What Should We Worship In Church?

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend - the traditional beginning of summer (pools open, schools are out, I can finally start wearing white.) I'm a big fan of Memorial Day, Veterans Day, July 4th... all the weekends that celebrate our freedom and remembers those who fought so bravely for us to have this freedom. Both my grandfathers fought in WWII. I'm thankful for their service and the millions of other Americans who fought against Fascism. We have men in our church who are currently serving in the United States military and are fighting the war on terror, either at home or overseas. I recently sat next to a young man on a plane who'd just graduated from Naval boot camp. My first words to him were "thank you for serving our great country." I'm thankful both for our freedoms and all those who fight to protect those freedoms.

Whenever I go to a Memorial Day parade, or a July 4th fireworks show, a service honoring our Vets, or hear Lee Greenwood sing his most famous song, that patriotic pride swells within me and I'm truly proud to be an American.

And yet, when I'm in a Sunday morning church service, and the Star Spangled Banner is played, or someone sings God Bless America, I do not feel that same sense of pride. There is something within me that is uneasy. I still have the same love for my country. I still have the same gratitude for those who've served in the military. But something just doesn't feel right when we wave the red, white, and blue in church. Why am I fine with this celebration at a parade on Main Street, but not on Sunday morning in a church service?

I read an article recently that helped put some theological framework around why I feel this way. To see this article by Kevin DeYoung, go to the following link: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2011/05/26/thinking-theologically-about-memorial-day/

Bottom line of his article is this: patriotism is a good thing, but a worship service of God is not the best place to exalt our country. Our focus in worship should be, well, God, and not ourselves or our country.

Having said all of that, I hope that you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and God Bless America!

Just a dad

Tomorrow is the big day - Kevin Ryan Mills, Jr (a.k.a, "Bubba" by his older sister Elizabeth, but "Ryan" to the rest of us), is getting dedicated in church. There are 20 babies being dedicated, and I've told my church and my family that on this day, I'm just a dad. On a normal Sunday morning, I'm up at 5:00 and out the door before anyone else in the house (including the dog) is even stirring. Most Sundays I do not get to see my family until 12:30 or so as we gather back at the house for lunch. But on this day, I'm just a dad. I'm not preaching. I'm coming to church with my family. I'm participating in the dedication, and then I'm riding home in the same car with my wife and children. Here is the way I envision our morning:

I will wake up at 7 and have breakfast with my wife. We'll drink coffee and talk about what a great day we are looking forward to having together. I'll then feed the dog, who will come over and put her head against my leg, saying "good morning" to me. I will then head up the stairs to wake up our daughter, Elizabeth, as my wife gets Ryan. We will feed them both breakfast as they sit quietly and eat. My wife and I will then take shifts getting ourselves ready, and getting the children bathed and ready. We will leave the house and be at the church at least 15 minutes before we are supposed to be in place. The four of us will walk onto the stage, along with the other families dedicating their children, and our son Ryan will behave superbly and our daughter Elizabeth will smile a perfect smile. We will then head home for a wonderful Mother's Day lunch together.

Have you ever watched any of the old "Vacation" movies with Chevy Chase? He always dreams of the "perfect" vacation with his family, only to be disappointed as nothing goes his way. I'm probably pulling a Clark Griswold here. The morning will probably go something like this:

Ryan wakes up at 5AM, screaming his head off. Since it's Mother's Day, I tell my wife to stay in bed, and that I will feed him. I stumble into his room, trying to find the light switch, and to keep from waking up his sister across the hall. I get Ryan out of bed only to discover that he has, on this Mother's Day, the "mother" of all dirty diapers. In the middle of the changing process, he decides he's ready to go, and his squirming causes the "problem" to escape the containment area. I then run out of baby wipes, forcing me to grab baby, clothes, diaper, and all affected areas and race to the bathtub. I attempt to detox the situation, causing Ryan to scream bloody murder. His screaming wakes his sister at 5:15AM, forcing mama out of bed for a man-to-man defense to try and handle the situation. Both children are taken downstairs and there is an attempted feeding. The dog starts barking, incessantly, out the window at a squirrel or cat or butterfly or some other creature that has invaded her territory, causing Ryan to cry all the more. We struggle through feeding the children, then take turns watching them in the playroom while we each attempt to eat some breakfast ourselves. At 7AM, we try and put both of them back down for a nap, hoping they will sleep some before going to church. Doesn't work. They both just cry. We again take turns guarding, I mean watching, the children while the other gets showered and dressed. Finally, just before we need to leave the house to be on time to church, they both fall asleep. We put them in the car, thankful for a little peace and quiet as we drive to church. We wake them as we arrive 10 minutes late to church. We get out of the car, frazzled, but put on our best church smile as a parking lot greeter comes over to help us. Ryan spits up on my shirt. I look at my wife and say, "Oh well." We finally make it to our assigned place to walk into the service for baby dedication, only to have our daughter screaming that she wants to go on the playground. We bribe her with a promise of ice cream, or a sucker, or a bar of gold from Fort Knox - anything to hush her up before going into big church. We finally walk in with the other families and...

both children are perfect during the entire dedication.

Please walk up to us afterwards and say, "Aren't your children just the most well behaved?" We smile and give our nod of approval to this myth.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between these two scenarios. Either way, I'm looking forward to being, "Just a Dad," and promising, along with the other dads, that I will raise my child in a Godly household, regardless of which scene becomes my reality.

Top Ten Ways You Can Know You Are Baptist

The church I pastor is an amazing family of people who are trying their best to follow Christ and believe that we can do it better together than alone. We are not perfect (not even close, really), and do not pretend to be so. But we sincerely believe that the biggest need of the human heart can be found in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We unabashedly invite others to be a part of our faith family, not because we want to be a bigger church, but because we truly believe that we can help them find answers to the big questions of life.

Because of this desire to connect others with God, we made the decision to break down any barriers which might prevent someone from taking that first step of visiting our church. We discovered that one of those barriers can be denominational structure. There is a generation today that has, with good reason, become quite cynical toward religious organizations. They've seen the news and they've read about the scandals, and so many of them have completely written off organized religion. With that in mind, we intentionally made the decision to not emphasize our particular denomination. This was not a "right" or "wrong" decision; just one that we strongly believed was right for our family of faith.

Having said that, our church is Baptist, both in our teaching and in our practice. We have many in our church who come from a variety of denominations - Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist - and are quite proud of their heritage, but now have found this to be a place where they are able to grow closer to God. In the same way, many in our church grew up Baptist and are proud of their heritage. While I personally was not raised in a Baptist church, it was in a Baptist church that my faith in and understanding of God really began to grow.

All that is just background for you to know that I'm Baptist and I have the great privilege of serving as the pastor of a Baptist church. So the following is not meant to offend anyone, just something that I came up with one day while I was running on a treadmill and my mind began to wander. If this list offends you in any way, then please accept in advance my apologies.

Top Ten Ways You Know You Are A Baptist

10. Your church has 400 members, but the FBI and Post Office together cannot find 100 of them.

9. If hearing the joke, "How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?" makes you respond, "Change?!? My grandmother gave that light bulb to this church 50 years ago! You'd better not change anything!"

8. Your version of the Bible says that instead of locust and honey, John the Baptist “ate fried chicken and drank sweet tea.”

7. At your last business meeting, there were 25 people and 30 opinions.

6. Gossip is not a sin as long as it is preceded with the phrase, "This is a prayer request" or "bless his heart." (i.e., "Pray for Sam, bless his heart, I saw him at... I mean, I heard that he was at a bar last night.")

5. Your church has a smoking porch for the deacons.

4. You have reserved seats in your worship service.

3. You have ever wondered when your church will finally pay off those loans to Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon.

2. You have ever sung all 74 verses of "Just As I Am."

1. You believe that Baptists will have their own section in Heaven!

He Isn't Ours

This past week we took our 2 1/2 month old son, Ryan, to get a CT scan and an ultrasound. He was born with something called a congenital aplasia, and after going to several doctors and even driving to Atlanta to meet with a doctor, we took the little fellow to get these scans. They doctors told us that it was probably nothing to worry over, but that these tests would confirm. Before I go any further, we did get that confirmation that he is perfectly normally (well, except for the genes he inherited from me), and that the scans were all clear, and that the worst he'll have to live with is a dime-sized bald spot on the side of his head.

We went with the technicians as they placed our son in the CT scanner. They had to place pads around his head to keep him from moving and then slid him back into the machine. My wife and I talked about that scene later as we drove home from the hospital - just how emotional it was seeing him being put into that scanner. My first thought was, "I can't imagine having to see your child go through test after test like this." I suddenly had a deep compassion for parents whose children face serious medical issues and have to go through this kind of experience over and over.

As we talked about that experience, we reminded ourselves about how both of our children are not ours. It is so hard to really believe that truth, but we have to allow that truth to find its way into our hearts or we will drive ourselves crazy trying to protect our children from every little thing and completely control their environments. We talked about how our children are a gift from God, and that they ultimately belong to Him and are under His protection. We reminded ourselves of the story of Hannah and Samuel, and how desperately Hannah wanted a son, and once he was born she both spiritually and literally gave him over to God to serve in the temple. We talked about her words, which I'm sure were said with many tears: "I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord." (I Sam 1:26-27) We've found that this is the hardest thing to do, and yet yesterday we were reminded, as we saw our son in that machine, that we cannot control everything that happens to him and protect him from everything. He belongs to God; we are simply Ryan's foster parents, caring for him the best we can.

How Do I Get To Oz?

So many times when we are trying to figure out God's will for our lives, we feel like Dorothy asking the scarecrow how to get to Oz. We get no further in clarifying the decision that ought to be made than Dorothy got in her answer from the scarecrow. We pray, we ask advice from friends, we get the big yellow legal pad and make our list of pros and cons, and still we are left scratching our heads. Is there way to really know God's will?

This Sunday (September 12th) I'm beginning a series on Discovering God's Will. In my preparation for this series, I have personally discovered two truths that make a huge difference in how I view God's will for my life: 1) God loves me more than I can possibly understand, and wants me to know His will for my life even more than I want to know it, and 2) God's purpose in my life is to get me to do the things that I don't necessarily want to do in order to become the person I want to be. In other words, I may think that His will is not the best for me, but God, in his infinite wisdom, understands the entire context of my situation, knows the outcome of every decision, and ultimately wants to lead me to the place I really want and need to be.

Those two truths are incredibly freeing. God wants me to know His will more than I want to know it makes my struggle to discover His will less burdensome. And, the fact that whatever His will is for my life is the place that ultimately I want and need to go means that I can trust His leading even when it doesn't make sense. Life becomes easier with a guide like that. Sure beats the heck out asking the scarecrow!

It Was A Scream!

Kevin Ryan Mills, Jr. (Ryan) came at 4:02PM on Tuesday, August 3rd, weighing in at a hefty 7 pounds, 9.4 ounces. According to the doctors and nurses, the delivery was as smooth as they come. Mama is recovering quickly; little Ryan seems to be happy, and big sister Elizabeth is, for the moment, tolerating this new "attention-stealer" who has entered our house. Now begins the crying, the screaming - and that's just from Dad! Even through it all... the mountain of dirty diapers, the feedings, the sleepless nights... it's worth every moment!

Dear Ryan

Dear Ryan,

It's 3:00 in the morning as I sit at the computer to write these words to you. Earlier this evening your mom decided she wanted us to go on a walk, "to get things moving along." Well, it apparently worked. After just 3 hours of sleep, she woke me to tell me that your birthday would be August 3rd, 2010. For a while, we debated: How long do we wait before going to the hospital? How long do we wait before calling and waking your grandparents to come watch your sister, Elizabeth? Should we call the hospital first and ask their advice? Will they call the doctor for us?

Strangely, the whole thing felt like deja vu all over again (a famous Yogi Bera quote...I look forward to sharing his famous wit with you one day.) Just 16 1/2 months before, we went through this same routine with your sister. You'd think that we'd know exactly what to do this time, but it's funny how much you forget in 16 months.

Your mom is getting herself ready and packing her bag (she'll pack enough to stay for a month). Your dog, Bella, is asleep on the kitchen floor. I'm drinking coffee, trying to clear the fog, sitting in the kitchen writing on the laptop. Even in the haze of the early hours of the morning, I'm exploding with excitement about meeting you for the first time.

I know I'll make mistakes. I know you won't always like me. There will come a time when you think you know everything and I'm a complete idiot. But know this: I'm going to love you with everything that is in me. I'm going to do my best to give you tons of my time. And I'm going to tell you about our God who loves you a million times more than I am able to love you. Unbelievable, isn't it? I cannot wait to throw a ball with you, to ride you on my shoulders, to read you a story, to put you to bed at night. I cannot wait to meet you, Ryan!

But for now, we wait. Just waiting on you to do your thing. So come on, buddy. I'm looking forward to meeting you.

Love,

Dad