fisher of men

There have been many queries as to how things have been going at Meck since we made the strategic decision to end our multi-site approach in order to pursue other methods for ongoing growth and the pursuit of our mission to the unchurched. You can read about that decision and our reasons for making it HERE. I will confess that this update is not what I expected. I have been completely blindsided by it. Since we have closed our sites, we’ve grown faster and become larger than at any other time in recent memory. I know, go figure. But from the very first weekend after closing our sites, our overall attendance has grown—and grown rapidly. We closed our sites at the end of May; currently, attendance in August 2019 is running 27% more than August 2018.  I have to reread that myself. We clo...

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NLT) Three smiling faces popped up as a memory in my social media feed. But instead of smiling myself, I started sobbing. The picture showed a happy memory, not a sad one: an October afternoon eight years ago, when I took my three children to the pumpkin patch. My little ones decorated their hand-picked finds with markers and stickers. Then they showed them off for the camera, grinning with the same gap-toothed smiles they had drawn on the pumpkins. So why was I crying so hard? Even though only God was watching, I felt foolish. I loved my children’s younger years, maybe a little too much. Little children freely share affection. I remembered how simple it was to relate to them. A sweet tr...

What is the Assumption of Mary? In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared that it was divinely revealed dogma that: “the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus (Most Bountiful God) 44). The word “assumption” is rooted in the Latin verb assumere, which means “to take to oneself.” The doctrine of Mary’s Assumption teaches that Jesus took his mother to Himself in Heaven at the end of her life, just as Enoch and Elijah had been taken up body and soul to Heaven at the end of their lives (Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:11). In discussing Mary’s Assumption, the Catholic Church teaches that Mary’s body was glorified immediately at the end of her earthly life. Thus, unlike other...

What will the world look like when it stops growing? And it will stop growing. In the year 1800, there were less than 1 billion people on the planet. Through advances in medicine, sanitation and food production, by 1900 there were 1.65 billion, and by 2000 there were more than 6 billion. In a breathtakingly short 20 years since, we’ve climbed to 7.7 billion. But this will not continue. In a fascinating article in The Atlantic, the number of people on Earth will stop growing. “Based on the latest figures from the United Nations, demographers’ best guess for when this will happen is about 2100. By then, the global population is projected to have risen to just shy of 11 billion.”  Population declines have happened before, such as with the Black Death, which is estimated to have killed 20...

We know that the world’s original harmony was wrecked by sin. Like a Molotov cocktail thrown into a backyard garden, sin exploded the world that God had made, fracturing and dividing it. Instead of wholeness, brokenness; instead of health, illness; instead of friendship with God, alienation; instead of peace, strife. Because we live in this fallen world that is yet to be fully redeemed, we can only glimpse the fullness of God’s shalom. Scripture tells us, however, about God’s original intentions for the world he made. Consider the Hebrew word shalom, which is often translated “peace” in English translations of the Bible. Comparing the word peace to the word shalom is like comparing a twig to a log or a boy to a man. When we think of peace, we tend to think of an inner sense of calm or an a...

God Believes in You by Max Lucado The tale involves a wealthy father and a willful son. The boy prematurely takes his inheritance and moves to Las Vegas and there wastes the money on slot machines and call girls. As fast as you can say “blackjack,” he is broke. Too proud to go home, he gets a job sweeping horse stables at the racetrack. When he finds himself tasting some of their oats and thinking, H’m, a dash of salt and this wouldn’t be too bad, he realizes enough is enough. It’s time to go home. The gardener at his father’s house does better than this. So off he goes, rehearsing his repentance speech every step of the way. But the father has other ideas. He “had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” We don’t expect such a response. We expect crossed arms and a f...

Excommunication is the most severe expression of formal spiritual pronouncement in the process of church discipline. As the name implies, excommunication is to deny a person in the public means of grace within their respective Christian community because of unrepentant sin, usually a sin of grievous, harmful, and public nature. To merely say that excommunication is to cut someone off from communion—and membership in the visible Church—doesn’t do justice to the biblical teaching on this oft-misunderstood subject. On the other hand, to say that excommunication is not a serious final-step taken to remedy a notorious sin in a person’s life is to diminish the teaching of the word of God. Between those extreme views is great room for misconception and error, which can devastate a per...

This article is adapted from the eBook, Thinking Biblically about Immigrants and Immigration Reform from the Evangelical Immigration Table. Click here for your free copy. While many immigrants are already Christians when they reach the United States, many others are not. By the classification criteria of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, there are 361 unreached people groups — ethnic groups in which there are few if any known followers of Jesus — present within the boundaries of the United States, more than any other country except India and China (J. D. Payne, Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2012), 63). What is The Great Commission? “Go and Make Disciples” The Great Commission...

The Bible neither requires nor forbids the ringing of church bells, but does encourage the faithful to “make a joyful noise” (Psalm 100). Since the fifth century, some Christian churches have been ringing bells for spiritual and practical purposes such as to call the faithful to worship, to highlight a particular stage during a church service, to remind the faithful of God’s presence in their daily lives, and to announce important occurrences to the local community. Bells in the Old Testament Bells are first mentioned in the Bible during a description of the high priest’s robe. Exodus instructs that “bells of gold” were to be attached to the hem of the high priest’s robe so that the people could hear the high priest as he entered and exited the Holy of Holies (Exodus 28:31-35). The Holy of...

Anyone who attended Sunday school as a child most likely encountered the story about David and Goliath. According to the Bible (1 Samuel 17), David, a young Israelite teenager, defeated the giant Philistine warrior with a sling shot and a smooth stone. After David aimed true at Goliath’s forehead, he beheaded the enemy of Israel when the rest of the Israelite army cowered in fear. We like to use Goliath in metaphors. We often say whenever we play an underdog in a scenario against something that seems impossible that we are David facing a giant Goliath. But where did Goliath come from? Where does he fit in the historical narrative of Israel and of the earth? And was he really as tall as our Sunday school teachers made him out to be? Who were the Philistines? Israel encounter a number of ene...

HOW WELL DO YOU NOTICE When Joseph came to them in the morning and observed them, behold, they were dejected. He asked Pharaoh’s officials who were with him in confinement in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so sad today?”Genesis 40:6-7 Do you know the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis?  It is an awesome story of God’s sovereignty and Joseph’s integrity and unwavering faith. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. As a slave, he was falsely accused of the crime of attempted rape. The truth was his master’s wife had a thing for Joseph. When he rebuffed her advances, she vindictively told her husband that Joseph tried to rape her. As a result of those false charges, he went from a slave to a prisoner. Coul...

Define Deism Offering a single definition of deism poses a challenge since, unlike in Christianity or Islam, there is no holy book or creation story. “’Deism’ is usually a rather broad classification of theological belief rather than a discrete, sociologically distinct religious affiliation,” according to this definition.   “Deism has no creed, articles of faith, or holy book. Neither Satan nor hell exists, only symbols of evil which can be overcome by man’s own reasoning,” All About Philosophy confirmed. While deists agree that the Bible is not the inspired Word of God, opinions about Jesus differ. Some deists believe He existed but treat Jesus only as a moral example and others believe He never existed at all, but deists reject the notion of miracles, including the resurrection. A c...