Zombies and the resurrection

                               

Watch out. They’re coming. And if they bite you, you’ll soon be joining them — after you die an agonizing death, reanimate and become one of the “undead,” that is.

I’m talking about zombies, of course. You can find them stumbling around looking for their next human snack in countless comics, books, computer games and movies. “The Walking Dead,” one of the most popular shows on TV, follows the grim adventures of survivors of the zombie apocalypse as they fight off hordes of mindless-but-hungry creatures in Georgia. No wisecracks, please; that’s my home state.

How did zombies become so big all of a sudden? It’s not all that sudden. George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” the low-budget movie that started the flesh-eating zombie craze, oozed onto theater screens in 1968. In fact, zombies entered American pop culture long before that. American soldiers who occupied Haiti in the 1920s brought back fearful tales of dead men working the fields, controlled by evil voodoo masters — part superstition, part folklore emerging from the brutal Caribbean legacy of slavery. “White Zombie,” starring Bela Lugosi (the original movie Dracula), came out in 1932.

There are any number of theories floating around about why folks are fascinated with zombies, ranging from our timeless appetite for scary stories to heavy-duty dissertations analyzing our fear of global pandemics, terrorism, world-ending wars and even the dehumanizing effects of consumer culture.

But there’s a deeper and more universal human fear underlying the zombie obsession: our dread of death itself. And what comes after.

“The zombie’s horror is that he is … a slave forever,” wrote theologian Russell Moore in a Baptist Press column last year. “After all, if even death cannot free you, you can never be free. That’s exactly the point, and here’s why it should matter to Christians. Zombies are horrifying not simply because they’re mean and aggressive. They’re horrifying because they represent what ought to repulse us: the rotting decay of death. But they still walk. And beyond that, they still crave. … [T]hey are driven along by their appetites, though always under the sway of a slave master’s will. That’s our story” — the story, in other words, of fallen human beings enslaved by sin and death.

No matter how hard our youth-obsessed culture tries to convince us otherwise, we know death is coming. I appreciated the honesty of actress Valerie Harper, whose recent announcement that she has incurable brain cancer brought a national wave of sympathy. “We’re all terminal,” she responded to well-wishers in one interview. “And we have a lot of fear [about] death.”

To allay that fear, secularists and pop spirituality hucksters assure us there are no such things as heaven, hell or a God who will judge our sins in view of eternity. We know deep down they are wrong, but many of us go along with the charade or fail to challenge it. It’s a comforting fiction for folks who reject or redefine biblical truth. It won’t be very comforting on Judgment Day.

Then there are the millions who ignore death (and any other serious subject) altogether. They also tend to ignore their own souls and consciences. They “live” for the moment — like zombies. Perhaps you have noticed this tendency among those who have turned themselves over to technology, one of our contemporary false gods. Psychiatrist Keith Ablow described one of the worst manifestations of this form of idolatry in an article about the Ohio teens who stood by and watched, even taking and posting pictures and videos, as a female classmate rendered helpless by alcohol was sexually assaulted for hours:

“Having watched tens of thousands of YouTube videos with bizarre scenarios unfolding, having tweeted thousands of senseless missives of no real importance, having watched contrived ‘reality TV’ programs in which people are posers in false dramas about love or lust or revenge, having texted millions of times, rather than truly connecting, and having lost their real faces to the fake life stories of Facebook, they look upon the actual events of their lives with no more actual investment and actual concern and actual courage than they would look upon a fictional character in a movie. They are absent from their own lives and those of others. They are floating free in a virtual world where nothing really matters other than being cool observers of their own detached existence. …”

What a pathetic way to waste a life, which is intended by God to prepare us for eternity.

Evil takes ever-changing forms, but it comes from two ancient sources: sin and death. Only one Person has defeated both. Jesus knew His beloved friend Lazarus was dead before he reached Bethany, as the story is told in the Gospel of John, chapter 11. Lazarus’ sisters had sent word, begging Jesus to hurry to the village to heal their ill brother. But He delayed His arrival. By the time He got there, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.

“Jesus said, ‘Remove the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?’ So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, ‘Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.’ When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth.’ The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go’ (John 11:39-44, NASB).

Jesus had authority over death, and He glorified His Father by raising Lazarus. On Easter morning, God glorified Himself by raising Jesus. At that moment, the power of sin and death was crushed for all time. For all who believe and follow Him, there is no longer any reason to fear death — or what follows. What follows is eternity in the presence of God.

Our zombified world desperately needs that message.

Bill Hyde: ‘John Wayne of missions’

                                                   
                                                      

Ten years ago March 4, a bomb planted at a Philippine airport by a Muslim rebel group killed 23 people — including one American, a Southern Baptist missionary named Bill Hyde.

It’s ironic that Hyde, 59, died at the little airport in Davao City where he’d walked countless times — a place considered safe. He had made a habit of going into some of the most dangerous places in the Philippines. Places where you could get kidnapped, shot at, or worse, especially if you were a foreigner. He’d just returned from such a place that day.

Why did he willingly go to those dangerous places? After surviving the Vietnam War more than 30 years before, he vowed never to leave the United States again — or if he did, never to go anywhere near Southeast Asia. To understand his change of heart, you have to understand Hyde.

He grew up in a small farming town in Iowa, the home state he shared with his movie hero, John Wayne. He was a big, athletic kid with a ready smile — and ready fists. “His nickname was ‘Slugger,’” his older brother remembered. “He got into lots of fights.”

He had a strong will and a fierce competitive streak, but he wasn’t a bully. Mostly, he proved himself in sports — especially basketball and baseball. When he wasn’t working at his father’s hardware and farm implements store, he starred in both sports in high school and later earned a basketball scholarship to college.

Hyde was no one-dimensional jock; his competitive instinct extended to all games, including chess, and he was a voracious reader. “I could almost see Bill looking at the world like a giant ‘Risk’ game, thinking of how the most people could come to Christ in the shortest possible time,” said a missionary in later years.

He accepted Christ as his Savior at 12 during a Vacation Bible School and renewed his commitment during college. Music eventually overtook sports as top priority, and he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and choral literature from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. While attending Bethany Baptist Church near the university, he accepted a part-time job directing the choir and met Garlinda (Lyn) Gage, an attractive young woman singing in the alto section. They married in 1966.

Their early months of married life revolved around the church and college studies. But the U.S. Army intervened with a draft notice. Hyde served at the height of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in 1967-68.

He suffered no physical wounds, but bore unseen scars. When he returned, he stepped off the plane carrying a bag. Inside was a large piece of shrapnel. During a mortar attack on his camp, the shrapnel had ripped through the top of his tent — and through the center of his cot, where he had been lying only minutes before.

“God had spared Bill’s life,” said Lyn. “We didn’t know why, but we were thankful that for him the war was over. When Bill returned from the war, he informed me that he would never leave the United States again.”

But the Word of God changed his mind and heart.

“Bill’s favorite verse in the Bible was Matthew 28:16, which says, ‘Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go,’” Lyn explained. “The verses we know as the Great Commission follow. Bill lived by this passage. … He would tell people that if they went where Jesus told them to go, they would be able to carry out the Great Commission in those places.”

For the Hydes, that meant missionary service in the Philippines. They were appointed Southern Baptist missionaries in 1978. Their first assignment fit their skills and experience perfectly: teaching at Faith Academy, a school for children of missionaries near Manila. They spent 11 productive years there shaping young lives, including those of their sons. Never one to stay inside the bounds of walls and programs, Hyde seldom missed an opportunity to take students and choir groups on mission trips around the country.

He sensed God leading him toward a new task: teaching Filipinos studying theology at Southern Baptist College in M’lang, on the island of Mindanao.

“He had a passion to equip Filipinos for ministry and leadership,” says former missionary Don Phelps, a friend and co-worker in the Philippines. “On the weekends he would go out and invest himself in their lives and ministries. He had such a rapport with them; he was a natural at spending time with them and encouraging them.”

A grand vision began to grow inside him: to equip believers to train other believers, to equip churches to start churches, to multiply the Gospel throughout Mindanao and beyond. In 1997 the Hydes transferred to Davao City, and Bill began to focus all his energies on training church planters.

“Bill could be kind of intimidating until you got to know him,” said another missionary friend. “He was tall and barrel-chested, with a deep voice that boomed with authority and confidence. … He had an extensive collection of John Wayne movies, and we would always want to watch the Westerns while our wives would want more ‘sensitive’ selections. Bill even developed a theory on how John Wayne had influenced American theology.

“Bill himself was much like an ‘apostolic John Wayne.’ … Aside from the physical similarities, he approached life and ministry in a similar way. He took on the devil and refused to accept defeat, with a vision to expand the kingdom that was as big as the West. As big as Bill was, he was doing something that was bigger than himself.”

The key to his church-planting strategy was simple: like the Apostle Paul, he multiplied himself in other faithful men, who could in turn multiply themselves in others. He started by training a core group of seven Filipino men committed to church planting. As they became trainers, the circle widened into a network of hundreds.

He never went anywhere alone. He always took at least one young Filipino or missionary — and usually as many as he could pack into his vehicle — on his trips into the hinterlands. He trained Filipinos to start churches, then let them take the lead while he observed and encouraged. Most important, he flatly refused to do anything in ministry leadership that Filipino believers could do themselves.

One of those Filipino men was Eddie Palingcod, a member of Hyde’s original core group. Palingcod became the leading Baptist church-planting trainer for an entire province in the Philippines.

Hyde’s approach departed from the traditional idea of starting one church at a time. “He said to me, ‘Eddie, you need to train others to plant churches. It’s not that you’re doing the wrong thing now, but you need to multiply,’” Palingcod recalled after Hyde’s death. “It was hard for me to understand at first, but when I applied it, I got excited.

“Even though he is now living in heaven,” said Palingcod, “I told Bill, ‘It works!’”

Today Hyde’s legacy lives on in the hundreds of churches started through his ministry of multiplication. In the thousands of Filipinos won to Christ. In the ongoing ministries of missionaries he mentored and encouraged. In the ministry of his life partner, Lyn, who courageously returned to the Philippines in early 2004 and continued her work until retiring in 2009. In the lives of his sons, who followed in his mission footsteps.

Perhaps most of all, it lives on in the hundreds of Filipino men like Eddie Palingcod, who continue to live out the passion for church multiplying Hyde instilled in them.

“Every day I read the Bible Bill gave me before he died,” said Palingcod. “He was my discipler, but he was also just like a father. After his death, it was hard to continue. But at his memorial service, I told him in my heart, ‘Bill, I will continue.’
“Bill died, but his ministry is still alive.”
(To read more about Bill Hyde and other contemporary missionaries who have given their lives for Christ, read "Lives Given, Not Taken: 21st Century Southern Baptist Martyrs." Order the book at http://imbresources.org/index.cfm/product/detail/prodID/1330.)

'Lord, bless the missionaries'

           

(Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/169/16904/16904-95293.mp3)

It’s a familiar prayer. Too familiar, some say, to mean much.

“Lord, bless the missionaries.”

For church folks of a certain age, these words are as comfortable and automatic as “Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies” or “Bless the gift and the giver.”

Mission leaders who’ve heard this prayer uttered countless times sometimes criticize it as perfunctory, meaningless or ritualistic. Which missionaries? Where? Bless them how? And what about the people missionaries are trying to reach with the Gospel? Don’t they need prayer, too? A quick “Lord, bless the missionaries” gives people an excuse to check praying for missions off their to-do list, like dropping a buck or two in the offering plate takes care of supporting missions.

Effective praying for missionaries and their ministries needs to be a bit more specific.

“I continue to be intrigued that God, a sovereign God, would link His activity over the nations to the prayers of His people,” said Jerry Rankin, retired IMB president. “But are we willing to move beyond a simple ‘God bless the missionaries’ and pray to invoke His blessings on their efforts? Prayer is not simply a way to bless the strategies and methods of our missionaries. It is the foundation of the strategy. Missionaries go to tell the story and to reap the harvest, but if the doors are to be opened, if the barriers are to crumble, if hearts are to be softened, it’s our responsibility to pray them into the kingdom.”

Wanda Lee, Woman’s Missionary Union executive director-treasurer, made a similar observation years ago: “Praying ‘God bless the missionaries’ once you are informed is not specific enough to open these dark places to the light of Jesus Christ. It will take informed, inspired praying to reach our world with the message of salvation.”

“Informed” is a key word. There are many ways to become informed about the needs of missionaries and the people groups they strive to reach. A good place to start is www.imb.org/compassionnet, IMB’s main prayer network, which offers a variety of ways to pray strategically for missionaries, mission teams and people groups. You and your church might even become part of one of those teams as you discover God’s heart for making disciples among all nations.

Storming the gates of darkness requires informed, committed spiritual warriors willing to pray big prayers — and “small” ones. God cares about little things, because they aren’t so little in the grand scheme of His work.

“It’s been another challenging week for us,” a missionary wrote recently. “My husband’s back suddenly started to spasm on Wednesday and by Thursday he was in real pain. Our crate arrived Thursday, which was a great encouragement. It’s been a little slow trying to get everything in place by myself, but I’ve done pretty well and things are shaping up. Did I forget to mention that my husband also slashed his finger pretty badly Wednesday afternoon? We just washed it, put a dab of super glue on it and bandaged it.

“Why do you need to pray for missionaries?” she asked. “Because these are some of the more minor things we face. Because a cut finger and severe back issues mean we’re a man down. Because we can’t just run down the road for medical attention. And because little things can become big things if you let them. God doesn’t need us to do His work. He can get it done however He chooses, with us or without us. He does need us to cooperate with Him if we are to be made holy and sanctified saints. And this requires the right attitude. Pray for us to persevere through all circumstances and to rejoice in all things. In this way, we honor the Lord and bring glory to His name. And that is what will draw the nations to Him.”

Are back spasms and a cut finger too trivial to pray about when the world is falling apart? Not if you’re the one experiencing them. Not if they prevent you from focusing on the work of God. Back spasms can shut you down faster than being arrested for spreading the Gospel. If you’re jailed, at least you can share Jesus with fellow inmates. Back spasms put you on the couch, afraid to move a muscle.

Lord, bless that missionary. But let’s get more specific: Heal his back, if You are willing, or teach him to rejoice in weakness and trust Your grace completely. Help him and his wife to persevere day by day when the going gets tough, when discouragement blots out hope like an eclipse. Give them joy. Give them strength and energy. Help them to lift Your light in the dark place where they live and use them to bring many new disciples into Your kingdom. And show us how we can do our part — through prayer first, but also through action.

Amen.

A new generation of black missionaries

To see a multi-media package celebrating African Americans on mission, visit http://commissionstories.com/

One half of 1 percent.

That’s the percentage of the 4,900 Southern Baptist international missionaries who are African American. They number 27. Even that tiny total represents progress. Not so long ago, you could count black Southern Baptist missionaries on two hands — and have some fingers left over.

Times have changed. Attitudes have changed. Demographics have changed. Leaders have changed: Fred Luter, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, made history last year as the first African American elected to lead the nation’s largest Protestant church body.

And SBC churches have changed. More than 10,000 of the convention’s 50,000-plus congregations now identify themselves as non-Anglo. That’s a 66 percent jump since 1998, according to the latest statistics from the North American Mission Board’s Center for Missional Research. The largest increase has come in African-American congregations, which grew by a whopping 82.7 percent between 1998 and 2011. Some 1 million African Americans in about 3,400 churches now represent 6.25 percent of total SBC church membership.

So why aren’t there more black Southern Baptists taking the Gospel to the nations? The daily challenges on their own doorsteps have something to do with it.

“A lot of our African-American churches are in the ’hood,” says Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. “[People ask me], ‘Why do I need to go to Africa, Asia or Europe? We need to get people saved in this community.’”

Luter, who visited IMB offices recently and preached to staff members, pledges to help overcome that mindset by modeling missions commitment, educating churches about global needs — and instilling God’s vision for missions in a new generation of African Americans.

“I want to challenge the pastor to start with our young people,” he says.

Young people like Jonathan Marshall,* 26, who is completing his service in North Africa and the Middle East. Last summer Marshall told about his work during Black Church Week at LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina. “My topic is ‘Young Black Men in Missions,’” he told listeners with a grin. “But I’m the only one, so I’m going to talk about myself.” At the time, Marshall was the only single, male African American serving as an IMB worker.

But 1,200 people from predominantly black churches attended the conference, including a contingent of teens and college-age folks, and they heard mission challenges from Marshall and others.

Seeing, hearing and following others who are blazing the trail — those are keys to nurturing a generation of African Americans with a heart for the world, according to Keith Jefferson, IMB’s African-American church missional strategist. Jefferson served for 16 years as an IMB missionary in Brazil. But he never seriously considered overseas service until he was personally challenged by David Cornelius, his predecessor as African-American strategist, who was a missionary for many years in Africa.

Increasing exposure to the world in a hyper-connected age is another key.

“The world is becoming smaller and smaller,” Jefferson says. “African-American professionals are traveling worldwide. Communication is becoming greater and greater. Younger people especially are communicating with people throughout the world, and they are more adventurous. They’re not ‘set.’ They’re open to new things.”

From early childhood through high school and college, young African-American Christians need to be “groomed” for missions, Jefferson stresses. He urges pastors, teachers and mentors to tell young people, “You’re going to be a doctor, you’re going to be a lawyer, you’re going to be a teacher, you’re going to be a nurse, yes, but some of you are going to be missionaries.”

Young people who start out by serving overseas for a few weeks or a summer through programs such as International World Changers are more open to serving for a semester, Jefferson says. Those who give a semester are more likely to give two years through the Journeyman Program or International Service Corps. And many two-year workers go on to become career missionaries.

The opportunities are limitless. The time for delay or rationalization is over.

“God is calling us, because like every other child of God, we have a responsibility,” Jefferson says. “We don’t have any excuses.”

*(Name changed)

To learn more about how your church can play a key role in reaching the world, contact Keith Jefferson, IMB African-American missional church strategist, at kjefferson@imb.org or (800) 999-3113, ext. 1422

If only I had ...

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/167/16719/16719-93243.mp3

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Regret is a painful thing. We look back on the foolish things we have done and the good things we have left undone. We lament wasted years, wrong attitudes, hurts inflicted on others, missed opportunities.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse, spent years caring for patients in their last days. She identified the most common regrets they expressed about their lives in an article, and later a book, titled “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” They are:

1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

“This was the most common regret of all,” writes Ware. “When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”

2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

“This came from every male patient that I nursed,” Ware reports. “They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”

3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”

Many people regretted staying silent or living dishonest lives just to “keep the peace” with others. They often developed illnesses from bitterness and resentment.

4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

Ware: “Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. … It all comes down to love and relationships in the end” — not money, things or accomplishments.

5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

Many people failed to realize until it was nearly too late that happiness is a choice, Ware discovered. They willingly remained in the bondage of patterns and habits that were familiar, yet brought little contentment.

I’ll add a few more regrets that I have experienced. Perhaps you have some, too:

-- I wish I had spent more time glorifying God and less time cursing the darkness.

The world stinks. People are evil. Terrible things happen all the time. This is not exactly news. Constantly bemoaning it is a waste of time. Praising the Lord, His greatness, His grace and mercy and His salvation is time better spent — both now and in preparation for eternity in His presence. It’s also a better way to eliminate darkness. Jesus said, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (John 12:32, NASB).

-- I wish I had spent more time serving God and people and less time serving myself.

God created you and me to love Him, not to squander our brief time on earth loving ourselves only. The Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1647 is a far better guide in this regard than all the pop psychologists and phony priests of self-worship: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

-- I wish I had told a lot more people about Jesus — and helped other believers to do so.

If Jesus meant the words He uttered in Matthew 28:19-20, when He told His followers to make disciples among all nations (peoples), this is our agenda. Nothing else comes higher on the priority list. And we have more resources to do it on a truly global scale than any previous generation of believers.

What are your regrets? If you’re still alive and alert enough to read this, you can change the habits and patterns that caused them.

“People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality,” Ware says of her experiences with the dying. “I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal.”

We are all dying. Some of us have a few days left; some of us have many years. Make every day count.

New Year's resolution: Be like Harold

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“He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; he who makes one is a fool.”

Harold Hurst didn’t say that, but it sounds like one of his zingers. He believed in commitment, not wishful thinking. I’m making this New Year’s resolution in his memory anyway: Be more like Harold Hurst.

It won’t be easy. Harold, who died Dec. 15, accomplished more in 88 action-packed years than any 10 lesser men. He often did it the hard way, but he never complained. Not about hard work, at least. I did hear him complain once or twice about slackers and lollygaggers. Harold was old school. Look up “old school” in the dictionary and you’ll probably find his picture. You’ll also find him beside “faithful.”

Who was Harold Hurst? Glad you asked.

Born in Illinois, he grew up on a Missouri farm during the toughest years of the Depression. He gave his life to Christ during a revival service in 1941. Hard work held him out of high school, but he finished a diploma by correspondence while in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He organized ministries to Christian servicemen and went on to lead several churches as pastor during college and seminary. But he felt God beckoning him toward farther horizons.

“I surrendered to His service,” Harold wrote. “I knew His call was to the foreign mission field.” He became a member of the great generation of postwar missionaries who took the Gospel to a suffering world crying out for hope.

I first met him many years later, during the “second act” of his eventful life. He had joined the International (then Foreign) Mission Board staff in 1977 to help Southern Baptist churches and volunteers do medical ministry and disaster relief more effectively. He “pioneered concepts in mobilization and deployment of responders to natural disasters and other crises,” said Lewis Myers, his friend and IMB colleague, at Harold’s funeral service. “He led our response to Hurricane David in the Dominican Republic in 1979. It still stands as a model for disaster response and established Southern Baptists as a major and effective contributor to global relief.”

Harold gained the know-how he later shared with others from long personal experience as a missionary — and “general flunky first aid,” as he described it — in Honduras. Harold and Alice, his wife and sweetheart for 65 years, opened Southern Baptist mission work in the Central American nation after they were appointed in 1952. He started First Baptist Church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras’ capital, and many more in towns and villages around the country.

In addition to nearly nonstop evangelism, preaching and starting churches over the next 20-plus years, he managed the Baptist bookstore in Tegucigalpa, directed and taught at the Baptist theological institute (begun in his house), coordinated university ministry and administered a medical clinic.

On top of all that, he taped a popular weekly TV program, “The Church in the Home.” At one point the station manager tried to move the program from a prime Sunday evening spot to a far less favorable time. Harold, never one to go down without a fight, appealed to viewers to voice their opinion about the change. The show’s fans jammed the station’s telephone switchboard and sent nearly 1,500 letters within a week demanding that it stay on the primetime schedule. Harold ended up getting a nice Saturday evening slot — plus a second program on Sunday morning.

Things didn’t always go smoothly in desperately poor, sometimes unstable Honduras. The Hurst family once experienced three revolutions in a single year — including one on Harold’s birthday. “The kids were asking, ‘Dad, are all those firecrackers outside for your birthday?’” he recalled. It was gunfire.

Many of Harold’s greatest adventures, however, came on the back of a mule. Getting to many of the isolated villages where Harold and Alice, a skilled nurse, took their evangelistic/medical caravans involved spending “a lot of time on a quadruped with long ears,” as Harold put it in a 1957 letter. “I discovered after two years on mules that I needed to invest in a saddle with a foam rubber seat.” He often spent a week at a time circuit riding between scattered preaching points.

Once he was arrested for riding a “stolen” mule. It was a big misunderstanding, but Harold and two fellow workers spent a night in jail in the village of San Jose. They seized the opportunity, announcing they intended to hold a preaching service that night. They began singing hymns, soon attracting about 80 listeners to the room where they were being held. Harold gave his testimony and one of his co-workers preached. Nine people gave their lives to Christ, and a church was begun in San Jose.

That’s why I want to be more like Harold. He never missed a chance to tell people about Jesus.

In Honduras, during later service in Panama and Mexico — and in retirement, when he continued to teach local churches (including my own) how to do missions — Harold had one priority: declaring Christ is Lord. He continued to lead volunteer trips to Honduras, sometimes three or four a year, into his 80s. Only health problems slowed him down. He never stopped preaching.

One of the last times I talked to him, Harold wondered why fewer churches were inviting him to speak. “Is it because I’m too old, or because I tell them what they don’t want to hear?” he asked with some indignation. I’m guessing it was the latter. Harold never sugarcoated the Word of God for anybody.

One of the songs we sang at Harold’s funeral was “Find us Faithful.” The chorus says:

“Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey.”

Farewell, Harold. You were faithful.

The ‘Crews missile’ and Christmas

(Listen to an audio version at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/165/16575/16575-91862.mp3)

Have you heard about the “Crews missile”?

It was launched by Nick Crews, 67, a retired British Royal Navy submarine commander. But it wasn’t a torpedo aimed at the empire’s enemies; it was an email aimed at his three adult children. It blew up family relations — and created a furor in England and beyond after his eldest daughter, 40-year-old Emily, released the message to the media.

Fed up with his children’s career failures, divorces and other assorted dysfunctions, angry at the toll their constant crises had taken on his wife and anxious about the future for his grandchildren, Crews let ’em have it. Here’s an excerpt from his “Dear all three” email:

“Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best — probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own children. … [Y]et each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents. … none of [whom has] the maturity and sound judgment to make [wise] decisions.”

He closed with this:

“I can now tell you that I for one … have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children’s underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a realistic plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don’t want to see your mother burdened anymore with your miserable woes. … I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed. Dad.”

Tough love? Crews has become both a hero and a villain in England since his blunt message became public, setting off a media storm and provoking thousands of responses. Many Britons admire his hard-hitting candor in an age of endless excuse making for personal irresponsibility. Others condemn him as unfeeling and cruel.

“My parents just don’t do tea and sympathy and never have,” reported daughter Emily, who said she was devastated by her father’s words but admitted they contain a lot of truth. Her two younger siblings insist on an apology; 35-year-old brother Fred refuses to speak to Dad until he gets one.

In a subsequent interview with the London Daily Mail, Crews said he “hated having to send [the email] and I have examined my conscience. … I still mean every word.”

Navy commanders aren’t known for giving gentle feedback. My maternal grandfather was a ship captain, and I’ve heard lots of stories about the rough justice he delivered when his kids went astray. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it backfired. As an occasionally exasperated father, I can sympathize with Crews. As a son who inspired similar fury and despair in the hearts of my own parents more than once, I also sympathize with his children.

But angry tirades about the failings of others don’t work, contends New York Times writer David Brooks in a column about Crews. “People don’t behave badly because they lack information about their shortcomings. They behave badly because they’ve fallen into patterns of destructive behavior from which they’re unable to escape,” Brooks writes. True enough, but he proceeds to serve up warmed-over recommendations about rewarding good behaviors and ignoring bad ones. That doesn’t work in the long run, either, if the darkness inside our hearts doesn’t change.

Why do I bring up this painful family episode so close to Christmas? When I first read about Nick Crews and his anguish over his children, I thought about God, our Father. In many Bible passages, the Lord speaks of His despair and wrath caused by the sins of His people. The Old Testament prophets record a long litany of His bitter disappointments (as Crews might describe them) in His wayward children.

“I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people,” the Lord cried, “who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts, a people who continually provoke Me to My face …” (Isaiah 65:2-3, NASB). But God also promised a sign in that same great book of prophecy: “Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14b, NASB).

Some 600 years before the birth of Christ, a Father whose heart had already been broken countless times was planning an act of love that would go far beyond the imagination of any earthly mind. What if He had washed His hands of us altogether? What if He had told us never to seek Him again until we could redeem our own hopelessly evil selves?

Instead, He came to live among us as a servant and went to the cross to make a way for us to return to Him.

Yes, there will be consequences — eternal ones — for every soul that rejects the amazing grace of God offered through His Son. But for now, the offer stands.

Here’s the message of Christmas: A loving Father is still waiting for us to come home.