Monday in Oswego three teenagers were killed in a fatal car crash on 126.  In a moment, everything changed for them, everything changed for their families, and everything changed for the man driving the truck who survives.  I have spent my life as a minister trying to muster up words of comfort in situations where there are no good words.  I officiated my first funeral back when 21 years old; the service was for a 34 year old mother of four who died of cancer one year after I met her.  I have spent my life trying to reconcile Who I know to be a God of Love with the pain and grief of a motherless 5 year old and her sisters and brothers.  Anything I have ever said that was helpful in accomplishing this is only a gift from God.  Me?  I never know what to say.

But let me be clear, I do know what not to say.

Do not say, “this was God’s will.”  For all the traffic this phrase generates you would think it would have a central place in scripture.  This phrase is often referenced as though random tragedy is divinely ordained, but no such example of God’s will exists in the life and teaching of Jesus...or in the entire New Testament for that matter.  So I can say with no reservation, it is never the will of God to kill three teenagers in car wreck.  I do not assume my readers are Christians, but for those who are, please remember ours is a faith of resurrection.  God has destroyed death as the final answer and is forever on the side of life and love - in fact, God IS life and love.  And that love is stronger than anything else in this world.       

Do not say, “this could have been avoided if...”  Humans like me and like you make mistakes all the time.  I admit, I have texted while I 

In most social settings it will eventually come out: I am a minister.  And that makes people do the weirdest things.  Some hide their beer as though I had not been holding one myself.  Most replay the entire conversation quickly in their heads to remember how many times they cursed.  More often than not people will fumble out a statement that goes something like this, "Wow, I could never do that.  I could never lead a church.”

     I often remind folks of two things: first, there is nothing special about me, no holy water I drink each morning, no halo around my head.  I am just a man, a guy, a bit of a nerd, a football fan, who leads because I have been asked to lead by God.  And second, what I have learned is this: God is asking each of you to lead in some capacity, too.   

     God defines leadership as servanthood in this world.  And God asks each of us to love each other to the point of serving.  And that means you.  Yes, I spent eight years acquiring a college and graduate degree in theology and saturating myself with biblical study at the highest academic level.   Yes, I have seventeen years of experience in church leadership on my resume.  But what this experience and study has really led me to is a clear, faithful, Jesus-modeled landing spot on who 'leads'.  God only wants leaders who serve.  And God wants servants who give their best.  Beyond that, just as Jesus demonstrated in His ministry, there aren't really any barriers!  Women can serve and men can serve and therefor lead.  God needs young people who can lead and wise elders who can lead.  The church needs single people who can lead and married people who can lead.  And God even needs divorced and remarried people like myself to model servant leadership.

     As the church in America continues to shrink, we have seen, and I fear we will continue to see, a closing of the theological mind.   And if the church fails to serve with the best of the human mind and the human heart's capacity, as God created us to lead, as God commanded in the first Commandment, we, the church, fail.  If we, the church, tell 50% of our community that even though they run a business, or manage in company 6 days out of the week, they may not have a leadership or teaching title on Sundays because of her gender, we fail.  If we tell the 50% of our community that is divorced or remarried that we, the church, will forever define you and condemn you by your past, unlike our leader Jesus modeled, we fail.  And if the mission of God is sidelined by the failure of the church to lead, the blessing of God sorely needed by so many will be missed.

     Even as we have a leadership crisis in our culture I am hopeful for the future of God’s church.  God has a way of getting done what God wants done.  In surprising and unexpected ways, through mangers, crosses, and empty tombs, God will get done what He wants to get done, to shatter the darkness of earth with Love.  Let us move past the legalisms of the past that have and continue to shrink the church in America and move into God’s future where servant leaders lead and the mission of God trumps all.

The religious leaders thought they had set the perfect trap.  They had found a woman in the ACT of adultery, and brought her to Jesus.  The Jewish law was explicit - the penalty was death (Deut 22:22).  (Although the law called for both parties to be put to death - where was the man who had perpetrated the same?)  But the Roman law was looming in tension to the Jewish law; no death sentences could be carried out by the Jews upon penalty of death from the Roman occupiers.  If Jesus chose to follow the law of Moses, he would be accused by the Romans and likely killed.  He had already stated He had not come to abolish even a portion of the Jewish Law, but to fulfill it.  The religious leaders had failed repeatedly to arrest Him themselves, now they could just let this situation play out and let the Romans take over the dirty work of killing Jesus.

But when confronted, Jesus assumed a submissive posture, going low, bending to the ground.  Then He does the unthinkable; He inverts the situation to make it about the heart of each and every individual.  He asks the crowd a simple question, that only they can answer internally, giving them the green light to kill the woman as their law allows IF they admit the impossible - true perfection - that they have never sinned themselves.  And none can.  In the flash of a moment, He requires them to achieve introspective repentance, acknowledgement of sin, and in that truth, grace prevails.   In fact, it is only in fullness of truth that grace for each is acknowledged honestly as necessary.

After the crowd disperses, in their final conversation, the woman and Jesus reveal much.   Everyone misses the mark, says Jesus:  "Is there no one here to judge you?"   She replies, "No one, Master" using the Greek, kyrie, translated throughout the New Testament as "Lord", a term that denotes that she has completely devoted herself to him, a full confession of faith and belonging.  Acknowledging her statement of faith He replies, "Then I do not judge you either." He says,  "Go your way, but do not sin again."  Grace...surrender...freedom...truth.  He offers no threat, no judgement, and no condemnation.  She has sinned, everyone has sinned, He has intervened, she has believed.  He has forgiven her, and He has asked her to live better.

As believers we must proceed humbly, to serve the broken, out of the knowledge that we too have been broken and still are broken.   Jesus is as available for each person to approach personally, internally, as He is for us who have already appealed to Him.  And we can follow his example to offer opportunities to encourage people to pursue truth and grace - not through statements of judgement - but through gentle and honest examining of their own experience, their own heart:
   
"Is your life where you want it to be?"  

"Are you teaching your kids what love is?"   

"Are you good with your relationship with God?"

What is the fastest growing religious group in America?  It might surprise you.  It is not the explosion of the polished mega church, though they are here to stay.  It is not Islam, though there are more Muslims in America than there are Presbyterians.  There fastest growing category is what researchers simple call 'None'.

Thom Rainer, President of Lifeway, recently wrote about the expanding segment of our country that describe themselves as 'None'.  When asked by researches if they are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim, one in five said they are 'None'.  While there are Nones who have rejected theism for intellectual reasons, many more have rejected the structures of traditional religion.  

Nones, as a group, are big and only getting bigger.  If you also lump into this category the large and growing number of people who will give a nod to God on a survey or show up in their grandmothers church on an occasional Easter, the Nones + the apathetic offer a blistering critique of American faith. 

For those who are looking for solid research on the Nones I would point you to "UnChristian" by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman.  Speaking as born and bred Evangelical Christians, they confront the hard data regarding the perception of the church through the eyes of those not involved.   Their answers are not surprising but still painful.  The Nones perceive that the church is too political, too homophobic, and anti-women.  But I also have a few thoughts that press to the core of what the church is doing to multiply the 

I decided to dig into hell today.  Not literally - in the form of study of its origins and Biblical usage. 


In the Old Testament, "hell" is translated from one word, Sheol. In the New Testament, "hell" is translated from three words Hades, Gehenna, and  tartar. 


In the Old Testament, 'hell' is always translated from the Hebrew word Sheol.  Sheol is used 65 times in the Old Testament and means "the world of the dead," grave, or pit in Hebrew.  However, in the Bible, it is translated as "grave" 31 times, "pit" 3 times, and "hell" the remaining 31 times.  It is the place where both the wicked and the good went at death and is a place of stillness and darkness.  It does imply a separation from God.  However, notably absent is any concept of a lake of fire and eternal judgement/ damnation.  


Hades is used 11 times in the New Testament as a direct translation to Greek from Hebrew Sheol and therefor takes in all the meaning of Sheol.  Hades is considered the place of the dead.  It has no relation to an afterlife reward or punishment in any instance except in the story in Luke (who was not one who heard Jesus teach directly) of the rich man 'in anguish in flame'.  Interestingly,