Bill Teague's lpc e-pistle

Welcome to the LPC e-pistle!

Bill — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:39:38 +0000

The LPC e-pistle is designed for the friends and families of Langhorne Presbyterian Church and any others who happen by. Pastor Bill Teague shares weekly comments on the world, the life of faith and Langhorne Church. A weekly e-mail, sent by request, keeps members up to date on news and prayer concerns within the congregation. Langhorne Presbyterian Church is a warm, Christ-honoring congregation, and we'd love to have you stop by for a visit if you're ever in our neighborhood. You can get directions to LPC here.

E-pistle March 5

Bill — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:27:19 +0000

Why Bother? 30 Hours, Haiti and Tenwek

As they have for more than a decade, middle and high school students from LPC and the community will gather during a late winter weekend for what is called the 30 Hour Famine. The 90+ kids and many of the 100+ adults who will play a role in the weekend will quit eating at noon today and not eat again until 6:00 p.m. Saturday. 30 Hours without food. But 30 hours filled with opportunities to learn and serve and have a little fun. The kids will spend the night at LPC in a “tent city” set up in the Fellowship Hall and elsewhere. There will be games and songs and lots of things to do, and as their stomachs begin to growl, they will be reminded of a world where nearly 1 billion people – one in seven of the world’s population – will go to bed hungry. Why bother? What good does it do to miss three or four meals?

When they wake up Saturday morning, there will be no Pop Tarts or Cocoa Puffs, just the feeling of an empty stomach and they will learn that every hour of their fast nearly 500 kids in our world, about eight per minute, will die of hunger related causes. But why bother? What can a few kids going hungry for a few hours do about it?

As Saturday morning unfolds the kids and their leaders will be sent to work and serve at sites across the Philadelphia area, to soup kitchens and food pantries, homeless shelters and nursing homes, where people not so far from home live with the reality of hunger or poverty every single day. But why bother? What do we in the suburbs have to do with them?

In preparation (and Sunday morning following!) for the famine, the kids are raising money that will go to support the work of World Vision, the international sponsor of the famine. This year’s money will go to the relief work still underway in post-earthquake Haiti. But why bother? Some say the earthquake is the least of Haiti's problems.

World Vision will also be the recipient of a special portion of our One Great Hour of Sharing Offering for those of you who so designate. Why World Vision? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, wrote about World Vision in this past Sunday’s column (click here). I don’t think he’s quite got it all, but Kristof, in many ways a surprising source, has some of it right. Kristof writes, “In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground." Kristof acknowledges that there is a tendency among the elites to discount the incredible care given in the name of Christ. He cautions his own, "We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars. A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.” But why bother? Why not just let the government do the job?

Yes, some of us spend vacation time volunteering in clinics and schools around the world. As noted in this week’s prayer concerns, two LPC members, Dr. Sadeer Hannush and daughter Monica leave today for what will be a ten-day mission to the Tenwick mission hospital in western Kenya. Sadeer will be working to train Kenyan doctors especially in cornea transplant surgery and Monica will assist as needed using her language and other skills. I encourage you to spend some time getting to know Kenwek by visiting their website (click here; you can learn about some of Kenwek’s longer term medical staff here and here). We pray safety and God’s blessings for Sadeer and Monica and will be eager to hear from them upon their return (they should be back in the U.S. March 17). But why bother? What difference will one doctor make in ten short days?

So why is that the followers of Jesus Christ are likely to give generously of time, talent and treasure (and not nearly enough as we should, we must acknowledge humbly and contritely)? Why bother? The heart of our giving is not for merit gained or honor earned, not for notoriety or self-satisfaction. Not even the good we may do, small or great. At the heart of our giving is the heart of God. “We love because he first loved us,” John reminds us (1 John 4:19)

Why bother with earthquake ravaged Haiti or impoverished Kenya. Why go without food for 30 hours or spend a Saturday morning at a homeless shelter? Why take a year to serve in Honduras or a week in Guatemala? Why bother? Because God bothered. He bothered to care on that beautiful terrible cross.

E-pistle February 26

Bill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:05:43 +0000

Grace Like a Snow Plow

After this month’s blizzards 2.0 and 2.1 the street where we live was a mess. The township was to blame and we lazy residents were to blame. The township plowed the street maybe once, just a single pass around the loop that makes up our development. When it became clear that that was all the plowing we were going to get, some of the neighbors got to work and shoveled and cleared the street in front of their houses right to curb. Others shoveled their own driveways, but left slushy ice piles in the street. Some folks simply powered their way through the snow drifts and during the two weeks before blizzard 2.2 hit yesterday, they became more and more comfortable parking on the ice as close to the curb as they could get, which wasn’t all that close. It was a mess.

A few days ago, before 2.2, one of the neighbors, for sure one of those clean the street to the curb types, stuffed a letter in each mail box in the development in which he told us, in a very nice way, that some of us are a little lazy and thoughtless. He reminded us of the township ordinances about parking our cars out of the way of the snow plow. I thought it was a pretty good letter. Of course, I’m one of those clean the street to the curb types.

He also reminded us that we are taxpayers and he gave us the phone number and email address of the director of the township’s road department and said, “Please feel free to contact him and voice your concerns.” I’m pretty sure the director of the township’s road department was really happy about that.

But here we are in the middle of blizzard 2.2 and while I was out shoveling snow this morning, the township’s snow plow made the loop through our development four times, he cleared the street curb to curb – well, almost curb to curb; I still did a little shoveling in the street. The director of the township’s road department must have gotten some calls. If the street where you live is a mess, I’m sorry, but the township’s snow plows were busy over in our neighborhood.

Sometimes we seem to think of God as the director of some cosmic service department with Jesus as his customer relations guy. In our best moments we are pretty understanding. God has lots of services to render and some pretty messy situations to deal with. We can see how he might forget us from time to time. But when the mess is on the street where we live or in our lives or the lives of those we love, we expect the service we deserve. After all, we pay our pledges at the church and volunteer in the community every so often. We are owed more than one pass by the snow plow. And when the snow plow doesn’t come we start complaining and praying all the more and ask our friends and neighbors to join in. Isn’t that what a prayer meeting or a prayer chain is all about? We deserve more than we’re getting. Squeaky wheel and all that.

In fact, Jesus said that it is like that in a way. He told a story once of a fearless judge and a persistent widow who demanded justice. The judge was not particularly inclined to hear the case and did so only because he got tired of the widow’s nagging. The parable teaches persistence in prayer, not badgering God until we get what we want.

Prayer itself is a richly complicated thing. David and Paul, Peter and John; the Lord Jesus himself, have much to say about it. In so many ways, prayer is not about what it gets for us. It about what it does to us. It’s not about what we deserve because we’ve paid our dues. It is about what are to become because Jesus has paid the price for our redemption.

Jesus doesn’t call us customers, he calls us friends. Friends take joy in each other’s company and do things for each not because it’s owed but because there is such joy in the giving. Indeed, only God could make the terrible cross a beautiful reminder of joy, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)

I suppose those of us who live in our development were owed the clean sweep the snow plow made this morning. We are, after all, taxpayers. I’m not owed an answer to any of my prayers. But for joy God answers every single one of them. Sometimes “yes,” sometimes “no,” sometimes “wait and see.”

See you Sunday

E-pistle February 19

Bill — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:32:00 +0000

How Rich Were We?

On Sunday we begin a two-week look at the ways that financial pressures complicate our quest for a more simple and Christ-focused life. The research for the sermon has been fascinating, though at times I came close to drowning in a sea of statistics. But I dog paddle well enough and made it safely to shore before the last wave of numbers threatened to pull me under.

I’ve read about the national debt and consumer debt (non-mortgage debt such as car loans and credit card debt), and the metaphor of drowning becomes more serious as we measure our situation. We’re in trouble. No wonder finances are among the big three stressors in our lives (along with time and relationships).

I’m no economist, but it seems pretty simple. We have debt because we borrow. We borrow because we want something we can’t afford. And some – not all – that we want and for which we borrow, we want a lot more than we need. Simple to describe, difficult, nearly impossible, for some to escape.

Becky and I have a car payment, so we are adding our share to the 13 billion dollars in national consumer debt (not to be confused with the 12 billion dollars in government debt). But, thanks be to God, we do not have credit card debt and never have. Debt has not swept over us like a wave that threatens our very lives. I make the statement with all humility and pray God would save me from pride.

If the statistics are accurate, half of you reading these words are not so fortunate. The stress of unmanageable debt goes with you to bed at night and is there beside you the minute you wake up. It is a dreadful companion who will not leave you alone.

So, what is the alternative to being in debt or going into debt? Going without. Going without an expensive cell phone plan or too many channels of television. Going without fast food or family vacations. Going without name brand clothes or designer coffee. Yes, going without.

Again, if I may say so, we know something about going without, seriously going without. We did it for a long time during those early years of our marriage – and beyond. In fact, God was calling us to go without and he had his reasons, one of which was to keep us from downing in debt.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has an inflation calculator and the Social Security Administration sends us those summaries of our earnings every year. So I’ve looked back to the years when our kids were young and my salary slim. I’ve fattened the numbers up a bit to see what they would like in 2010 terms and they still don’t look too healthy.

As I recall it, going without was no fun. Nothing fun about it at all. I hope never to return to those days.

But there was something about those going without days that was very rich. I’d be much less than honest if I did not admit that we lost sight of it some days, but we saw it often enough to know it was true. We saw what the Apostle learned and shared with the Philippians, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

Debt and the financial stress it causes is serious and it is complicated. Going without as God’s call for a season, perhaps a long season, also brings its share of stress, no doubt about it, but it is less complicated. It hears what Paul reminds the Philippians, “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

I will accept the charge of sounding arrogant with humble apologies and the charge of being hopeless naive only by saying that he who promised is faithful.

I would encourage any of your who feel lost in a sea of debt to please let me know. There are solid, biblically based, resources to help.

I’ve looked, and the BLS does not have a calculator for an inflation-adjusted reckoning of the riches of God’s grace. Our computers would crash before the calculation could be done.

E-pistle February 12

Bill — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:36:12 +0000

Godly Disruptions of a Predictable Routine

I had not penciled in several hours of snow shoveling on my weekly calendar. I had not expected to be searching the shelves in the garage, flashlight in hand, for that old backpacking stove after the power went out late Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t know that Faith Acts would be canceled. But neither had I expected a Tuesday afternoon invitation for an early Wednesday morning walk through snowy Langhorne and the wonderful conversation and prayer I’d share with the faithful friend who invited me. I hadn’t thought of Scrabble by candlelight the night the power went off, but Becky did and it was great (Becky won – she played her Q more shrewdly than I played my Z). I could not have imagined the beauty of the snowy landscape under bright blue skies yesterday and today.

The third blizzard of the century this winter disrupted a lot of the things I had planned on or assumed that I would be doing. All in all, it was a pretty good disruption.

God, blizzard-like, loves to disrupt our predictable routines and our best-laid plans. Earthquakes, hurricanes, famines and drought strike people in places we’ve never heard of and suddenly we’re called to prayer and generous giving we had not anticipated. Friends call at unseemly hours with pain or sorrow in their voices, and we know that whatever else we planned to do must be set aside in order to listen, pray, listen some more and then share a word from Scripture or Spirit-given solace.

We hadn’t planned on it, but a friend invites us to a Bible study, a time or prayer or just a fellowship gathering and that Spirit that blows like a wind reminds us that what we had thought we’d be doing with that time wasn’t all that important after all.

We never thought we would sing in the choir or teach in the Sunday School. Never imagined that God would call us to join a mission team traveling in Christ’s name to a country we’d otherwise never visit. Me a deacon or an elder? Never say never when you're in relationship with the God with whom all things are possible.

That disruptive God of ours simply asks that we always use a pencil with a good eraser when we begin to plan and organize our time. Most often our appointments and meetings will take place just as predicted. But every so often the Spirit begins to blow in a new direction, sometimes even a blizzard of change, and we better be ready to be disrupted.

It’s something like this. We can be open to God’s disruptions, even shoveling snow, or we can spin our wheels in the slush of our carefully organized lives getting nowhere. I’ll take the godly disruption.

By the way, did you know if you spelled “quizzed” on a triple world score, using all seven of your letters (including the blank as your second Z), you’d get 158 points? I’m hoping for the day.