Category: unity

A COORDINATED RESPONSE

Neal Pollard

The leading local story today has to do with how police and fire responded to the Aurora theatre shooting in the summer of 2012, a horrific crime that left 12 dead and most of the other theatre patrons injured to one degree or another.  Those tasked with evaluating the response use words like “chaotic” and uncoordinated to describe what emergency responders did in the face of the incredibly unusual and tragic scene.  It is hard to imagine how one would prepare for something so unprecedented and it is much easier to make such evaluations in hindsight, but all seem agreed about the need to work together more efficiently when faced with life or death situations.

There is no greater life or death situation than concerns the spiritual state of even a single soul.  Whether we are talking about bringing a lost soul to Christ, helping a discouraged or offended brother or sister, or retrieving a Christian who has fallen away, it requires a coordinated response! Many people are needed to work together to help a person in his or her relationship to God.  Paul urges, “Therefore encourage one another and build up one another…” (1 Th. 5:11).  He also writes, “Bear one another’s burden” (Gal. 6:2a).

When we are faced with the challenge of reaching a lost soul, think of all the coordination needed.  There is the friend or family member trying to reach them, but who else? What about the one(s) trying to study with them, not to mention members who need to reach out to them by befriending them, make them feel welcome, have them into their homes, and introduce them to other Christians?

When someone is struggling, it requires many people calling and reaching out, visiting, and doing what can be done to show them love and concern.  When someone has fallen away, it takes more than the preacher or an elder to do that “heavy lifting.”  Anyone who knows them and can influence them should coordinate with all others to rescue the perishing one!

Twelve lives ended that fateful night in Aurora.  It has been determined that emergency responders were not responsible for a single person being lost, a fact that has to provide them with solace and validation.  When we stand before Christ, each of us wants to do our part so that we can say no one was lost due to our neglect or lack of response.

I REMEMBER CALE VERSUS DONNIE

 

Neal Pollard

1979 was the year I discovered sports, developing a fledgling interest in my home state’s greatest football team, the Georgia Bulldogs, watching Dale Murphy and Bob Horner, young stars on a woeful Atlanta Braves team, learning names like Steve Bartkowski, William Andrews, and Greg Brazina. I started collecting baseball, football, and basketball cards.  But my clearest memory and biggest sports’ memory in that seminal year of sports-fan-man-ship came when I walked into our living room in Cairo, Georgia, at the end of the Daytona 500.  I can’t remember how many laps I watched, but I watched them all in utter fascination—including the historic final lap.  The suspense, drama, and excitement was palpable, climaxed by Cale Yarborough coming down the inside in an attempted “slingshot” move and triggering a crash between himself and Donnie Allison.  The maneuver cost them both the victory as Richard Petty took the checkered flag.  But what I remember was not Petty’s win, but the altercation between Cale and Donnie’s brother, Bobby, who had stopped to check on his brother.  Cale hit Bobby in the face with his helmet, then, as Bobby famously recounted, Cale went to beating Bobby’s fist with his nose.  That moment (“the fight”) is credited with putting NASCAR “on the map” and leading it into the mainstream of American interest.

While it’s ultimately a matter of indifference that a fight led a sport to success, it’s profoundly sad that the religious world is often known for its division and difference rather than its being united in truth.  One of the biggest arguments against Christianity is that “Christians” (as the world sees them and understands the term) argue with each other.  As world religions spread and as secularism and atheism grow in our world, the strife and division among us is more negatively noticeable than ever.

This fragmentation could not be farther from heaven’s desire.  Jesus prayed for His followers to be united (John 17:20-21).  Paul condemned religious division (1 Co. 1:10-13) and called for the body of Christ to be one (1 Co. 12:13; Eph. 2:16; 4:4).  The world is heading toward eternal punishment and religious people who follow manmade doctrine are said by the Bible to share that tragic fate (Mat. 7:21-23; 15:8-9; John 12:48; Gal. 1:6-9; Rev. 22:18-19).

When the world looks at those professing to be Jesus’ disciples, what should they see?  I know what Jesus wanted them to see.  He said, “”A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).  Let’s be known to the world as lovers, not fighters!

Unity In Ukraine

Neal Pollard

My first mission trip was to eastern Ukraine.  Ironically, years before coming to preach at the Bear Valley congregation, I was in attendance with many other American brethren at the first graduation of a Bear Valley Bible Institute extension in the city of Kramatorsk.  Despite mildly corrupt practices at the airport and in some local governments,  Ukraine was a seemingly peaceful country.

If you watch or read the news, you know that tension, violence, and instability is currently a daily occurrence in that nation. At least dozens of protesters were killed by ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and his security forces.  A new cabinet was elected, an interim president named, and asylum was granted to Yanukovych in Russia. Russian president Putin seems inclined to interfere, given that there is pro-Russian sentiment in parts of eastern Ukraine and pro-western sentiment in much of western Ukraine.  Now, there are dark clouds gathering in the Crimean region bordering southeastern Ukraine.  Russia and the European Union seem to be engaged in a tug-of-war over this nation that has tragedy draped like a pall over its storied history.

Despite all the friction and fighting, the citizens continue to speak of their desire that Ukraine remain one nation.  That may prove difficult (some facts gleaned from BBC.com and The Washington Post, Will England and William Booth, 2/27/14).

What a dramatic illustration of the need of unity and the external forces that threaten to undo it.  The Lord’s church has faced the threat of internal and external forces intent on trying to divide and hurt the body of Christ.  The devil has been a constant force to that end.  The early church faced Judaizers, gnosticism, and false teachings about the resurrection, the deity of Christ, and the second coming.  A few centuries was all it took for a new, false church to form.  Ultimately, protestant denominationalism was spawned from it.  Cults, world religions, skepticism, and unbelief challenge us.  So does worldliness and immorality.

We get to choose how we respond, both locally and on the whole.  We can splinter and divide, or we can rally around the supreme authority of Christ.  There will always be pressures seeking to push us apart from one another.  We must have even greater determination to stick together, bound by the banner of the Bible!

Chris Greicius

Chris, less than a week before he died.

Neal Pollard

Make A Wish Foundation has granted 310,000 wishes worldwide with the help of 30,000 volunteers in 49 countries as well as numerous, generous donors.  Very often, the wishes are granted to children with life-threatening conditions.  This is appropriate since this is the genesis of the now highly-successful collection of nonprofit organizations which grants a wish to a child an average of once every 38 minutes.

But it began in 1980 with a 7-year-old boy named Chris Greicius.  He wanted to “catch bad guys.”  His mom, Linda, was friends with a U.S. Customs Agent’s wife in Arizona.  Several individuals were able to solicit help, pull strings, and get Chris a police uniform in his size and a helicopter ride to tour the Arizona Department of Safety facilities. Four days later, Chris dies.  But he dies a happy little boy, and several people allow his dream to come true (info via wish.org).

Perhaps the most beautiful part of this touching story is the powerful impact for good that follows when people work together, selflessly, for a common cause.  When no one is looking for credit but everyone devotes their energy to a good and noble cause, who knows to what extent it can grow?  God’s people have that power, and David proclaims it, saying, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Ps. 133:1).  “Good” depicts the action and “pleasant” demonstrates the effect of it.

The function of evangelism campaigns, workshops and lectureships, mass mail outs, organized home Bible studies, friendship evangelism, Vacation Bible Schools, and the like can be the saving of souls.  When we see our congregational events and activities as opportunities to work together to reach the lost, beautiful results follow!  Heaven’s heart is touched by the earthly efforts of Christians to seek and save them (cf. Luke 19:10).  Who knows what profound, positive things follow the conversion of even a single soul?  So, let’s find ways to work with our Christian family to save souls from death (cf. Jas. 5:20)!

Church Cooperation

Neal Pollard

I have become more acutely aware of the importance of “church cooperation” working with a congregation that operates a school of preaching.  To get every student here and to support every teacher who prepares them for ministry, several congregations and individuals must give to make this a reality.  Those who contribute range from the very wealthy to the financially struggling, the highly educated to those not as much, the urban to the rural, and from the west coast to the east coast.  Congregations who give may be large or tiny.  But, all are needed and each works together to help produce men prepared to fulfill their ministry.

“Church cooperation” also is a term which applies to a necessary, internal function.  Within the church, there must exist a spirit and willingness to work together despite our differences—be it race, societal status, religious background (whether raised in the church or converted), and the like.  God anticipated such diversity, but still expects unity.  He is displeased with multiple, divergent “agendas” and frowns most emphatically upon self-seeking and self-serving individuals.  Whatever would fuel division, pride, fleshly lusts, greed, or worldly philosophies, must be identified and scuttled.  Paul wrote one congregation, saying, “Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others” (Phi. 2:1-4).  Why cooperate?  Because of Christ and what He has done. How cooperate? Positively, by oneness of mind, love, spirit, purpose, and humility. Negatively, by avoiding selfishness, conceit, and serving self-interest.

How easy it is to read that divine guidance, but how hard to practice!  Yet, it is essential to a congregation thriving and growing…together!  The sobering thing is that each of us is either a cooperator or a coagulator (hardening and hindering).  That is determined by our attitude, words, and decisions.  May we each resolve to be a “church cooperator”!