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By Richard Hamilton, December 8, 2007 2:56 pm

Christmas is fast approaching and it is easy to lose sight of what is important over the holiday season. It seems to be that more and more people are spending more and more money earlier and earlier in the year. I heard on the radio the other week that Americans spent 8% more this year on “Black Friday” then they did last year. It seems some people even go into debt to give the “perfect” gift. I wonder what our world would be like if people decided to spend less money on Christmas gifts and invest more time in the people around them.

I was in San Diego for the National Outreach Convention in November and got a chance to hear Rick McKinley from the Imago Dei Community speak. One thing he mentioned was the Advent Conspiracy. The basic idea is people spend less on Christmas, give relational gifts, and give their money to a good cause (in this case, making clean water available to those in need around the world).

Maybe instead of giving useless junk, no one needs as gifts this year; we can be a little more thoughtful and come up with meaningful ways to give.

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By Richard Hamilton, May 2, 2007 2:35 pm

I was preparing a Bible lesson for a high school group recently and wondered about the integrity of the typical approach to Bible study. The passage was Nehemiah 7 and the theme was “A Leader Actively Administrates.” No one is taking a pot shot at a certain publishing company; most sermons, talks, and lessons from Nehemiah focus on leadership. 2 Timothy 3:16,17 is as trademark verse for those who say that every verse has an application in everyday life. So we take a passage of Scripture and dissect it into “application bites.” Often teachers look so closely for nuggets of wisdom in the text that one misses the big picture.

If a person going to teach the Bible with any integrity, it is important to understand what the text meant to the original reader. I cannot tell you for sure how the original reader understood the text of Nehemiah. But it must be asked: do you think they naturally thought, “Leadership is influence (John Maxwell was re-writing that one book back then), and every person has influence over at least one person, so I am a leader and like Nehemiah I should administrate, equip, and motivate those I influence in the same manner?” In my mind this could be what we call in the industry “a stretch.” This approach lacks the common sense we use when reading any other book, fiction or non-fiction.
Imagine you approached a children’s book in the exact same manner. Perhaps I will open the Chronicles of Narnia and read about a talking Beaver rescuing children from talking wolves. Would a couple of pages gives us a clue as to what is going on in the bigger story? Can we draw conclusions from a segment of the story? Of course not. So we should not look closely at each verse if it means we miss how each narrative fits into an overarching story.

When one opens the book of Nehemiah or any other book of the Bible, the focus should be massaging the bigger questions out of those we teach. Why was the wall broken down? Why was Nehemiah in Persia? Why did God allow his people to go into exile? Does God always deal with sin in this manner? How does he give man freewill and still control the destiny of nations? How does God redeem His people?

There are overarching themes woven throughout Scripture-how mankind is designed to interact with their Creator, the power of sin, how God punishes, redeems and calls out of chosen people; teachers should consider showing how each story is a piece in a larger puzzle.

Perhaps the only books in the Bible where we dare even attempt pull specific commands straight out of the text into everyday life is the epistles, but even then we need to be aware of cultural considerations.

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By Richard Hamilton, March 27, 2007 10:42 pm

Last summer I had an interesting conversation with a couple of relatives. More distant relative, ultra successful, highly educated businessmen found out that I believe “evil supernatural beings” exist. After looking at me like I was a raving lunatic, he proceeded to pooh-pooh the idea by doing cartoonish impersonations of evil beings. It was quite funny, even though the laughs were at my expense. There was zero chance for a productive conversation, but later I thought about attitudes towards the supernatural.

Now I understand the reluctance to believe in certain supernatural elements, but I think we need to look a little closer at the issues to develop a consistent thought process. There are many people who consider belief in God to be a psychological coping mechanism or even a way for leaders to control people. And it is understandable when someone who holds this position denies the existence of angels and demons, Satan, even God because they deny the reality of the supernatural.

But there are many people who want to believe in a benevolent Deity but would not be inclined to believe in an actual evil being like Satan and be even less inclined to believe that he has agents that manifest themselves in our world.

But look whose foot is already in the door. It is the belief in something other than things proved by natural law. It is disturbing for us to think that there is an actual Force of Evil that may be at work, but much more comforting to believe in an all-loving God who may even send angels to help us out in need.

Look whose foot is already in the door; it is the belief in the supernatural, and it would be nice if we could have the good without all the evil, but it is inconsistent thinking. What source, other than our preference, would dictate to us, that we could have one without the other?

It seems like many people want to have their cake and eat it to. We don’t like the thought of evil at all even though most religions seem to believe that the benevolent Deity is more powerful, even has control of the devil-type. But people want to take it a step further and eliminate the forces of evil altogether.

I would be inclined to think that most people either really believe that there is no God or that people believe in both good and evil but simply stick their head in sand when it comes to supernatural. Either way, I think it is better if we are consistent in our thinking about the supernatural.

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By Richard Hamilton, March 22, 2007 10:38 pm

Because most people do not feel up to entering the debate arena, many Christians retreated to what I call “hit and run” evangelism. Christian bookstores are full of products to help these endeavors. My favorite product: the “Testamints.” Maybe you have seen them. Admittedly, I have even eaten a few. They are the mints, usually located by the register, that are wrapped with a Bible verse. Christians who do not feel qualified or prepared to debate can simply leave a punily named mint with a morsel of God’s Word for their unsuspecting friend or coworker to discover. This type of evangelism, although well intended, lacks the genuine connection many people are seeking. A church I once worked with decided to get groups together on a weekday evening to go visit people in the community. As a gesture of goodwill and with the intention of being friendly, they made sand-art cookie jars. Attached to the jars were usually a Bible verse and the contact info for the church. I thought it was a great idea. This small southern community was still very open to people coming to their homes and the combination of cookies and art was genius. The first night I showed up, we grabbed a few cookie jars and headed on our way. When I read the tags, I was stunned. A few of the jars had something like “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. -Luke 13:3″ written on the card. With some tweaking, the visits proved to be very successful for that church, but it makes me wonder what these well-intentioned people were hoping to accomplish. I think we hope that if we leave tidbits of faith around, we will not have to win over our friends with eloquent arguments and we will have still done our evangelistic duty.

Evangelism does not have to be like this. In fact, these approaches usually are not very effective because they do not take into account what people really need.

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By Richard Hamilton, March 21, 2007 10:37 pm

I often wonder what thoughts enter people’s minds when they hear the word “evangelism.” Often, evangelism is a thing of dread and terror. It causes many Christians to break out into cold sweats. To feel nauseous. To get all tongue-tied. Maybe a more important question is what thoughts enter the minds of those on the receiving end of Christian evangelist efforts. It’s quite likely they have been on the receiving end of a failed evangelistic attempt more than once. Often, the very thought of someone talking to them about Jesus makes them want to run for the hills.

Why is this? Why has evangelism become such a negative idea for so many people?

I believe it is partly because of what we [Christians] have made evangelism. Usually when churches “teach” evangelism, they teach how to debate and argue their points. “Be sure and cover this list.” “Argue this point.” “Throw in this Bible verse here.” “And never admit you don’t know or you were wrong.” Even the language we use brings to mind Court TV (“apologetics” and “evidence that demands a verdict”). Do not misunderstand me. There are times to defend Christian faith. There are times to discuss and even debate, but in many cases, debate is the only evangelism people know. I see two problems with this. First, a debate is a win-lose situation. When we enter a debate over faith and religion, it is with the unspoken understanding that someone will lose. Evangelism should be win-win. Second, debating takes a certain set of skills and a lot of prep-time. In High School I was on the debate team for a year. My event was called “Congress.” Each student submitted their legislation in advance and we came together to debate each document’s merit at competitions. At my first debate match, I came with a printout of each bill neatly tucked in a file folder, assured I was well prepared. As I passed through the classroom door, into the room where the debate was to be held, I noticed that everyone there had boxes upon boxes of material. Newspaper clippings. Computer printouts. Books. Magazines. Statistics. Analysis. Boxes and boxes of debate prep. Then, the debates started. High School students would stand behind a podium and rattle off quotes and statistics a mile a minute, all the while judges as stern as Simon Cowell (although luckily for me their criticisms were written not verbalized) critiqued your every word. I learned something that day: formal debate is for a select few. This is may be why many Christians leave evangelism to the “professionals”: paid church staff.