Friday, August 25, 2006

Noutheteo

noutheteo (noo-thet-eh'-o)
Def'n: to admonish, warn, exhort

Before I begin this entry, I must state that many of these interpretations from scripture are borrowed from the late J. Hampton Keathley, Th. M. He was a pastor and graduate from Dallas Theological Seminary and had many words of wisdom on this subject.

Whenever I have participated in bible studies and had serious discussions with fellow believers in Christ, we often touch upon how we need to be more encouraging to one another and build each other up in Christ. Pretty much 100% of the time, this area could use some improvement in my life. However, this isn't the only command that we are given for dealing with one another in the body of Christ. Keathley outlines many verses containing commands on how we need to act with one another into four categories:

A. Promotion of Spiritual Growth and Health in the Body of Christ
B. Promotion of the General Welfare and Good of the Body of Christ

C. Promotion of Unity and Peace in the Body of Christ

D. Promotion of Ministry and the Function of the Body of Christ


The area that caught my attention came within the first section on promoting the spiritual growth and health in the body of Christ. As I mentioned above, we are to encourage one another and build each other up according to the scriptures.

"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." (1 Thes. 5:11, NIV)
"Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification." (Rom. 14:19, NIV)

Then he moves on to touch upon the topic of admonishing one another.

"And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another." (Rom. 15:14, NASB)
"We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone." (1 Thes. 5:14, NASB)

The Greek word for admonish is noutheteo and is translated to "council", "instruct" and "correct" in various bible translations. The King James and New American Standard versions always use the word "admonish". Dr. Gene A. Getz contrasts this from the casual communication or normal teaching. Admonishing implies, "a definite exhortation, correction and warning." In the context of the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul was speaking to lazy and idle Christians. However, this is a very delicate matter and must be done with the proper motives and by a capable individual. Paul says that we are to be full of goodness in order to be able to admonish one another. Basically, we need to be careful that we remove the plank in our own eye before attempting to help remove the speck in a brothers eye. The admonisher must be of righteous character with an attitude to heal and build up rather than to hurt or get even. Dr. Getz also writes, "Christians who are sensitive about their own walk with God are capable—and responsible—to admonish other Christians … It is one of the most difficult exhortations to obey, but it is necessary for the body of Christ to mature and grow." When done according the bible, it is NOT judging others. That is why it is so important to be "full of goodness."

Another good passage is Galatians 6:1-5 (NIV shown):

1Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. 2Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, 5for each one should carry his own load.

The last point that caught my attention was the fact that the admonisher must be "complete in knowledge", which is an obvious reference to an adaquate knowledge of the scriptures. Keathley states that we must be careful to address specific biblical issues and not exhort Christians in areas of extra-biblical matters. There is a danger of imposing personal beliefs/standards that are contrary to scripture. Romans 14 outlines this pretty well.

I find that we rarely encourage one another in fellowship. What's worse, we often give in to the temptation to use coarse joking, silly talk and crude language in our conversations instead. Admonishing one another is even harder to do and as a result, almost never happens. I think you need to be very close to someone in order to admonish them - not to mention being complete in knowledge and full of goodness. That's not an easy task but it is commanded of us nonetheless. Am I able to admonish my close friends? Would I be willing to listen and accept their council and exhortations? I think this is a definite indicator of a true friendship.

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Friday, August 18, 2006

Sports Camp

So this summer I took a week off work to help out with a sports camp my church ran during the week of July 24-28. I love kids and I love sports so this really is a golden opportunity to experience both simultaneously. It really brought back great memories of when I used to volunteer and work as a day camp counselor many years ago.

Prior the the camp, we had many weeks of meetings in order to prepare. In previous years, the church had held the usual vacation bible school (VBS as we like to call it) during the summer. It's just a time for kids to come out, play some games, makes some friends and receive some biblical teaching as well. Since the church merger almost a year ago, we have refocused our vision on being more of a "missional" church - reaching out the community around us and those in need. We thought that VBS doesn't really appeal to many people who aren't so keen on going to church. I mean, if you aren't "religious" and you hear something with the word "bible" in it, you probably won't want to bother with it much less send your kids to some bible camp.

Anyway, we placed the emphasis on sports this year and although it required a lot more work on the planning side, it was definitely worth it in the end. We promoted the camps within our church but also outside in the surrounding communities. I think 60-70% of the children that attended came from outside of our church with a significant proportion of that coming from our community in Bannister Manor and Shawnessy. It was really cool to work with the City of Calgary to provide an affordable week-long camp for kids that maybe come from families who can't afford to pay the hundreds of dollars to send their kids to basketball or soccer camp. Many of the families only paid $5 for their kids. I won't forget the emotions on some of the parents that I saw at the end of the week. One mom had tears in her eyes and told us she would never have been able to send her girls to camp because of their financial situation and that they had such a good time.

I had the opportunity to lead hockey on the last day of camp. I anticipated the worst and even in our meetings everyone estimated at least 5 casualties in the form of scrapped knees, sore fingers and slashed shins. But, the kids were tough there were surprisingly few injuries. I also had the chance to share a simple gospel message that I called "Avoiding the Penalty Box". I tried to use the analogy of a penalties and the penalty box with sin and judgement. One of the ladies also talked about heaven and hell in the afternoon cooking camp and how it relates to salvation. By the grace of God, I think there were something like five kids that ended up talking to our childrens pastor and accepted Christ's death as payment for their sins. How cool is that?!?

We always need to be careful never to take credit for stuff like this. I know that it was all God's handiwork because even a week before we still had no idea where we were going to find the equipment for certain sports or if the weather would even work out. But God pulled through yet again and everything went better than we could have hoped for.

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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Fearless for God




The plan is to lead a new song by Building 429 in church this week. We are having a special service to welcome back our STM team from Garden River up in Northern Alberta. We will be taking the time to hear some of their sharings about their experiences with God and the native people. This song, Fearless, is about two missionaries who go about fearlessly into the world to spread the gospel of Christ. Watching and listening to it reminded me of the great task we have as followers of Jesus: to make disciples of all nations. Many people I know have a passion for full time missions work and that is awesome. But it also reminded me that even if we don't decide to travel to distant lands, our mission field is right here in our community.

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Chemistry Deja Vu

This morning was a pleasant change to the normal routine of sitting in front of the computer screen, battling the temptation to doze off. Instead, we prepared for the upcoming mice experiments that will commence next Tuesday if everything proceeds according to plan. Preparing stock solutions and setting up equipment helped the morning hours to fly by quickly. It's too bad I couldn't have done more of this earlier in the summer.

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Monday, August 07, 2006

Jammin'

As an astute young man that I know would say... "long weekends are super-awesome."

Half the time I don't even bother to find out why exactly I don't have school or have to work on this day. I often don't spend the extra time with my family on Family Day (in Feb) or show any sort of nationalism on Canada Day. Apparently today is an Alberta civic holiday called Heritage Day. Whoop-dee-doo.

Friday

I had the honour of seeing a friend get married. Weddings are such magical moments and I was just glad I could witness it. It's also an excuse to dress up all nice and unlike most guys, I actually like dressing up from time to time. I thought the master of ceremonies (also a guy i know) did an excellent job at keeping the reception on track for time and keeping it funny and entertaining. Other highlights were the drive out to Okotoks with the cabriolet top down and the tiramisu. Unfortunately, I got that "every sperm is sacred" song from Monty Python stuck in my head. Not the ideal way to end of the night.

Saturday

In typical Saturday fashion, I slept in a bit until around 1000 and then proceeded to get a few things done. Normally my family does laundry on the weekend and I fit mine in during the week sometime. But with my family out of town, Saturday morning was the ideal time to squeeze that in. I've realized that I probably do more laundry than anybody I know. Most of it is due to the way I was brought up by my family. I distinctly remembered my parents making me change my clothes every day after school. It was probably because I would play football or hockey at recess, rain or shine, and all my stuff would be filthy. I think I started doing it myself in high school because I didn't like the thought having my stuff being thrown into the same load as my mom's underwear (borderline OCD?) and I would wash everything after one wear.

It wasn't until probably sometime in university that I had the laundry conversation with someone and realized that it's probably not necessary to wash my clothes that much and that it probably wears them out faster. Even after modifying my habits a bit, I still find myself having minimally 2 full loads of laundry each week (one dark and one light) and quite often 3 full loads if I do a lot of physical activity that week.

Anyway, laundry and cleaning in the morning. Small gathering in the evening for some basketball, pool and settlers.

Sunday

For the second Sunday in a row I helped out with the children's service. A new summer arrangement has our english congregation split up into three seperate services - adults, youth, children. Now that I think about it, I should really catch a Saturday evening or Sunday evening service at a different church (First Alliance or Centre St perhaps?) to replace the teaching that I'm missing.

Last week we had a jam session on Saturday night at church. It was mainly just a time to make some music together but secondary goals were also to come up with some potential new songs or new arrangments to use in a praise and worship evening in September and for the Winter Conference in December. We tried out some stuff by Lincoln Brewster, David Crowder, Chris Tomlin and Hillsong United. You Are Good, originally written by Israel Houghton and also performed by Lincoln Brewster had this awesome riff that we played TO DEATH. They play it over and over a bunch in the song and sing "You are good, all the time, all the time, you are good" repeatedly. However, when we started getting into the song we just kept playing it over and over for like 15 minutes straight - guitars, bass, drums, keyboard all taking turns soloing. Then we tried On Our Side, a gospel-like song by Tomlin that had a simple A7 A/D progression for the whole song. And we ended up going crazy on that for like 10 min straight with Rob goin' nuts on the guitar busting out solo after solo.

So this Sunday afternoon, the same guys met up and we had another 3 hr jam session. No more crazy riffs but it was just as fun nonetheless.

Afterwards, we played some more settlers and mah-jongg (ultimate chinese gambling game). I finally won my first game of settlers with these people. Other highlights of the night was trying to do Gigli for pictionary (without having seen the movie) and playing sardines in the dark.

Monday

I woke up to the sounds of my phone ringing to realize it was 12:30pm. I was supposed to be at a surprise bday bbq at noon and I had slept in. To make things worse, I also said that I'd bring salad. I managed to make it there by 1:15. They had already started to eat but I wasn't too late to get the salad there. We ate some great food (smokies, steak, ribs) and played more settlers (i won again using orange! Orange is now my lucky colour) while watching V for Vendetta (i was too focused on the game at hand to figure out what was going on in the movie). The day was topped off with some floor hockey and more male bonding time in the evening.


So what did I have to give up? Well, I missed an opportunity to go waterskiing and tubing at the lake on a gorgeous weekend because i had to come into work everyday. I also missed an opportunity to fellowship with some old friends who were in town for wedding. But I remained concussion free and made the most of a long weekend in town and at home.

Next up...Labour Day...

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