You move to Miami Beach from Sand Mountain, Alabama, in order to start a church.

Big assignment. Not because there aren’t zillions of needy people there and not because you are not committed and zealous.

The first problem is you don’t know these people, do not speak their language–actual or cultural–and have no idea how to connect with them.

So, we come back to our question on penetrating a culture: “Where would you get started?”

Our initial answer was: “Ask Questions.”

But questioning is useless without this: “Be very quiet and listen.”

If you are not there to learn, no surface respect for their traditions and no superficial asking of questions will make a bit of difference.

Nearly a year ago, Chris and Kassy brought their two small children from Kansas to New Orleans to start a church.

They did it right.

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I had just returned home from England where our youth choir had given concerts in churches and schools, and I’d preached several times. The phone rang in the office of my Mississippi church. It was a fellow in the next town over.

“We’re beginning an amazing ministry to England,” he said, without any idea that I had just returned from there.

“What we’re going to do,” the young man said, “is to invade that country with the gospel of Jesus. We’re going door-to-door and show those dead churches how to do evangelism, how to build great churches. We’re going to bring the dead back to life again.”

I said, “Uh, my brother, have you ever been to England?”

The fact that he had not did not seem to bother him. He was sure that the approach to Kingdom-building that had worked for him in rural small-town Mississippi provided a template workable anywhere, in any culture.

The conversation went downhill from there. I recall telling him that several ministers in the London area had told us how they resent know-it-all American evangelists arriving in their country with all the answers. One said, “We do not mind their coming to help us. What we hate is that they are not interested in anything we have to say, not in learning the customs or traditions. And if we don’t get behind them and support them, we’re opposing Jesus.”

Arrogance is not the exclusive property of young ministers, although I can tell you from personal experience, it seems to find the ideal elements for incubation in those who are uninformed but zealous, untrained but certain. I will spare you the numerous stories of my own presumption and foolishness in judging faithful workers in the Lord’s vineyard for not producing more fruit when I had very little idea what I was talking about.

There is a way to make an impact on any culture, thankfully.

And there is a way to begin. May I suggest that way is: Begin by enrolling as a learner.

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Last Sunday, January 1, my friends Mike and Karen, who pastor a church in Mobile, invited their married daughter and her family home with them after worship for a traditional New Year’s meal.

The meal finished and the dishes cleared away, Mike and Karen were settled in the living room and Mike had found the football game du jour on television. Oldest grandchild Jayda, nearly 10, I think, sat nearby doing something. The daughter, her husband, and their young son were in the kitchen gathering the dishes they had brought to take back home. The three of them were laughing it up and having a good time.

Suddenly, as Jayda jumped up and started toward the kitchen, she called out, “Are y’all being a family in there without me?!”

Grandmother Karen told me that story and said, “I love what it says about her concept of family.” Indeed.

God wants us to be a family.

He wants our family to be a “real” family–that’s the reason for the numerous proscriptions in Scripture regarding this smallest and tightest of all communities. We are to honor parents and obey them, to love one another, to provide food and shelter for them, not to engage in sexual relations outside marriage, and so forth.

God wants His people to be family, also.

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An article in the most recent issue of The New Yorker proved to be a conversation stopper. You read it and think, “What?” and walk away thoughtful and speechless.

Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s public schools, tells how he encountered Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her young son Jack at a social function. The boy approached him and said, “They tell me you run the city schools? And that you are the one who declares snow days.”

Now, little Jack attended a private school–it will not surprise readers to know–but he knew that if the public schools closed the private schools followed suit. Jack said, “When I have a birthday, I’d like the schools to be closed.”

I don’t recall the superintendent’s answer

As it turned out, it was Caroline who called in that favor. The snow was coming down in buckets and she called the superintendent’s house. “Tomorrow is not Jack’s birthday,” she said, “but he has a big paper coming due and he’s not ready for it. This would be a great time for you to declare a snow day.”

The superintendent, now retired, admits that that was one of the days he closed the schools for snow.

Fascinating. More than a little strange.

One wonders just how many of the high level decisions being made every day are prompted not by economic or other realities but as personal favors to people of influence.

In my most recent article for this blog–“Greed: The Favorite Sin of the Free Enterprise”–I started to tell that story and make the point that, for most of us, it’s not money we’re grasping and groping for, but the things money can buy. Like influence with people in high places.

Caroline Schlossberg has such influence. And money too, we presume. Enough to shut down the city schools for a day for her young son. How he must admire his mom. The things she does for him.

So, what has your mom done for you lately?

Here’s what my mother did for me recently.

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“Is life passing you by because you don’t have a high definition television? Well, now you can….”

The advertisements in the various media make no secret of it. If you do not have the latest computers, televisions, phones, and techno-gadgets, if you are not driving a car less than three years old and equipped with rear cameras, heated seats, and Sirius radio, you are surely among the deprived in this world. You must be the poor and deprived we keep hearing about.

Life is passing you by.

That’s how it feels to some of us. Teens in particular fall prey to this deadly syndrome.

The old-timers called it avarice. We know it as greed.

Twenty years ago, Wall Street was telling the world that greed is good, that the hunger to get more and more, to gain and possess and control and dominate, was all good. If anyone is listening to Wall Street any more, they’re not saying.

And yet, greed is alive and well in this country. And every other country, too, I expect, since it seems to be related to the depravity of the human heart and not geographically situated.

Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. (I Timothy 6:9)

Someone responds, “I don’t want to be rich. I don’t actually care for money. I just want the things money buys.” That’s a little word-game we play to camouflage our grasping, groping greediness.

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A few years back, a young friend in our church became hooked on “Happy Days,” the television series. She fantasized of the 1950s as the golden age in American life. She thought it was all Elvis and sock hops and soda fountains.

One day I just couldn’t take it any more and did something really mean.

I said, “Melissa, I became a teenager in 1953. In the ’50s, we fought the Korean War, then went through the Cold War. We feared being bombed by Russia every day, and racism was rampant. I wouldn’t go back there for anything.”

I know, I know. I should have left her alone to her daydreaming. She wasn’t hurting anyone.

The truth is I’m as much into nostalgia as anyone I know.

Nostalgia: Fantasizing about an earlier time in a way that denies the reality. That’s my definition, not one you’ll find in a book somewhere.

The current Sherlock Holmes craze owes its popularity to an idealized love for the 1890s as much as to an admiration for the observation and reasoning skills of the great detective, I wager. This fictional creation of Arthur Conan Doyle is more popular today than he has ever been, and that’s saying something.

In “The Sherlockian,” Graham Moore’s new book that plays to the fascination for all things Sherlock, the protagonist, Harold White, sizes up the nostalgia thing perfectly.

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My friend Don Davidson, who pastors Alexandria Virginia’s First Baptist Church as well as it’s ever been done, turns out an end-of-the-year retrospective which will serve as my model for what follows.

So, here’s my report on my (ahem) Retirement Ministry in this, my third year of unemployment….

Revivals

Six revivals this year. In diverse and wonderful cities such as Ochlocknee, Georgia, Saragossa and Deatsville, AL, Mt Hermon and Crowville, LA, and Picayune, MS. I loved every one of them and made friends for life and beyond.

Banquets.

McComb and Columbus, MS. Zachary and Moss Bluff, LA. Linden and Grove Hill, AL. In banquets, I sketch people before, during, and after the meal, and at the appointed time get up and tell my stories, doing my best to be entertaining and inspirational. I have more fun than anyone there.

Senior Adult stuff.

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Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. (Galatians 5:26)

It’s funny that the Old Testament’s references to envy focus on God’s people looking outward to the world (“sinners”). They were not to envy wrongdoers.

The New Testament’s references, by contrast, are directed inwardly, warning believers against envying each other. For those of us who know the inner workings of church life, we fully understand the change.

Now, a confession first.

Over the last two weeks, as I’ve reflected on the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, avarice, anger, sloth, gluttony, and lust), the one that interested me least was this one: envy. What’s exciting about that? Nothing exotic. No funny stories to tell, no dramatic scriptural stories to relate.

In fact, I decided envy is not a problem in my world. I honestly don’t know anyone sitting around stewing over the neighbors having a car and wishing it was in their own driveway. I know of no preachers fuming because another pastor received a doctorate which he should have rightfully received. So, maybe envy is no longer a problem to moderns.

The reason for that strange–and erroneous–conclusion is the narrow definition I was applying to the concept.

If to envy means to wish we owned something another person now possesses and only that, few of us would be guilty. But that’s far too skinny an interpretation of this obese transgression.

Here then are several observations on envy, what I’m calling “the sneakiest” of the seven deadly sins.

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God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. (I Peter 5:5)

When a British newspaper invited readers to submit their answers to the question “What’s Wrong With the World?” the inimitable G. K. Chesterton wrote: “Editors: I am. Sincerely, G. K. Chesterton.”

Of the so-called seven deadly sins, pride always leads the parade. It’s the granddaddy of them all, the source of the other six. Consider how this is so—

–Lust is pride expressing itself sexually, as well as in other ways. It takes what it wants, uses it, and tosses it in the trash.

–Avarice is pride in the marketplace and in our culture. It wants more and more and is never satisfied.

–Anger is pride on the highway and in relationships. It didn’t get what it wants and wants revenge.

–Envy is pride casting an evil eye at its neighbor, wishing for what he has and that he had a wart on his nose. (An old childhood curse we would inflict in jest)

–Sloth is pride expressing its selfishness concerning work. None for him, thanks. He’ll sit this one out. Everyone owes him.

–Gluttony is pride at the dinner table.

Pride is an exalted sense of oneself. It’s that simple.

Sometimes people speak of pride as a correct and healthy sense of oneself, as in, “Take pride in yourself” and “Take pride in your work.” And since there is no Czar of Correctness concerning word usage, that is as legitimate as using pride to mean an inflated, puffed up ego.

This is probably as good a place as any to quote my wonderful old professor, Dr. Ray Frank Robbins, who would tell us seminarians, “Words do not have meanings. Word have usages.”

Chesterton was correct; he was the problem. But so am I. And so are you.

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…the idea of sin is preeminently a construction of Christian theology. (From Henry Fairlie’s book, “The Seven Deadly Sins Today.”)

It bugs some people that the Bible does not give us a comprehensive list of sins and end all the speculation, frustration, and false guilt.

I suspect we are victims of a rulebook mentality as a result of the endless controversies over interpretations of rules in NCAA football, NFL football, MLB baseball, and so forth. What complicates those discussions is that the authorities are forever tweaking the rules. Each year representatives of the NCAA get together to discuss requirements for athletes to play collegiate sports, rules governing the playing of those sports, and one thousand related issues.

The IRS constantly tweaks the rules for taxpayers, forcing CPAs to attend regular updating conferences.

Why don’t we do that in church, some wonder? How in the world could the Lord send us forth into this world to accomplish such grand missions without providing a list of all the no-no’s and taboos?

We are such legalists at heart. And for good reason.

When we have a list of rules to keep and prohibitions to avoid and do them perfectly, we have a wonderful sense of accomplishment. “Look what I did.” Ahhh. Such self-satisfaction.

And that’s why the Lord doesn’t do it. Self-satisfaction is the last thing He wants in His children. “Boasting in the flesh,” scripture calls it, and it is anathema to believers who would be used of God.

The Lord much prefers His children have an on-going sense of dependence on Him, that “I can’t do it without you, Lord,” and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Once we get the hang of that, we find ourselves saying what those who do not “get it” consider utterly stupid, such as “when I am weak, then am I strong” (II Corinthians 12:10).

So where does the concept of sin figure in this? Answer: Prominently.

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