re-Focus: 2011 Moody Bible Pastors’ Conference 

Tuesday through Thursday, May 24-26, I will be speaking five times at the Moody Bible Pastors’ Conference. This year’s theme is re-Focus. 

I’d appreciate your prayers as I attempt to help pastors to re-Focus on: 

• Ministering to Grieving People: God’s Healing for Life’s Losses

• Equipping Their Church for One-Another Ministry: Leaving a Legacy of Loving Leaders

• Marriage Counseling: Building Oneness in a Christ-Centered Marriage

• Cultivating Christ-like Intercultural Ministries: A Theological Primer or “Why Bother?”

• Counseling Parishioners Struggling with Anxiety: The Anatomy of Anxiety

Later this week, check out the Free Resources section of the RPM website for free downloads of each of the five PowerPoint lessons. Look under Moody Bible Pastors’ Conference Documents (2011).

Join the Conversation

Which of the five topics would you want to re-Focus on?

The Grace Wife

On May 23, 1981, at Berean Baptist Church in Richmond, VA, Pastor Ralph Hubble pronounced Bob Kellemen and Shirley Vernon “husband and wife.”

On Our 30th Anniversary

If my math is correct, and it had better be, that makes today our 30th Anniversary.  

Because of how many marriages seem to fail in today’s world, many people have asked, “What’s your secret?”

I’m not a big believer in “secret steps” to anything. Obviously, I believe that a Christ-centered marriage is the not-so-secret secret.

Beyond that, I can personally attest to the fact that our marriage has survived and thrived because Shirley is a Grace Wife. There is no one I know better than Shirley, and, I can honestly say, there is no one who better reflects Christ’s grace than Shirley.

Don’t just take my word for it. Consider my seventeen-year-old nephew. He recently commented, “No one is kinder, sweeter, or more gracious than Aunt Shirley.”

High praise from a teenage male!

And he’s right. His words remind me of several passages that convey how Shirley models Christ’s grace.

Romans 2:4: “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?”

Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Ephesians 5:1-2: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Jesus with Skin On

I write and speak a lot about “Jesus with skin on.” About how we need to give one another tastes of Christ’s grace.

Shirley is Jesus with skin on for me. She gives me continual tastes of grace.

How has our marriage survived and thrived? Because Shirley is an imitator of God, of Christ.

Happy Anniversary, Shirley. I love you. Thank you for being my grace wife.

Join the Conversation

How do marriages survive and thrive?

Learning to Love…All Over Again

This week, Shirley and I watched a show that depicted a brain-injured husband whose personality drastically changed. The show raised the dilemma of how his wife would deal with being married to a man who was very different from the man she had married decades earlier.

In the episode, they faced three logical options:

1. Remain committed to the marriage without really knowing, liking, or “loving” each other.

2. Divorce.

3. Learn to love the “new you.”

Fortunately, and atypical for most TV, they chose option three.

The Mid-Marriage Years

Shirley and I reflected on the show in terms of our own marriage—now in its 30th year (and having known each other for 33 years—since our late teen years). We also reflected on our past five years—our empty nest years where both our children are now out of the home and on their own.

After twenty-five years of marriage as parents, Shirley and I faced the reality that we had to get to know each other all over again—not just as parents, but more importantly, as husband and wife, as soul mates, as best friends.

In our early 50s now, we are not the same people we were at 19! In fact, we are not the same people we “fell in love with” over three decades ago.

As we faced these realities, we never wavered in our commitment to our marriage. But I’m not convinced that that is “Christian enough.” We’ve all seen Christian couples remain committed to the institution of marriage for decades, while obviously not continuing to live loving lives with one another.

Loving with the Whole Heart

The Bible calls us not only to commitment to the institution of marriage, and not only to a moralistic commitment to one person. The Bible calls us to a growing holistic loving relationship.

God created and designed us to be relational with affections, longings, and desires; rational with thoughts and beliefs; volitional with motivations and actions; emotional with feelings and moods; and physical with bodies. Thus God calls us to love one another with the whole heart—relationally, rationally, volitionally, emotionally, and physically.

In the past five years, Shirley and I have had to re-learn how to love the new “us.” We’ve had to get reacquainted.

We’ve worked to renew our affections (relational) for the new “us.” This is romantic love if you will—which is a biblical love (see Proverbs, Song of Solomon) just as much as “committed” love is.

We’ve worked to renew our knowledge (rational) of each other. We’ve worked to live together with our spouse according to knowledge/understanding/consideration (1 Peter 3:7). We’ve gotten to know, like, love, appreciate, and respect the people we’ve become and are.

We’ve worked to renew our committed love (volitional) for each other. We are called to love each other with Christ-like/God-like agape love—self-sacrificing, giving love (John 3:16; Ephesians 5:21-33).

We’ve worked to renew our emotional connection (emotional) to each other. I know, in “Christian circles” we act as if “emotions” are bad and we should ignore them. God, who is an emotional Being, created us in His emotional image. He calls us to develop emotional connection to one another (Romans 12:15)—to like and enjoy and care about each other.

We’ve worked to renew our physical connection (see Song of Solomon…enough said).

We now are best friends all over again. We would marry each other again if we met today. We’ve learned to love each other…all over again.

What’s the Point?

Though this is a much more “personal blog post” than I normally share (and, yes, I did ask Shirley’s permission), this post is really not simply about my marriage. It’s about all relationships.

People change. Love needs to grow with those changes. Our relationships need to mature as we mature.

Recently married? Allow this post to be your “marital counsel” that I wish someone had offered Shirley and me decades ago.

Not married? This applies to you also. Maybe you’re a young adult or a late teen—are you working hard (relationships take hard work) to re-learn how to relate to and love your parents?

Parents, are you working hard to re-learn how to relate to and love your children? The relationship can’t get stuck in the idealized “I miss when they were little kids.” They’re not little kids—learn to love and to like the new “them.”

Single? You and your friends change. Re-learn how to love them…all over again.

Church? Oh my! Churches change. I could write a book on how people need to re-learn how to love one another in local churches as new members join, as new pastors come, as new ministries are launched.

Relationships aren’t static—frozen in time. They change because we change. Keep knowing and growing. Work hard each day to re-learn how to love each other…all over again.

Join the Conversation

Who do you need to re-learn to love…all over again?

What Causes Our Fights and Quarrels?

It’s so easy to think of how big or small my slice of the pie is compared to the next person. Sadly, we bring that same competitive, hoarding spirit into the work of the Spirit. That’s true regarding the Spirit’s work in our marriages and it’s true regarding the Spirit’s work in our ministries.

An Inspired Question

James said it well (actually, he said it perfectly well since he said it under the Spirit’s inspiration) in James 4:1-4. James asks the age-old question:

“What causes the fights and quarrels among you?”

What causes the fights and quarrels among husbands and wives? What causes the fights and quarrels among church members? What causes the fights and quarrels between various counseling “groups”?

James offers God’s answer to any with ears to hear; to any with the wisdom and humility to listen.

“Don’t they come out from the desires that battle (soldier) within you? You desire but you have not. When you don’t get what you want, you kill and covet—you retaliate and manipulate, and yet that still doesn’t get you what you want. So you quarrel and you fight some more—the vicious spiral spirals ever deeper.”

When we imagine life as a competition, then everyone else is, of course, our competitor. When our image of life is a war, then everyone else is, of course, our enemy. When we see life as a finite pie, then everyone else is racing against us for their slice of our pie.

A Supposedly Inspiring Answer

The world has a solution—compete smarter, fight better, race faster. To the victor goes the spoils. To the winner goes the crown.

Of course, the world’s solution is based upon the world’s angle. From the small angle of small minds looking at what seems to be a finite, small world, there’s only so much “stuff” out there. I have to demand my share of the finite stuff. The one with the most toys wins.

Some how this line of “reasoning” is supposed to inspire us. And inspire it does—it inspires a me-against-you, an us-against-them mentality. If the “victor” gets the “spoils” in a marriage, then what does the “loser” get? If my “side” of the church squabble “wins,” then what does the “losing side” end up with? If my “camp” in the seemingly never-ending “counseling wars” “wins,” then what does that leave the other “camps” with?

I’m sorry, but even as fleshly as I can be, I am decreasingly inspired by this “hoard the wealth” mindset.

An Eternally and Daily Inspiring Answer

Forget the world’s answer to a worldly problem. Consider God’s answer.

“You have not, because you do not humbly ask God. You have not, because even when you do ask, you ask with selfish motives—in order that in the pleasures of YOU, you may squander.”

When we assume that God is a Hoarder and that His universe has a finite supply of “stuff,” then even when we think to ask God for “stuff,” even “ministry stuff” (like a “better marriage,” a “bigger church,” a “ministry with larger impact”), then in God’s eyes (and His eyes are the only ones that matter), our motives are selfish.

God does not care about our agendas. God cares about our getting on board with His agenda. God does not focus on our kingdom building. God focuses on our building His Kingdom.

If I think that God is a Hoarder and His universe has a finite supply of the stuff I think I need, then I demand my share (more than your share!) of His limited stuff.

In marriage, I demand my share of being “right,” my share of my “needs being met,” my share of “satisfaction.” In church conflict, I demand my share of putting you “in your place,” my share of the “congregation’s trust.” In counseling wars, I demand my “market share” of “followers,” I demand my slice of the people-pie saying, “I am of your group!”

How immature. How childish. How sinful. How worldly. How adulterous!

“Adulteresses!” James labels us.

“Don’t you know that loving the world’s way means hating God and God’s way? Anyone who chooses to befriend the mindset of the cosmos, chooses to be God’s enemy! Repent! Draw near to God! He gives ever more grace!”

God Is a Grace Rewarder, Not a Hoarder

God’s supply is never exhausted. His supply of grace is infinite. God is a grace Rewarder. Those who come to Him, the author of Hebrews reminds us, must believe that He exists, and that he generously, graciously rewards those who diligently, humbly seek Him.

In the beginning of our fallen cosmos, Satan schemed to deceive our spiritual parents into believing the unspiritual lie that God was a “Shalt-Not-God.” “God,” Satan whispers then and now, “is a Hoarder and His supply is limited. Grab the fruit of the tree now before someone else exhausts His limited supply.”

“God,” the Spirit whispers in His still, small voice then and now, “so loves the world that He gave infinitely—He gave His only begotten Son that whosever believes shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.”

“God,” the Son whispers in His authoritative, loving voice then and now, “so loves the world that He gives infinitely. That’s why I came—to give you everlasting life and ever-expanding life—abundant life. Spoiling and spilling over life—not so you could consume it on your own lust, but so you could share it out of the overflow of my Father’s infinite supply!”

So What? What’s It About?

Since God is a generous grace Rewarder who showers us with everlasting life and ever-expanding life (eternal life and abundant life) . . . so . . . we give. So . . . we mimic His giving, His sharing.

So, in our marriages, we are not competing for a limited supply of who is right or who is satisfied or whose needs are met. We are working together to advance God’s Kingdom of giving to others out of the overflow of God’s infinite love working in and through us.

So, in our churches, we are not competing with the other “faction” for a finite supply of whose style of music or style of preaching or style of leadership or style of youth ministry or style of carpet wins the day. We are working together to win the lost and equip the found so that God’s eternal, expanding is advanced in and through us.

So, in our “counseling wars,” we are not contending against rivals to see who will shout, “I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas!” We are building bridges and working together to say, “We are of Christ—the infinite God who has generously graced us with forgiveness and with resources that are everlasting and ever-expanding so we minister in humble harmony learning from each other, empowering each other, respecting each other—so that the Body of Christ dances to the eternal song of the Trinity.”

It’s not about market share. It’s about sharing the mark of the Trinity—the eternal Community of mutual admiration and adoration. The everlasting Community of overflowing goodness and oneness. The infinite Community of equality and mutuality.

Join the Conversation

Where does the Christian community need to quit competing and start serving?