When did "Church" become a verb?

I'm not "churched." I worship at church. I was never "unchurched" nor have I become "dechurched."

I'm not sure when "church" became a verb, but I don't like it. Someone probably thought it was more convenient to say "the unchurched," than to say "those who don't attend church." Still, both "churched" and "unchurched" carry a negative connotation.

"Churched" sounds kind of like "caged." You've been "churched," locked up in a box with a steeple. "Unchurched" is worse. It dismisses a whole group of folks who don't attend church for various reasons, casting out both the cynics who scoff at church, along with those damaged from abusive or painful relationships in churches, as well as those who grew up not going to church and never really thinking about faith.

Am I the only one who finds this term uncomfortable?

Choices

Mulling over Proverbs 22, after Pastor Joe's message this morning, and I noticed the issue of choice in the first verse: A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches. I never really thought of either of these as a choice. I never thought, "I think I'll establish a good name," or, "I think I'll earn a billion dollars over the next several years."

Still the everyday choices we make establish our names, our reputations. And I can't help wondering if at some time in your life you'll be offered a choice between the two: good name or riches? You might fudge a little here, compromise your ethics there, cheat a bit here and there for great riches. Or you might give up a chance here, refuse to cave into temptation there, avoid a compromising situation here and there and pass up great riches.

If so, these are little, daily choices that add up to big ones. You have to step back and look at your life over time to see what your choices added up to.

Lots to think about in those passages.

Sharon Sleeps on the street!

I looked at my week in the inner city as a vacation of ministry. It was the first time that I was away from Lucy. I only had to do dishes for one person, and only had to look after myself.

Our team started out with Ladies of the Night, the ministry to the prostitutes. The first night was by far our best as the ladies were not expecting us yet. Our goal that night was to give a tract, invite the women to a meeting at the Coffee House and to pray with them.

They truly were hurting women that need Christ’s love and forgiveness. One women asked me to pray for more business; she was being a little cheeky, so I laughed and said that I wouldn’t pray for that, but I would pray that God would bless her.

Pray that these women come to know the Lord and seek to get off the street. I really found that I enjoyed the door-to-door ministry and the street evangelism. At my heart, I care about people and wherethey will spend eternity. I found that by just asking people if they knew where they would go when they died, opened the doorto a conversation about spiritual things.

It was interesting where the conversations went. I shared with them using the principles found in the “The Way of the Master” evangelism training. The highlight for me was being able to share with a muslim women.

The conversation went like this: She said, “I am a muslim: I said “Oh, I am a Christian, a follower of Christ. To which she said, “God canʼt have a son.

I said - He is GOD he can if he wanted to. (Which she couldn't deny because the Koran says that God can do anything.) Then I said - your Koran talks about Jesus being a prophet right? And she said yes. I said, And the Koran says a Prophet can't lie, right? And she agreed.

Then I said, Jesus stated, "I am the way, the truth and the light. No one can come to the Father except through me." Our conversation had to stop there as we came to the corner. Please pray for her.

The other highlight was our night to sleep on the street. We slept as a huge group so it wasn’t quite what the homeless experience, but armed with our cardboard box and a sleeping bag we headed out to sleep on the main drag in Pretoria. All I can say is the night is long, cold and un-comfortable. Tonight when you go to bed say a prayer for the homeless, thank God for your bed, pillow, blankets and the central heat that we take for granted.

To God All the Glory

Your submissions wanted

Because we'd like to keep things fresh and new here, your works are needed. Do you draw, sketch, write poems or devotionals? Do you have some good digital photos you'd like to share? Some thoughts on a scripture verse you've read recently? We can use it all here on the blog. We also want to invite kids to contribute. A crayon drawing (scanned into a jpg file), a YouTube song video of a worship song, a poem or short story -- send it all in HERE. Thanks!

Death is out of place

In death there are no constants, nothing sure, except that it will come. No speed of light, pi, two-plus-two, no gravity.

If you're a smoker, like to drink a lot, or revel in skydiving, if you're just plain mean, you could outlast the health nut and survive the careful jogger or fat-skimping queen. In death you can't predict who'll last and live the longest.

Nothing's sure but death and taxes, but with death you're never sure of when or how you'll go --- by falls or heart attacks, by cancer, stroke, too many M&Ms. You don't know where you'll be at your last breath. On board a plane that crashes in a field? Will you be choking in a diner at your death? Or die from duct tape in your safe room, sealed?

If only death could be erased like cold when winter ends. In spring, no one would die, and for a season no one could grow old, no aches advance, no wrinkles, no goodbye. There's something wrong with death. It doesn't fit. It's like a clip-art graphic in the Louvre.

Survivors know there's something wrong with it. They push the dark away. It doesn't move. Death never comes to those you think it should, but comes instead to everyone you love. While relatives fall ill --- you lose the good --- the Castros thrive and claim more than enough of life.

The man who ripped you off survives into his 90s, and with wealth to spare. He cheats on taxes, goes through scores of wives. He bullies underlings and doesn't care.

And death appears to have no sense of timing, coming uninvited hours early for dinner, at your door, while you are climbing out of bed. It seems in such a hurry. That morning knock, each time, sends out a jolt of dread, confusion, fear and inner pain. You must refuse to answer! Lock the bolt and hook the latch, then quickly slide the chain.

We're never ready. Never. We might think we have sufficient warning, but we're wrong. We brace ourselves, prepare, try not to blink. Then death bangs not the doorbell but a gong. Death always comes as such a great surprise, zinging like an arrow to its mark. Or, slowly crushing, right before our eyes, the ones we love.

It simply cannot work that death's as natural as tears or breath. It shocks us, slaps us every single time! We can't adjust or just resign to death. It simply isn't part of earth's design.

The Word who authored life showed that our blood was meant to course forever through our veins. But real human choice demands that should we choose our ways to His, we feel the pain of separation that He knows from all who turn away from Him, and from His gift of life. One life span is a world too small. All nature screams of something more, some shift or lift into another span of life.

Not only nature, but the age-old Word that comes both as a book and as a knife that slices soul from marrow, joints and blood. That Word, both flesh and page, holds more than hope in this world. It proclaimed a land apart, above.

Approachable by those who grope for meaning and for truth through hands and heart. Though spat upon, and mocked a thousand ways, though crucified and buried in a rock, though now misquoted or revised away, though jumbled, trampled, mangled and forgotten, the Word that echoed out from tomb to ear for centuries is muffled, but not stilled.

Buried inside churches every year, by programs, papers, pews that must be filled, until the Word is just a whispered song, it still can sing that we are more than bone. No matter whether life is short or long, we're made for more, for we are not alone.

Donna Marmorstein, American News April 2003

New, improved address!

Because the old blog address was clunky and awkward, we've changed the name to something a little easier to remember.

Also, the old one sounded like you had to be some kind of professional writer to contribute, and we want to dispel that idea right up front. The old name - newlifewritersblog.blogspot.com - goes out the window.

We've changed the address of this blog to simply nlfaberdeen.blogspot.com This one should be much easier to remember.

On this blog, we invite submissions from all NewLifers and covet (maybe that's not the best choice of terms) your devotionals, poems, photos, artwork, testimonies, sketches or whatever might be of interest to the New Life community. Help keep the blog fresh and new by contributing your works. Did a scripture jump out at you today? Share it here. Does a song really affect you in some way? Describe how and why. Did something happen to you that made you appreciate the daily gifts of God even more than usual? Here is a place to share about it. Discovery, creation and creativity - that's what we want this blog to reflect. Send your thoughts or works HERE.

Your Story

This is the perfect place to share the story of how you came to walk with Christ. We each came a different way and for different reasons. When you listen to (or read) someone's "testimony" or spiritual life story, you can only marvel at the twists and turns people go through as they come to a place of surrender. No two people come in quite the same way. Even kids who grew up in a church-loving home and can't remember not being with Christian family members, even they come to a knowledge of Him in different ways.
If you would be willing to share your story, please send it here: TESTIMONIES.


Since I made the invitation, I'll start out, although Kady already did earlier. You can scroll down to read her story.

ALONE IN THE DARK

My parents gave up on church before I was born, though they sometimes went on holidays for my grandmothers' sake. I remember my grandmother giving me Catholic prayer books when I was 6 or 7.
I also remember a book about Mary and knowing -- even that early -- that I could never be a saint. The book said that Mary never sinned, but I knew I had sinned. I had taught my little brother to take candy from a store display when my mom was shopping and we were supposed to be riding the vending horses near the entrance.
I figured God wouldn't want me because I had blown perfection already. For some reason, and I can only think it was to get us out of her way for a while, my mom sent me and my little brother to a summer Bible school around the block. I was excited because it was called Bible school and I was too young for regular school. I liked the idea of going to school like the big kids. I must have been four and almost 5. My brother would have been 3. I had never been to this part of the neighborhood and I was scared. Mom wouldn’t take us, just sent us. I took my brother to what I thought was the house and got the wrong house. I was scared. The lady in the wrong house pointed out the right house, though, and we came in late.

The problem with Vacation Bible School

I was very uncomfortable at Bible school. They kept talking about Jesus and I really didn’t know who Jesus was. My feelings were not good during that experience. Later, I thought a lot about hell and was scared. When I was older I reasoned that if you burned, you’d eventually burn up and not hurt anymore, so then the idea of hell didn’t scare me any more.
My parents, and especially my dad, became pretty vocal about religious nuts and religion in general. They told us that when we were older we could choose our own religion, as if all religions were equal (and frankly, equally wrong).

Religious People are Stupid

A man at my dad’s work was a Christian and really annoying to my dad. He was everything the fundamentalist stereotype encompassed, unfortunately, and my dad would sometimes rave about Christians at dinnertime. I adopted the same attitude, deciding that religious people were deluded and that intelligent, thoughtful people wouldn’t believe in superstition or religion. But I really didn’t reason or think things through. Just adopted an easy world view. If you make the other guy prove his way is right, you never have to exert yourself. It’s easy to be a skeptic. Doesn’t take any effort at all.

Wondering at night

It's one thing to be a skeptic in the day time, but when you are alone at night, doubts creep in. At night I began to think deep, unsettling thoughts. What if I’m wrong? What if there really is a god and eternity? I had a hard time with the concept of nothing. I felt that after you died you’d experience nothing. But what was nothing? Was it black and cold? Black and cold were concepts. They weren’t nothing. What would nothing be like? That I couldn’t fathom nothing bothered me. I had many doubts. I thought there might be a god every time I saw rays of sunshine beaming through clouds. And I would sometimes, secretly, wonder if God might have been speaking to me throughout my life in different ways, like through my grandma and her prayer books. Through a music teacher at school and other ways.

God doesn't grade on a curve

But if I was wrong, I figured I’d come out okay anyway. After all, I was a moral person. I was more moral than most people around me, even Christians. I just assumed that God would grade on a curve, that as long as I could find people worse than I, I’d have to be admitted to heaven. It never occurred to me that God might have an absolute standard by which He judged people.

Failing Mission X

When I was 10 or 11, a neighbor family invited me to go with them to Missionettes. This was an Assembly of God kids group. I thought the girl said Mission X. Since we were studying California history, and at that time missions, I thought it would be great to visit a mission. I said yes, and my parents said fine.But it wasn’t a mission. It was church.

I had only been in church before when I was very small, at Easter, and I really had no clear memory of it. Here, I sat in the pew next to my friend’s dad and he let me look at the pictures in his Bible. I liked the pictures but had no understanding. Missionettes itself was okay, and I kind of liked it, but I felt awkward not knowing what all the other kids knew. It slowly dawned on me that the only reason I had been invited was for my friend to earn play money for some kind of prize contest. I was being used, and I knew it.

I thought the girl liked me and I was flattered to have a new friend. When I finally understood that I was just a means to an end, I was disappointed and stopped going.

Activist Atheist

In 6th grade, a teacher we all hated would mention the Bible in class from time to time. My friend said it was illegal for him to do this. I thought that if I could tape record him mentioning the Bible, and play the tape for the authorities, we could get rid of him. I had a new (reel to reel!) tape recorder. I asked Mom if I could take it to school. No problem, she said. (I didn’t tell her why.) I recorded Mr. Fode’s first class and also our social studies class. When I came to Mr. Fode’s second class (I had him both for English and for reading) he saw it and asked me if I knew I needed permission to record classes. I told him yes (I had Mom’s permission). He thought I knew I needed permission from him. He asked me what I had recorded. I mentioned the social studies class but not his earlier class. He marched me to the Social studies teacher. I was made to stand in front of the class and replay everything I’d recorded. I stood there beet red. Everything I recorded was pretty much just static anyway. I stood in front of the class. The class had no idea what I was doing there, so it wasn’t too bad, and I could tell the social studies teacher was sympathetic. I never got rid of Mr. Fode, but I begin to really hate religion.

Occult studies

In junior high, from time to time, I made fun of the religious kids at school. I was very lonely in junior high. My best friend had a hip problem and missed a lot of school. I was on my own, very self-conscious and lonely. In 8th grade I turned to the occult. I had read Nancy Drew books which were harmless mystery stories. In the library, next to the mystery stories were ghost stories. I read through those. Then there were occult books on astral projection, astrology and other dark arts, and I read through those. I bought some Tarot cards. I don’t like to dwell on it now, but there was a real spiritual force in the Tarot cards. Not at first, but after a while, I could go into a trance and go through a spiritual progression (regression?) until I came to the death card. After a while I could go through that until I came to the Devil card. I was afraid of the Devil card.

I used the occult practices to feel powerful when I was lonely and miserable. The girl across the street was a bully had beat me up on several occasions and I lived in fear of her. I felt powerful when participating in occult things. I bought a book on witchcraft that had many spells in it. I was not very successful at casting spells, but I did consider myself a witch. I held seances (also not successful) and burned incense and told fortunes.

I feel very fortunate that I was not more ensnared in the spiritual dimension of these practices. I have my mom to thank for not getting in too deep. When I bought the book, my dad told me I could have it as long as I didn't believe in it, as long as I just used it to study witchcraft, not practice it. He didn't believe in religion or superstition and I figured that's why he told me this.One of the spells in the book was for making you invisible. I thought -- wow -- to be invisible, I'd give anything. I forgot the exact spell, but you were to take certain items to bed with you and go to sleep. A spirit would wake you up and you were to do everything it said to do. What could I lose? I gathered the items and was about to take them into my bedroom when my mom stopped me. When she asked what I was doing, I told her, embarrassed. I'm not sure why she warned me against doing this, (it may have been no more than preventing me from being silly, but I felt she was really warning me). I am so thankful. I am certain that if I had gone through with that experiment I might have been lured into a spiritual darkness that would have been very difficult to get out of.
The woman next door considered herself a witch and I didn’t realize this until I was no longer much interested in occult things. I dropped everything except Chinese fortune telling with cards by the time I was in high school.

Turning point

In high school I met Art (my now husband) and he was a Christian. Why he dated me, an atheist who dabbled in the occult, I’ll never know, except that I had once kind of thrown out a prayer in case there was a God saying please send me a boyfriend if you’re there. And here was Art.

The first thing he took me to was Steambath, a play about God being a capricious Puerto Rican despot or something. I guess it did cover a spiritual topic, but when I saw it I figured it was an anti-God play and that Art must be an atheist like me. We had so much in common! Instead, he was a Jewish Jesus freak.

He never came on strong about his religious beliefs, but he did insist that we go to church Sunday mornings when we were dating. He dragged me to dozens of bad churches and some good ones, and I got a taste of 1970s Christianity. I hated most of the churches and just put up with them. What I saw were people all dressed up trying to impress each other. This was the natural, earthtone 70s when young people wore jeans and T-shirts, especially in California. All the church people just seemed square and phony, and I sure didn’t want to end up looking or acting like them.

In the corn field

One day, Art took me to a Baptist church where his friend Charlie taught adult Sunday school. Charlie’s class was wonderful. He was studying the book of Mark and the story of the disciples going through the corn fields plucking corn and being criticized by the religious leaders. It was a great story. Here was Jesus, and He felt about religion the same way I did! It was quite a revelation.

I enjoyed reading about Jesus by the sea side, hearing his parables and teachings. Everything he taught sounded great; it was the religion part I didn’t like. After this, Art gave me a Gideon's Bible, and later a reference Bible along with a Bible reading chart. He asked me to do two things: Read the Bible, five chapters a day, and pray. I scoffed at this. But I said I’d do it for him.

The five chapters a day was no trouble. Parts were interesting and other parts confirmed my anti-religious outlook. When I got to the part where the Israelites were slaughtering the Amorites and such, I’d say, "See, see. Religion is bad and violent." (This was during the war-is-always-bad Vietnam War era.) It would just confirm what I already suspected.

I remember first reading about Christ on the cross. The priests came by and mocked him. "He can save others, but he can’t save himself. Hey, just come down from the cross and we’ll believe you." I thought, why not? Why DOESN’T he come down? If the big thing is for people to believe, why doesn’t he take them up on it here? I didn’t know yet that the very staying on the cross at that point was the sacrifice that saved the whole world. That by staying there, he took God’s anger on himself for our sins and paid the penalty for us. If he had come down, a few might have believed but the world would not have been saved.

Believing is against my principles!

The hard part, though, was not reading the Bible. The hard part was praying. How could I pray when I didn’t even believe in God. It seemed a violation of some sacred principle. But how could I have any principles? Without God, no principles are real. You make them up and you ignore them. NOTHING is binding if there isn’t a god! But I had promised Art I’d try to pray. I couldn’t break a promise. That, too, was going against my principles!

I finally allowed myself to pray. It was a great effort to humble myself that much. I had pretty much been my own god, and to bow down took great effort. To go against this strong barrier - which I now know was pride - seemed like breaking faith with myself and was nearly impossible.

When God came in

But the moment I did, I was broken, and God flooded into my life. He confirmed He was there and that He’d been speaking to me in different ways all my life. After that happened, I couldn’t get enough of the Bible. I devoured it. I read chapter after chapter. Art gave me a little booklet that explained the gospel in a simple way. I learned that man couldn’t get to God all by himself. That he tried all kinds of ways to bridge the gap on his own, including trying to be good. But nothing brought him anywhere close to the perfection a sinless God required. All religion was that ineffective effort to bridge the gap between sinful humans and a perfect God. It said that God himself bridged the gap by becoming human and laying himself down over the gap as a bridge so that men could get to God. All God required was for a person to acknowledge they were sinful, to believe in His sacrifice, and to confess Him before men. When you did that, you were saved from yourself, from the corrosive power of sin in your life and from eternal doom. He throws in eternal life as a bonus!

New Life

Since then, I've been walking with Him in the "newness of life." It really was a new start. I have never regretted trading my empty, arrogant, lonely, smug atheism for life-giving truth! And I got a whole, new family of Christian believers at the same time.

How did you meet Him? I'd like to hear.

Thanks from Tony and Sharon

Dear New Life Fellowship,

The entire Jones family wants to thank you for the two huge boxes that arrived yesterday! We were so excited! I had just lamented a few days prior that we never get any mail. Then here are these two huge boxes. Wow - I never expected you all to be so generous! Thank You so Much! It meant so much to be remembered in such a way!

The kids felt so special that their church family thought of them and with Mac N Cheese! The funny thing is we just had Mac N Cheese the night before made with cheddar cheese - Wesley, and Irina were so excited for it until they tasted it and they realized it wasn't what they wanted. Then here is the "real" Mac N Cheese so we had it today Saturday for lunch and the leftovers for dinner! We also made the chocolate chip cookies. Surprisingly enough they are not all gone! We had to set some aside for Tony who is currently at the Inner City outreach, we get to visit him tomorrow to go to church and spend the day there. We are surprising him with homemade chocolate chip cookies!

Irina and Lucy both love the dolls, Irina was strolling them around in the stroller most of the day. Wesley took his cars into the dirt then decided to wash them and has played with them a lot today. I've decided for them that we don't have to eat all of it at one time and so it should all last awhile.

Again - thank you everyone! I think of you all in the new building and wish we were with you to worship together but we are their in spirit as part of the family of God.

Hope you have a blessed day!

In Him,

The Jones Fam 5
Tony, Sharon, Wesley, Irina and Lucy

Latest from Dan Hagen in Peru

Every pothole shall be exalted, every speed bump and mound made low

No big yellow taxi here. Sometimes, you don't know what you've got til it's here.

So here is this beautiful, "new" building, the Gibson's department store building, Idelman Telemarketers building, whatever it once was called, a building that sat vacant for a very long time, waiting for a new purpose.

And now people from every walk of life, with a whole variety of skills, worked together to make this building into a place of worship -- and it's beautiful.

You kind of wander around in awe as you see old and new faces also wandering around in awe.

The chalkboard walls - awesome! The nursery - state of the art. I actually got to hear the sermon and could even control the volume while working in the nursery! The signs Brian Schultz and Barb Klein made. I saw men up high on dangerous looking machines installing ceiling tiles and men with more dangerous looking machines cutting things in what will be the kitchen.

I saw Bob Marler in a secret back room with dangerous looking wires and connections on the walls, working with all kinds of hanging doors.

I saw Theresa Heupel, so intent on scraping paint from door panes that she was standing up out of her wheelchair to reach spots of paint up high!

I saw my dentist on his knees cutting carpet for those hard to fit places. Only someone with fine motor skills like a dentist could do that kind of job!

I saw Jacob Mellette running a roller over carpet and Rod Johnson down low doing something with carpet trim. There were many, many people I didn't see, working day and night to build a place for people to worship the Lord.

And the result is the gorgeous building that you can only walk around in with your mouth hanging open.

Then, there is the parking lot. Someone said it would cost another 80- 100 thousand dollars to resurface it, and you can see why. Dips and gullies, huge craters and lumps, cracks, lines, hills and lakes and rivers. It seems like an overwhelming problem. After spending so much on the building and working so hard, how can we possibly take care of the parking lot? What will we do? How is God going to provide for this challenge?

(I thought that once a month everyone should bring a bag of gravel and fill a pothole, but no one is too enthusiastic about that idea.)

But leaving alone after prayer this Sunday, I took another look at this vast, uneven surface and words from Isaiah came to me: Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill made low; and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain: and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shalll see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Has spoken it (Messianic group Lamb lyrics repeat "Has spoken it.")

Isaiah wasn't talking about parking lots. I think he was probably talking about justice. Everything will be paid for someday. Justice will be done. Somehow, though, the words just fit. Someday, somehow, that surface will be smooth as glass, or almost. He will provide. He will shock us and put us in awe once again. I don't know how, but I know it will happen.