Two New eBooks at Amazon Kindle!
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
I came of age in a town with a Rexall drugstore. I can still see the classic orange and navy sign spelling the word in white neon. The store had one aisle but everything we needed.
Our town had a grocery store, two barbers, beauty salons, a shoe repair shop, local mechanics, and two ice cream stands. There were 12 churches and 13 beer joints, or about that. A sign at the edge of town said “3,000 Friendly People.”
Our Small Town lay along north-running Wills Creek, a stream that twists its way amidst the gentle, southern Ohio hills that still give the area its signature beauty. It wasn’t a big creek, but it was our body of water.
Small Town was a place where everyone went to church, or at least it seemed so. If you didn’t, people knew it and thought you were on the road to perdition.
We knew the baker, the barber, the grocer, the Police Chief. We knew where to get the best milkshakes, where a baseball game was always in play, and where to fish for catfish at “The Rocks” at the lake (an astounding six miles away).
Kids ran free but not wild. “It takes a village,” Hillary said, and conservatives pilloried her for it. But in our Small Town it was a lot like that. Do something you shouldn’t do and someone else’s Mother likely told you to straighten up or she’d call your Mom, who of course, she’d gone to high school with.
The only people wearing tattoos in Small Town were a few veteran sailors from the big war. The only people with un-naturally colored hair were a couple of elderly blue-haired ladies at the church. Drugs, when I was growing up, were something you bought at the Rexall to help cure your cough.
In Small Town, our elementary school was classically named for a Nineteenth Century President. I attended Lincoln Elementary School on Fifth Street. All the school buildings of my youth were made of dark red brick that screamed “Stability and Truth.” Two of those school buildings are still standing, relics of an ancient past.
In a wonderful symmetry I recognized only later my 1st Grade homeroom teacher was named Mrs. Holmes. I remember her as nice, thin, and that’s about it. But she taught me to read.
In 2nd Grade, I experienced the single greatest moral moment of my life, a tale I’ll reserve for another time.
I watched for steel pennies in the lunch money I helped collect in the 3rd Grade, learned geography in 4th Grade, figured fractions in 5th Grade, and was standing on the playground in 6th Grade when we got the news of JFK’s assassination.
When news from Dallas reached adult ears teachers quickly herded us into the main entrance hall. For the next couple of hours all students from grades four to six watched a small black and white television, the only one in the school, set high on a rolling cart. I don’t remember what I saw on TV, but I remember teary-eyed teachers, whispering adults, and a pervading quiet in the hall like we’d never known before. Two days later I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television.
Later that year on the same playground I watched my first and to this day only “Girl Fight.” I remember one of the girl’s names yet today. Of the girls in my class she was the last one I would’ve ever thought capable of this. She and the other unfortunate went at it fang and claw for several minutes until large-bodied adults corralled them. It was quite a show. I imagine others on that playground remember it too. Forgive me for smiling as I write.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/rexmrogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
Jeff Manion’s The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions (Zondervan, 2010) is about those times when life isn’t what it was and the future is uncertain. It’s about walking through the desert, a hard place like grief, lost jobs, financial duress, illness, broken relationships. The Land Between is a metaphor for the undesired transitions we experience in life.
If you haven’t experienced a time like this you haven’t lived long enough. Adversity comes to us all.
Under pressure, we choose to be and become. How we respond to pressure influences the kind of person we will be, perhaps for the rest of our lives.
Manion, Senior Teaching Pastor of Ada Bible Church in Michigan, notes that God wants to shape, mold, and refine us and that God knows we’re most open when we’re in the desert. He wants us to learn to trust him. God allows us to experience what we consider suffering so we may gain strengthen.
The Land Between is a quite readable book. It’s chock full of illustrative stories gleaned from years in Pastor Manion’s ministry and it features applications born of experience, personal and pastoral. Indeed the book’s most interesting paragraphs describe his own story and what he learned then and now.
This country seems to be in The Land Between right now. America isn’t sure of itself. We’re losing respect abroad. We’re engaging in infighting among ourselves. We’ve not agreed upon how to describe our enemies (meaning those who hate us), and we’re uncertain really how to describe ourselves. We can’t answer the question “What is an American,” which makes it difficult to resolve immigration issues.
America is in The Land Between. The way out for America is the same as the way out for individuals. Biblical signposts are visible. God has not forgotten and will respond. But we must respond first to him. The good news is there’s still time.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
Rita Elmounayer, SAT-7’s Executive Director of SAT-7 ARABIC and SAT-7 KIDS visited West Michigan in the past few days. She’s served with the ministry for 15 years—from it’s beginning as the first Christian satellite television outreach in the Middle East.
Rita is well known in the Middle East for her program, “Bedtime Stories With Rita.” Each night she reads Bible stories to young children, and if the hundreds of emails and text messages she receives are any indication, to teenagers and adults too.
While she was in Grand Rapids I asked her what she enjoyed most about her work with SAT-7. She thought for a moment and said, “Sharing about the ministry with people.”
I spent three days with her, listening to her share with a Sunday school class and with individuals in several meetings. She’s passionate, energetic, and totally committed to the Lord’s work as her work.
“It’s really eye-opening again how important the ministry is,” she said. “When you work you get caught up in the day-to-day pressures and you forget the essence of why you’re doing this. When I meet people and share stories about the Middle East it helps me stay in focus and feeling happy I’m used by God in this way.”
Rita is as professional as she is passionate, which is why she’s become a knowledgeable and influential Christian leader in Middle East missions.
Pray for her. She is a Lebanese Middle Easterner reaching Middle Easterners with the message of hope Christ offers one and all.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
WWJD, What Would Jesus Do? It took the culture by storm in the past 20 years. It’s a simple and worthy creed for millions of Christians.
There’s another memory device that might be worth pondering regarding our challenges today, WDJD, What Did Jonah Do?
Jonah and the whale is one of the great Old Testament stories. Jonah was a reluctant servant. God said, “Go,” and Jonah said, “Who, me?” Jonah resisted, ran, repented—sort of, responded…and when the Lord blessed his ministry, Jonah rejected the results.
WDJD? Jonah didn’t want to take a message of God’s love and forgiveness to Nineveh, a people he considered a nemesis, if not an enemy, of his people.
But God had other plans and sent a great revival to Nineveh. Jonah didn’t like this either and the book entitled with his name ends with Jonah pouting under a vine.
God points out to Jonah that Nineveh had more than 120,000 children so young they didn’t know their left from right hands, suggesting a total population ranging to a million. Then God asks, “Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4:11)
This is our challenge today: We live in a time when religions and regimes with strong anti-Western and anti-American postures are growing, aggressive, and threatening. Their advance seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, which is creating social tensions and political confusion throughout European countries and the United States. In addition, the West is still engaged in military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It might be easy, even understandable, and seemingly logical for us to feel like Jonah, resisting spiritual responsibility or opportunity for regional populations in the Middle East, Africa, or Asia.
But this is not the way the Lord works. He asks, “Should I not be concerned about that great city?”
We can ask WWJD and embrace Jesus’ approach, or we can ask WDJD and follow Jonah’s lead. Figuring this out may be the defining Christian challenge of the new millennium.
To read more on this subject click here.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
About ten years ago, the university where I served as president experienced significant financial pressure.
We did everything organizations do in times of financial duress: postponed new initiatives, cutback programs, curtailed operations, discontinued activities, delayed hiring, and worst of all, laid-off personnel.
Somebody once said that when you’re squeezed what’s inside of you comes out. It’s true. Some people responded to the pressure, even loss of their own position, in remarkable demonstrations of faith and fortitude. Others, not so much. None of this was fun.
Professionally speaking, it was the most challenging thing I’d ever endured. I remember a weekend when I literally bent over with stress pains.
Of course I prayed, perhaps like never before. And I read the Scripture, certainly like never done before. In two months I read the entire book of the Psalms—twice.
I confess that up to this time the Psalms didn’t make much sense to me. David seemed to forever be in trouble and unable to deal with it. I used to think David needed more resolve, more “toughness.”
But I began to understand the Psalms in a new way and realized my assessment of David woefully missed the mark. Until then I’d never experienced anything that stopped me where I stood. I’d finally, as we all inevitably do in life, faced something I couldn’t handle. I felt like David.
Now I saw the Lord’s teaching clearly. When we face challenges beyond our capacity God is there. When we feel like failures God’s “unfailing love” is there. When we cannot go on God’s “strong arm” is there.
A year ago I wrote about God’s “unfailing love,” a phrase repeated many times in the Psalms. Now I share the other truth the Lord taught me in the Psalms: God’s “strong arm,” his “right arm,” upholds us.
Financial duress isn’t fun. It generates stress and anxiety. But God’s strong arm undergirds us.
God teaches us many things in adversity:
--He strengthens ministries during or even because of financial challenges.
--We can grow spiritually.
--We can actually make some needed adjustments more easily.
--We can re-vision, reposition, and restructure for greater mission effectiveness.
--We can experience what it means to be part of the Church when supporters pray and give.
--We’re reminded who owns the ministry.
The Apostle Paul said God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. So God’s strong arm is even stronger in the midst of financial shortfalls. Like the old hymn says, we can take heart “leaning on the everlasting arms.”
A version of this was originally published as "Encouraging Words" in "What's New With Our Family," SAT-7, Number 133, September 2010.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
There’s something about sports heroes. They’re different from other heroes. We get to know them.
Unlike other heroes—the woman who rescued a child from an oncoming car or the fellow who served his country in harms way—sports heroes do their deeds in front of us. We get to see it happen, time and again, in HD, TiVo, or live at the event. We get to be heroes vicariously, one of the great joys of sport.
So when sports heroes go awry it brings us up short. It’s no fun, unless you’re a bit perverse, to see sports heroes brought down to earth.
That’s the case with the New Orleans Saints Reggie Bush who yesterday gave his Heisman Trophy back. Bush returned the award to spare the Heisman Trophy Trust from having to ask for it. Both giving it back and asking for it back are unprecedented in the award’s 75-year history.
The NCAA recently ruled Bush was ineligible during his award winning 2005 season on the basis of evidence his family received hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts, free housing, and more from California agents. In other words, Bush was paid like a professional before he turned professional, a clear violation of NCAA policy.
Sports heroes are falling from grace, in part, because cultural commitment to character has declined in the past few decades. More youngsters are growing up without moral teaching, good role models, or moral restraint. You can see this in elementary and middle schools. If you don’t believe this ask school teachers, EMTs, fire-fighters, nurses, or police personnel who’ve been on the job for more than 25 years. They see it.
Tiger Woods, Michael Vick, Marion Jones, Art Schlicter, Darryl Strawberry, Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson, Barry Bonds, Pete Rose—athletes whose character failures harmed their careers and their lives. There are many more.
I think incidents like this are going to increase. Reason being, kids are still growing up in homes without both parents, without instruction in right and wrong, and little chance of getting either anywhere else. Neither schools, nor churches it seems, can handle it.
One of the great beauties of sport is the purity of competition. It’s the idea that we can watch athletes go head to head at the pinnacle of physical talent and skill with all the heart they can muster. And “May the best man/woman/team win.” And when they win it’s because they deserve to win, not because they cheated but because on that day they are truly the best.
The integrity of sport. Lose it and lose the meaning of sport.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2010
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Dr. Rogers or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow Dr. Rogers at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.