The Value of a Good Book

For the cost of a game of golf, I could buy a good book. Then with that book I could spend several nights in intimate fellowship as I hold it in my hands, touch and smell the pages as I turn each one in delight. It becomes a companion to new insights of knowledge or adventures of the imagination. A good book, one that is bound well, crafted under high standards and authored by a wise pen, is like being invited into a circle close friends in a gracious conversation. One can argue with a good book. Much as one would argue and debate a dear friend over issues that matter or truths worth sharpening, books require engagement. Bad literature and sloppy books can be easily closed, discarded or forgotten. But the ones that demand your attention and engage your thoughts toward higher and loftier ideas are like treasures discovered in a barren field. Is the book then a dead object once read? Not at all – it is to be shared with others and passed down to our children. It can find repose on the open shelves of the den or the room of one’s house where people dwell, talk, and laugh. There the book waits and silently beckons the next reader to take down and begin the fellowship again. Books do not live in the sense people do. They are not souls. But books have a way of living longer than people. They span generations. In this they possess great power.

Thanksgiving Day and After

This week our nation will observe two important days. One day will be a day when we remember what price the Pilgrims paid in coming to this country. The Pilgrims were the Puritan pioneers who came to America for religious liberty and barely survived those first years. Half of them died in the first several months. By the help of Indians, the tenacity of faith and God’s grace, some did survive and gathered around the new foods (corn, squash, and perhaps a turkey) of this great new land and gave thanks to God. In the same tradition of what our Pilgrim forefathers acknowledged as the providential blessings of God, we will gather with family, friends and neighbors around a splendid feast to give thanks. Some will volunteer at soup kitchens, work at homeless shelters and give out dinners to the lost and the lonely. On this day a nation will in some degree show its best side and recall a history of what once made us a “nation under God.”
Then the day after, in what has been called “Black Friday”, the retailers and shopping centers will be anticipating the busiest shopping day of the year. The hope of the economic future is in many ways measured by the “success” of this day. What a contrast from the day of thanks and remembrance of God’s provision. Yet isn’t that the way the human heart responds to God? We are so fickle and forgetful in our commitments. What we need is not another warm feeling of nostalgia – a fond memory about the days of old.

Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?"
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Eccles. 7:10 (ESV) What we need is a transformation of our hearts in the present that will bear fruit of new obedience for the future. Like true repentance, true thanksgiving reveals a pattern of a new and different kind of life. What will you do on Friday, may in fact reflect what you did in your heart on Thursday. Just think about it.
Happy Thanksgiving Day in all light of God’s grace.
Pastor Todd Baucum

Read These Books

The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment by Tim Challies
This book is written by a Canadian blogger who has probably one of the best known blogs in Reformed circles. All the big names read him for his insightful comments and numerous book reviews. This is his first book. It is probably good that one acquainted with the vast diversity on the internet and the all the bad theology that is promoted therein, deal with the issue of spiritual discernment. This is a book every believer should read and soak in the wisdom of the lost art of discernment. Tim wisely sees the challenges and the pitfalls of discernment and avoiding needless judgmentalism. But the spiritual health of the Church and the local fellowship of the Body of Christ is dependent upon a proper use of discernment in dealing with problem doctrine and divisive people. His opening parable is dynamite.

Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church by Martin Downes
A Welsh pastor digs into the minds of a diverse (geographically) group of pastors and theologians about the problem of heresy in the church. This is a candid and personal look in the way false doctrine and bad influences get started in solid orthodox circles. It relates the beguiling and attractive appeal that heresy has had on people and its destructive power. This book is good medicine, but not always easy to swallow in our climate of tolerance and niceness among Evangelicals. Of, course the answer is not in being mean and combative, but “speaking the truth in love,” as Paul did. All recent movements besetting our churches are reflected upon and critiqued, but in a storytelling of personal encounters and struggles. There is great balance found in this book. It is important that we take this seriously.

Scotland Revival and Missions

Revival and Missions

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord…” Acts 3:19


“Religious fervor is not a constant. When it flames most brightly, it transforms not only individuals but history; yet among the same people it may die down into smoldering ashes that give no heat to personal life nor any energy to national life.” This was a description of what historian James Leyburn made of the of the religious life of the Scottish people in book on the Scotch-Irish.

I wonder what was the mysterious work of God that emblazed hundreds of Scottish men and women to become missionaries? Why did so many from one small country go into uncivilized lands to suffer hardship and loss of life during the 19th Century? What was it about the land of thistles and heather that was different? How did Scotland from its pagan history come to be won by Christ through the preaching of St. Columba on the isle of Iona and send out missionaries that converted the Angles and perhaps much of Europe? In the ages of smoldering ashes when the gospel light was dim, once again God sent a revival through the preaching of John Knox and other preachers that resulted in a national transformation that still impacts our lives as Presbyterians.

Consider all the great missionary servants whose legacies now stand in the halls of Christian fame. In one decade alone from 1850’s to the 1870’s we find great missionaries like Mary Slessor go as a pioneer missionary in Africa and become known as the White Queen of Africa. She came from a poor working class family in Scotland, never married, but became a woman greatly loved by her converts and orphan children in what is now Nigeria.

We also read about James Gilmore, who in this same period left Scotland for Mongolia to preach the Gospel and never looked upon his homeland ever again. Also, John Paton sailed for the cannibal islands of New Hebrides, another Scot sailed for the Cook Islands. James Chalmers preached Christ to the islanders and eventually traveled to New Guinea and there he was killed by cannibal tribesman in 1901.

We cannot forget Alexander Mackay who like Moffat and Livingston before him, took the Gospel of our Lord into Africa with the watchword “Africa for Christ.” He never took his hands off the plow, nor looked back to his home. He spent his years in Uganda in a time of great persecution and killing of Christians. He would die of malaria in 1890, but the Church would live on.

What was it about these men and women that captured their souls and hearts with such unmitigated devotion? What do they possess that I do not have? Why cannot we experience that same visitation of holy devotion that rained upon Scotland in their days? Might the Spirit of God blow upon the smoldering ambers of our hearts for true revival? How I long for such a reality to happen in our day.

The Light of the Gospel @ Ft. Hood And the Darkness of Evil

PS 139:11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"

PS 139:12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
We have a PCA church family serving the men and women of Ft. Hood, called Hill Country Church. Rev. Lou Best is the pastor (retired Col.) and some of our own are a part of that church. Thank God no one from that church was directly affected by the shootings.
Can we make sense of the rampage on our military within their home post? Can we understand the tragedy of these honored warriors who have fought for our country and sacrificed in foreign lands only to be gunned down at home? No we cannot. There are many questions and far few answers. Who can know the human heart where evil resides? Yet, we are people of faith and hope because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even as the Psalmist declares, the “darkness will not be dark to you” because while tragic and sinful events can enter our lives they do not destroy us. This is the hope we can share with the hurting world.
When I was in high school in Texas I attended a JROTC camp for a week at Fort Hood, the largest Army post in the world home of the 1st Calvary Division. This is a place where if you thought one would be safe, it would be there. There is great shock and pain. It is time we look to the Cross of Christ where sin and evil was destroyed and the only hope of the world can be found. This is our glorious Gospel shining its light in the dark places and the dark times.
Let us pray for the victims of the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas and for the people of Hill County Church as they share the Gospel in love and confidence to that community.

Book Review

The Other Preacher in Lynchburg: My Life Across Town from Jerry Falwell. John Killinger
I could not resist reading this book with a keen interest, since I was in Lynchburg as a student at Liberty University during part of the timeline the book covers. I was expecting a candid and yet objective reflection. Upon reading the book, anybody ready to jump in delight upon any insider scoop against Jerry the Fundamentalist would find more fodder for the cannon. If you are searching for truth, one would find this personal memoire sad and at times pedantic or in a word, just arrogant. Large gaps of knowledge are quickly filled up with innuendo and third party gossip.
John Killinger is a prolific author and well known preacher among mainline pulpits having criss-crossed denominational lines at ease at the call of tall steeples and academic professorships. It is surprising that one so educated and esteemed in his circles would write a book that is on the level of a cheap “kiss and tell” narrative of sour grapes.

The title itself gives one an inkling that this book is about ego- pure and simple. Lynchburg had more than two preachers, several who never were in the spot lights, but nonetheless faithful preachers of the gospel. While one was famous for a television ministry, the founder of a university and the major inspiration of the Christian Right’s political activism, Killinger was one who seems to sulk in the shadow of one greater.
I do not and cannot defend everything about Falwell or Liberty. It was a mixed bag of experiences for me. Some bad, but some really good – which is pretty much a commentary on most things in life. In fact, overall, coming up as a Fundamentalist is not the worst thing to experience in life. Liberals and progressives can be just as mean, deceptive and duplicitous as any fundamentalist ever thought about being. The book brings together a line-up of disgruntled professors and students ready to expose the dark interior of life at Falwell’s school. I laugh at some of the examples attributing a Nazi like atmosphere to the school with its strict rules, which is like saying West Point is too regimented and uptight about hairstyles. Some of its legalistic trappings are long gone and good riddance, too. One did not go to Liberty during those days expecting it to be like Berkeley or even Lynchburg College, for that matter. The metal buildings that looked “like chicken houses” as, Will Campbell called them, were embraced by forward looking students who believed in the kind of education they would receive at such a school fully committed to conservative Christian beliefs. While some may have relished the grounds and buildings at the University of Virginia, they did not covet the content of the classrooms. Of course there is always the disgruntled minority forced into the school by hook or by crook. There are parents who think Christian Colleges are the answer in a last ditch effort of redeeming a botched up job of parenting.
I became a Presbyterian while at Liberty, not in any way thanks to the likes of Killinger (his well known pointed jabs from the pulpit were part of campus discussion), but because of what historic Presbyterian theology stood for: a cogent, intelligent belief in the Bible as the Word of God. That was something of which a nondenominational liberal fashioned in the style of Emerson Fosdick would never be accused of. For him, Fundamentalism was the social ill on the fabric of an open-minded free society. From Lynchburg to Birmingham, John Killinger recounts the victimization of a “progressive thinker” by exploitive mean- spirited fundamentalists who made his life less than a dream. His days at Beeson Divinity School also come into play as another case where Falwell and cronies undermine and discredit his work and ministry. This is a sad tale of hubris offended. It will be especially sad that people will even believe it.