctrine.
He asked me if I would pray for him to help him
build bridges in order that there might
not be a mood of panic.
As I look at our brotherhood and as I listen to
elders and as I work with fellow preachers
of the gospel and as I travel, I see an
increasing mood of helplessness among churches
of Christ.
For example, I hear elders talking about
circumstances that are out of control.
I sense fear that is almost paralyzing some of
our leadership, indeed leading to more
leaving the eldership, more depression among
the eldership.
My own father has called me, and I won't be
personal about this, but he has called me
on a number of occasions and said, I just don't
think I have the strength to go on again.
And I have always looked to him as a great,
strong man and a strong elder of the church.
But the feeling that fear almost paralyzes our
leadership is very widespread.
There is a sense of confusion and lack of
purpose and reason for being.
Some in our pulpits right now are even nearing
the outer boundaries of their fellowship with
churches of Christ.
Now it is because of all of that, and that's as
much time as I'm going to spend on that,
but it is because of those flashing yellow
signals that tonight I think we need to refocus
on the major critical issue facing churches of Christ.
It is our reason for existence.
Why does God leave us here?
What are we supposed to be doing as a church?
What does the next few years hold for churches
of Christ?
I can still hear my mother's words each time I
would go out on a date as I would leave
home in Nashville.
Remember who you are.
I never quite knew exactly what she meant by
that, because when you're a teenager you
always have those quick, smart, Aleck one-liners.
But tonight I want to go back to mother's words.
Remember who you are.
Isaiah is saying in this lectureship, and Randy
Beckton will develop it again tonight,
you are the light unto the nations.
I want to play off of that tonight by saying
first that we take our cues in churches of
Christ from one man and one man only, and his
name is Jesus.
Jesus knew why he was here instead of in Heaven.
The story goes like this.
The blind man had never seen a sunset or
smiling face.
He sat every day begging for money.
Life for him was simply a series of humiliating
moments, occasionally interrupted when someone
would come by and toss him a spare shackle.
Life for the blind man was weariness, being
wounded, in shame, being brokenhearted, guilty,
and in silence, and he sat daily in darkness.
Until one day when the Galilean carpenter came
by him and did a strange thing.
He spits in the ground and makes some mud of
the saliva and puts it on the blind man's eyes.
At the pool of Siloam he did, and he came home
singing for the first time. Why?
So Jesus could give evidence to what he has
just said, while I am in the world, I am the
Light of the World.
So the encounters that are in Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John are not only historically accurate,
they are the encounters of light with darkness.
It is the story of God in the flesh in a dark world.
And of course it reminds us of the second question.
Why does God leave his church here rather than
translating us all to Heaven?
And you're probably ahead of me as you move
into that metaphor that Jesus used in the
Sermon on the Mount.
You are the Light of the World.
Let your light so shine before men that they
may see your good works and glorify your Father
who is in Heaven.
But how does Jesus want us to reflect God's
light in a dark world?
That's the question I've struggled with.
That's the thing I think is challenging eldership.
That's the real question that comes to a
preacher when he is trying to take the text of the
divine Word of God and make it live for an
audience in the 1990s.
How does Jesus want us today to be light?
Well, how did he do it?
I'm going to go back to what Martin Luther
called the golden text or the little gospel.
You've all memorized it, many of you since
childhood, and most all of you have preached
and taught on it.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only son that whoever believes in
him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
For God did not send his son into the world to
condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved.
That is precisely the same idea that the late
Robert Frost had when he ended his little
poem entitled The Lesson for Today with these
four provocative lines.
Listen to them.
And were an epitaph to be my story, I'd have a
short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me and my stone, I had
a Lover's quarrel with this world.
I had a Lover's quarrel with this world.
My brothers, in the most profound sense, this
is precisely what God has always been about.
He too has a quarrel with the world, but it's a
Lover's quarrel for God so loved the world
that he did not condemn the world, that the
world through him might be saved.
This is to say that he does not love us because
we are objects with which to quarrel.
He quarrels with us because we are the objects
of his love.
So taking our cues from Jesus, I want to
suggest three ways in which we in the 1990s and as
we come to the next century as the churches of
Christ, must quarrel with the world.
These come from my heart, they don't come from
a book.
These come from my experience.
These come from having to deal with people in
Springfield, Missouri and Seattle, Washington
and Los Angeles and Nashville and now Dallas.
They are not new, but they do share with you
and me the way in which the churches of Christ
in the future must quarrel with the world.
First, we as a church must have a Lover's
quarrel with the world's standard of happiness
because the world is in darkness when it comes
to the question, how is an individual to be happy?
It answers it by simply saying, things give
your life meaning and the more toys you have,
the more you win the game.
Have you seen the little metaphor used by
Joseph Campbell?
It's an interesting little and an arresting
metaphor in which to describe the way in which
our world has shifted.
He says that if we were living in the Middle
Ages and we were approaching a medieval city,
what we would see is the huge cathedral and the
steeple as the tallest structure in the
whole city, how the church dominated medieval life.
But as you come to a modern city today, he
says, what you see today dominating the city
are the cathedrals of business.
Inadvertently, I think, business is now giving
us our values.
I would add television to that.
And what the world is hearing today is that one
needs to look after oneself and be a success,
protect number one, assert your rights.
If you don't protect yourself, no one else will.
A world in which numbers dominate.
We now define ourselves and our values by
things we can count, everything from SAT scores
to Nielsen ratings to cost-benefit analyses.
We have become such a numbers-oriented culture
that we only place our faith now in what we
can graph, chart, and count.
And we are very, very suspicious of the
unquantifiable, of the mysterious.
But what do we as the church offer, this dark world?
We offer light.
We offer the light of Christ to people that
says the way in which an individual truly
is happy is when that person faces his sin and
when the blood of Christ washes that person
totally clean in baptism and that individual
then is forgiven.
We have an emergency, excuse me, forgive me for
interrupting you, but we have a sister,
we're not sure of her name because she's not
coherent at the moment, but she's in the tent
and a brother, poke or pole, elderly, are you here?
Brother poke or pole or something like that.
If you have a wife, an elderly wife in the
tent, she's had a fall and she's not doing
well and Roy, you might need to head on over
there if you could please.
Thank you.
Let's stop my speech for a moment and let's
have a prayer.
Her father, for this sister who has fallen and
is not doing well and who is quite elderly,
we give you our deep appreciation and we pray
for her husband as he goes to her that he
may minister to her.
We pray that Roy and other physicians may be
with her side and help her to recover.
We thank you for the sensitivity of Ian and
others who would put human life above a speech
and who would put a person above a moment.
Please be with her Lord, preserve her life
according to your will and bless her and keep her.
In Jesus' name, amen.
We offer to people today a different standard
of happiness that is all, of course, called
for in the person of Jesus.
I believe strongly that what we teach is
crucial, brothers.
I do not believe that what we teach comes by
human consensus.
I believe that it comes because of the Word of
God and that God has revealed His Word
to us and that what He is revealing to us is
the person of Jesus Christ and that Jesus
forgives people in baptism and that Jesus lifts
people up and that Jesus is as close
to the woman who is in the tent tonight as He
was at the moment of her baptism.
That Jesus Christ is alive and well today and
that Jesus Christ is the light to people
in inner cities and in foreign nations and in
middle class suburbia.
A few weeks ago, some people from Prestoncrest
were having dinner.
They were talking about the Prestoncrest Church
and what they appreciated about its direction,
its worship, and what was going on there.
The two people sitting over at another table
were listening and came over to them and then
said, I'm sorry, we don't want to interrupt
your meal, but we couldn't help but overhear
you talk about a church.
We're looking for a church.
They've been coming to Prestoncrest for the
last several weeks and have been in our searchers
He has been the Catholic reader at one of the
largest Dallas Catholic cathedrals for
the last 19 years.
If you go to a Catholic mass, you know that the
lay reader will read the mass or read
the gospel aloud to the congregation.
He's been doing that for 19 years.
We shared Jesus Christ with him over a period
of weeks and days.
On Thursday night in Prestoncrest, I baptized
him into Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Tears rolled down his eyes and mind because
what was happening in the life of this extremely
educated and high-level manager from Texas
Instruments was that he was getting light,
as he said, into his heart and into his soul.
Count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God
in Christ Jesus, Romans 6 and verse 11.
But I think the church in the future also has a
Lover's quarrel with the world's morality.
I'm really concerned about what's happening in
this country and the direction of our culture morally.
Do you remember the words of the former Chief
Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
Frederick Vinson?
This is what he said, nothing is more certain
in modern society than the principle that
there are no absolutes.
When William Kilpatrick's little book, Why
Johnny Doesn't Know Right From Wrong, published
in 1992, became a bestseller, Kilpatrick, not a
preacher, not a missionary, elder, or
deacon, said, the reason Johnny doesn't know
right from wrong is we've lost our moral sense
of direction.
People really in the country no longer believe
in absolute right and absolute wrong.
The Dallas Morning News this morning reported
in Great Britain the new passage of the new
law that now teenagers who are homosexuals may
marry by law.
My brother's homosexuality is not, and let me
repeat it for emphasis, homosexuality is
not a political issue, it is a moral issue.
And what I am sharing with you tonight is that
family breakdown, epidemic violence,
the lack of personal restraint, Rampant gays
within the community are all indicating to
you and me that we're living in a time in which
fewer and fewer people believe in moral absolutes.
We offer the light of the ethics of God to
people today.
We offer permanency of marriage.
We offer virginity prior to marriage.
We offer the idea that there is a God and that
this God cares.
We offer the idea that stealing is always
wrong, lying is always wrong, and helping
your fellow man is always right.
Where did we get the idea or the notion that
all the commands of God are even?
They aren't.
And Jesus once said it this way, the first
commandment is that you love God and the second
one is that you love your neighbor as yourself.
We in the churches of Christ offer the ethic of
Christ to this world.
No wonder Sheldon Van Auken has said in his
fine book, A Severe Mercy, that the best argument
for Christianity is Christians, their joy,
their certainty, and their completeness.
I know what it's like to sit in an office day
after day and be asked questions at times,
and some of which you can't even understand
where people are coming from.
I know what it's like to be the son of an elder.
I know what it is like to attend elders'
meetings and to see elders and to listen to
them pray very diligently over ethical matters
such as marriage and divorce.
But let me encourage every elder and every
preacher and every deacon tonight to not give
up on God and the ethic of God.
It does matter what we teach.
It does matter what we believe.
It does matter what we preach.
And what I'm experiencing in Dallas, Texas is
that as people hear absolutes, they are
drawn to them and they are drawn to them
because it is light.
They are drawn to them because they can see
that it is true.
It is from God.
Never leave the church.
Never leave the Bible.
And never leave the absolutes of the Word of God.
Third and finally, in churches of Christ, we
must have a Lover's quarrel with the hopelessness
of the world.
The number two killer under 25 right now is suicide.
Have you seen suicide among white males over 65?
Absolutely off the charts, skyrocketing.
But God brings light to people who are hopeless.
As much as I enjoyed Prestoncrest, as much as I
enjoyed South National, as much as I
enjoyed growing up in Nashville, Tennessee
hearing Batsal Barrett and B.C. Goodpastor
and great preachers, as much as I've enjoyed
all of that, the greatest experience of my
preaching life has been the last 3 years
standing in that magnificent theater built
by Joseph Stalin in southern Russia to the
glory of atheism and preaching the greatest
story in history, the story of Jesus.
And looking into the faces of people who do not
smile, and I ask a Russian colonel, why
do the Russians not smile?
And he responded cynically, what do we have to
smile about?
And watching these people who have lived in
darkness for 70 years hear the sweet story
of Jesus in all of its simplicity and like
little children respond to it in deep faith
and trust and to be buried with Christ in
baptism for the remission of sins.
I decided I had to go back when in 1991 an old
Russian woman came up to me and put her
arms about me in a huge bear hug and said after
her baptism, thank you from the bottom
of my heart.
And then she said, will you ever come back to
our country?
Let me tell you about Andrei.
18 months ago, Andrei was the chief of the
Russian mafia for all of southern Russia.
When he smiles, Andrei has huge gold teeth.
You have gold teeth in Russia to indicate rank.
Andrei's wife began attending the worship
services of the churches of Christ in Rostov-on-Don.
He became interested enough that he went to one
of their, quote, business meetings.
Volodya was a member of the KGB, had been
baptized into Christ, and then tried to destroy
the church of Christ for the party and for the KGB.
That became revealed at this business meeting
at which Andrei then said, and I quote him,
I can arrange to have him never to be found again.
May I quickly add that I have been to a few
business meetings in my life in which
they said, back off, Andrei, we don't want you
to get a contract out of him.
We don't want him in the bottom of the Don
River, don't kill him.
Three months later, Andrei divorced from his
wife, went back to his wife, was baptized
into Jesus, and is now a janitor in
Rostov-on-Don, earning a legal living with hard work.
When he smiles, he has the greatest smile in
the world, and he says, I'm going to go
to God someday.
I met Olga, an English professor at Rostov
State University.
I met her in 91.
I saw her again in 92.
She came up and hugged me in 92 and said, I am
a different woman from the one you first knew.
I met Igor, an engineer, a colonel in the
Russian army.
He was baptized into Jesus Christ in the Don River.
He became my translator just six months ago.
As I told the story of the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ and the simplest words I knew,
and as he was translating each sentence into
Russian, I suddenly realized I was speaking
in English.
I was speaking in English.
Of the world.
You are the Light of the World.
And we have a Lover's quarrel with the
hopelessness and the guilt of this world.
I end with just some few personal observations.
First I detect great movement in the churches
of Christ.
I don't think we're dead.
I don't think we're close to extinction.
I've read all the tables, I've seen all the
studies, I've heard all the speeches.
We are clearly at our worst when we don't look
like Jesus.
We are clearly at our best when we manifest
Jesus Christ to this world.
Satan wants to move us from our mission of
being light.
But remember, light always illuminates.
Remember light always penetrates.
Remember that you and I are where God wants us
to be and He has given us the capabilities
that He wants us to have in order to build up
the church of Jesus Christ.
Oz Guinness writes, I think insightfully, the
main problem with American Christians
is not that they aren't where they should be,
but they are not what they should be where
they are.
As doctors and housewives and lawyers and
computer salesmen and nurses.
My second observation is I am greatly
optimistic about the future.
I am privileged to work with a united church,
with a united eldership.
I am privileged to see people being baptized
into Jesus Christ.
I am privileged to see teenagers become
interested in Jesus Christ, in Christian
education, and
to remain virgins until they marry.
I see elders who give huge blocks of time and
effort in order to be with people as shepherds.
I see preachers of the gospel who spend their
whole life never giving up and continue to
preach and to work and to encourage.
I see Christian literature.
I see Christian literature being faithful to God.
Tonight as you leave, as editor of 21st Century
Christian, I'd like for you, as many of you
would like, to have a free copy of the issue of
February on the Lord's Supper.
I am optimistic about the future of the Lord's church.
My spirit is the spirit of the Roman officer
that Stan Munahan talks about in his book,
when he sent a message back to Rome and said,
please send new instructions, we've just
marched off your map.
Thirdly, I am proud of the church of Christ.
I am proud of the hundreds of men and women in
churches of Christ who are engaged in Christian childcare.
It has been my privilege in the last three
years to serve as their national spokesperson.
The glory goes to God, but the credit tonight
goes to those men and women who are house
parents, who are not at this lectureship, but
who are taking care of homeless children
and neglected children in a culture that is
throwing its children away and murdering its unborn.
And tonight I say to you, I am proud to be a
part of a brotherhood of believers who take
care of the world's children when the world
throws them away.
I am grateful to be a part of a brotherhood
that brings relief to people in the earthquake.
In 1,971, I was 2 miles from the center of the earthquake.
My home was virtually destroyed.
I preach for the San Fernando Church.
I want to give you something as the preacher of
that church that I've never revealed in public.
The eldership revealed to me that sister
congregations over the United States sent
$335,000 in order
to buy food and water and blankets to help
people in the San Fernando Valley.
I'm proud to be a part of a church like that.
I'm proud to be a part of a church that has
recently sent money to Van Nuys Congregation
and to the Culver Palms Congregation in order
to reach out to the people of Southern California.
I'm proud of a church that gives money for
foreign missions.
I'm proud of the missionaries that we have in
Brazil, in Africa, in Europe, and various
parts of this world.
I am proud of our worship to God.
Sure it can become routine.
Sure it can be boring.
None of that brings glory to God and no one
defends it.
Go read the prophets.
But what a wonderful moment of encounter with
the divine it is on Sunday.
When we sing great songs together and we gather
around the table and we eat the bread and
drink the cup and we fellowship with one another.
These are the people we're going to Heaven with.
And the encounter with the mysterious God we
have only causes me to have more awe and
appreciation for worship.
And last, I love the church of Christ.
I frankly love what we bring to the table, friend.
I'm proud of our heritage.
I'm grateful for the leaders.
I'm thankful for every man in this audience
that preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I am grateful that many know where the power is.
It is not in our locations.
It is not in our advertising.
It is not in our PR.
And let us never be confused as to where it is.
That it is totally the power of God who is
working in every woman and every man and every
young person.
The challenge of our time is not to be
overwhelmed by the tasks that are ahead, but to honor
our capacities as given to us by God.
I've never given this speech before, likely
will never give it again because it is for
this audience on this occasion at this
university this week.
But if it is not for you, then I don't know who.
It's rather like the father who knocks on his
son's door one morning and shouts,
Jamie, get up.
And the kid answers, I don't want to get up.
I don't want to go to school and I've got three reasons.
It's hard, all the kids hate me, and I'm scared.
To which the father shouts, I'm going to give
you three reasons you must go to school.
It's your duty, you're 45, and you're the headmaster.
Brothers, you're the headmaster.
If it isn't you, who is it?
I am the Light of the World.
You are the Light of the World.