About Randy Buchman

I live in Western Maryland, and among my too many pursuits and hobbies, I regularly feed multiple hungry blogs. I played college baseball, coached championship cross country teams at Williamsport (MD) High School, and have been a sportswriter for various publications and online venues. My main profession was as the lead pastor of a church in Hagerstown called Tri-State Fellowship for 28 years before retiring in 2022. I'm also active in Civil War history and work/serve at Antietam National Battlefield with the Antietam Battlefield Guides organization. Occasionally I sleep.

A Little Dab’ll Do Ya Sort of Faith (Mark 4)

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Randy Buchman

Warning here: Unless you are pretty close to my age (Randy writing), you might be lost in this opening illustration.

I remember a particular men’s hair product being advertised frequently on black and white TV when I was a kid. It was for something called “Brylcreem.” You put this stuff in your hair – just a dab of it, mind you – and it would make everything unruly come perfectly together. The jingle went like this: “Brylcreem — A Little Dab’ll Do Ya! Brylcreem — You’ll look so debonaire. Brylcreem — The gals’ll all pursue ya; they’ll love to run their fingers through your hair!”

A lot of folks are into “a little dab’ll do ya” sort of faith. You just expose yourself to a little bit of it here and there, and wow, it goes a long, long way.

In our passage in Mark 4, Jesus spoke of this kind of perspective with the second of the four soils he would mention in his parable…

⁵Some seed fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

The shallow nature of soil can sometimes be seen even in a person’s lawn. I have two of these conditions in my own large yard.

Being rather far into the country, we have a septic system rather than sewer connections. There is a main distribution box made of concrete that is in the back yard, rather shallow under the surface. I was worried when we built the house that I may not be able to find it if I needed to, but there’s no concern about that. Except in very wet and cool conditions, the square outline of the box location is often obvious, as the heat of the sun burns away the grass above it due to the shallow roots.

As well in my yard, I have the common Western Maryland condition of limestone rock outcroppings. A few places they stick clearly out of the ground, and I need to be careful that my mower does not experience intimate fellowship with the rock. But other places are only minimally covered by the soil, and in dry periods I am reminded of the stone just under the surface.

Again as Jesus returned later to tell the disciples of the meaning of the parable, he said this …

16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

The meaning here is that certain people start out quickly in faith. They have a joyful experience, perhaps at a retreat, a concert, a conference, or even a church service attended. It is fresh and exciting, though it lasts about as long as a green banana before it turns rather quickly to yellow, and then to brown.

I call this sort of person a “dabbler” in faith. So what makes people only dabble in a relationship with God?

The text tells us the two main things that happen: troubles in life, and persecution. Both are inevitable in this world, a spiritual sort of “death and taxes” thing.

Troubles – We live in a fallen world with broken bodies that are falling apart. Beyond that we live here with everyone else who is as broken as we are. Nothing is more discouraging than the physical stuff that wears on us in a chronic way, or the relational stuff gone awry.

Persecution – Jesus said it would happen, saying that as the world persecuted him, it would persecute his followers. The Scriptures say that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. The world hates truth and the God of truth.

But if all you have is a dab of faith to rely upon when trials or persecutions find their way to your address, it aint’ agonna do ya.

Dabblers are not against church, they actually like it for the most part … that is, when they get there because there wasn’t anything else to do that week. They have hopes of coming regularly, but honestly, something else always come up. They want to be regular in Scripture reading and some sort of enrichment, but they never get started or make the arrangement to do it.

You don’t dabble into food once a month or so. You don’t brush your teeth every couple of weeks, just to get by. You don’t change the oil in your car once every other year. So why would dabbling in faith work out?

Pesky Birds (Mark 4)

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Randy Buchman

My father was never interested in fishing until I came along. After three daughters and at age 46, he adopted me. I guess he thought he would be an irresponsible father if he did not take his son fishing. It’s an OK hobby I suppose, but it always hit me as a bit passive for my tastes. It would have been much more interesting to me if there was a competitive element to it … like if the fish could fight back and jump out of the water and drag you in if you weren’t looking, or something like that. Dad fished for years after I was gone from home, though I never much kept up with it.

We actually did more salt water fishing than anything else, as being from New Jersey we went to “the shore” quite a lot. A major memory, be it fishing on the beach or from a pier, was the need for constant vigilance – being ever on guard that sea gulls would not swoop down while you weren’t looking or close enough to the bait, and snatch it up and fly away with a giant hunk of squid or whatever.

Birds can be a real pain that way. I remember when planting my first lawn of 1.5 acres of grass seed at the home we built in New Jersey… I spread the seed widely over the expanse of the property and covered it as best I could with dozens of bales of straw. I remember doing this in the fall of 1983 and listening to the Orioles/Phillies World Series while I spent several days on guard duty chasing away the birds that showed up to eat all of the seed I had spread.

The parable that Jesus told of the farmer planting his seed would picture much the same sort of planting technique of widely throwing grain seed over a large area. The portion of the field that annually grew a crop would likely be somewhat tilled and permeable. But on the edges of the field, or along pathways through or around the field, the ground was more hardened. And thus the seed was more exposed to ever-watching eye of the local fowls.

Jesus portrayed the scene with these words from Mark 4:3,4:

³“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

Later in the passage, as Jesus gave the interpretation of this first of four soils, it says in Mark 4:13-15 …

¹³Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? ¹⁴The farmer sows the word.15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.

Something I have attempted to avoid in life, though not always successfully, is that situation in a grocery store where there is an employee giving a taste test of some cheese or spread that they want to sell. When I see that, I make a circle around it … though sometimes I have had to “experience” it just to be polite. There is no way I’m going to buy it, no matter how good it is. In the words of the first George Bush, “Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent.” Frankly, I’m just hardened to being hit up that way. I’m not saying this is good or commendable; I’m just being honest about it. The fact is that my heart in hardened toward it.

And that is the way a lot of people are about God’s Word. Their heart – their soul – is simply hardened from years of resistance, and the good seed of the Word does not penetrate. Along comes the bird, Satan, and eats it before there is a chance for it to germinate in the soul.

We might call the person with this sort of soul soil “the taster.” That is about as far as their experience with the Word of God goes. We have them in church with us every week. The seeds are landing all around them on a Sunday morning. But the heart is hard, and thoughts of a dozen other things to happen later in the day or the week ahead, or the phone speaks to them, or some other mental priority grabs their attention away. And in comes the Evil Bird and snatches the seed away.

Chances are pretty high that if you are reading this devotional, you are beyond this description. But we are never beyond the possibility of our heart being hard, our souls being distracted, to the extent that the truths of the Word around us do not penetrate. So don’t be a hard-heart, compacted soil hearer of God’s Word.

Some questions and thoughts for further discussion…

What makes people lose the seed to Satan?
How have you seen a hard heart in yourself or others?
Why is Satan intent upon snatching the seed of the Word away?
How can you actively prevent this from happening in your life of the lives of others near you?

Seeds, Soils, and Souls (Mark 4)

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Randy Buchman

How is your heart? How is your soul? How is the Word of God taking root inside of you? How is that evident by the fruit of your life?

These are among the most vital questions that may be asked.

The scene in our Scripture for analysis and comment this week – in Mark chapter 4 – features Jesus telling a parable from a boat, speaking to the pressing crowds upon the shore. As most of them were subsistence farming, the story Jesus told was a familiar mental picture – that of a farmer sowing his crop by flinging the seeds in a field.

In this parable we will see four distinct soil conditions, or applicationally, four distinct soul conditions. And the challenge for all of us in today’s culture, is to move beyond merely seeing Christianity as a component of life rather than the source of life itself. We need to see our faith be more than a hobby … something that can lose appeal once religion ceases to be fashionable.

Any of you who have ever tried gardening know that the quality of your soil is everything. It needs to be great just like it is in New Jersey, where the soil most everywhere is amazing. It is, after all, the Garden State.

There was a particularly fertile region in northern NJ where I grew up named Great Meadows – a place with totally black soil that was fantastically fertile. And so when we moved to Texas and went to buy our first house, I did so out of the encouragement of the soil I noticed in the cotton field across the street – a dark, black soil. But when I went to plant my first garden and put the shovel into the ground, that soil stuck to it in a terribly gooey and messy way. The locals told me it was called black gumbo. The only way to get it to grow much was to mix in a lot of other organic material.

Again, the quality of the soil is everything in terms of fruitful agriculture. And again, the quality of the “soil of your soul” is everything in terms of the quality of your life in living fruitfully and meaningfully for God.

We are going to take one day each this week to look at the four soil/soul conditions. A nice feature of this parable is that it includes both the simple facts of the story as Jesus told them from the boat, and then he later gives the interpretation privately to the disciples. But first, let’s jump in by reading the entire passage as a whole …

4:1 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge.

²He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: ³“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. ⁴As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

⁵Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. ⁶But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

⁷Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.

⁸Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”

⁹Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

¹⁰When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around they asked him about the parables. ¹¹He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹²so that, “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!” << quoting from Isaiah 6:9,10 >>

¹⁶Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

¹⁸Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.

²⁰Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Some questions and thoughts for further discussion…

Take a vote among your family or group and see how many think this passage would be better called “The parable of the sower and the seed,” or, “The parable of the sower and the soils.”
If you were among the crowd that day hearing Jesus’ teaching, do you think you would need to have the meaning explained to you at a later time?

The Motivation for Mission (2 Corinthians 5)

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Randy Buchman

Often in life when we join a club or organization, we have to consider what are the benefits of the organization versus the responsibilities of membership. For example, in a civic service club you gain community friendships, networks, exposure to what is going on in the town and county, etc. But you also have minimal requirements for attendance, dues, fund-raising obligations, and other duties that require time and attention. Is it worth it?

But there is nothing so worthwhile as working for Christ and his kingdom. It is living out something that is far, far beyond anything we can imagine in this world. Let your mind go wild: What job would you want to have? Or who would you like to be? A king, a queen, a media personality, professional athlete, pop star, fashion model, successful industrialist or corporate executive? Whatever you could come up with … How does that compare to you actually being the child of the creator of the universe, serving as his representative in the role of an ambassador to the world?

Here is our fourth and final statement about “Why Mission” this week: Mission is motivated by understanding who we are in Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 5:16-21)

¹⁶So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

So when you understand the gospel and who you are in Christ, seeing also the mission that he has for you as a member of his body of faith on this planet (the church), I have no insecurity whatsoever in calling you to make our ministry together in the church as a defining value in your life.

I don’t need to feel like I’m dumping something on you or selling you on commitment to the organization of which I just happen to lead the local franchise. No. I’m calling you to fulfill the mission you have from God! I’m just helping you fulfill your eternal purpose.

I often hear from folks who are business owners talking about their workers. When away from the store or shop they might leave a list of tasks that have to be done by employees. When the owners return at a later time, they often find themselves wondering what really happened while they were gone, because not much is visible relative to accomplishment in the time where it well could have been. There are a number of parables in the Gospels about this theme … of Christ returning and not having found faithfulness from those entrusted with the stewardship of a mission to accomplish. Hey, you don’t want that to be your experience with God. Rather, you want to hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.” So get busy and be on mission for Christ!

<< Note: This ends our “Why Church?” series. On Sunday we will have a one-time service on a remembrance theme, somewhat connected to Memorial Day, but also with communion. The following week begins our next seven-week series called “Rooted,” which talks about the grounding and nourishment of our faith. Chris and I will have some sort of summer reading/devotionals to accompany that. So we’ll see you again in another week or 10 days. >>

The Culture of Discipleship (Matthew 28:19-20)

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Randy Buchman

I remember an interesting skit on TV from years ago, I think it was probably on Saturday Night Live. OK, believing you can find anything online, I just looked and found it from 1984, featuring Ed Asner. Asner was the retiring manager from a nuclear power plant. His final, parting words of wisdom to the remaining employees were, “Just remember one thing, you can’t put too much water into a nuclear reactor.” After he is gone, the skit shows the remaining staff arguing over his final words. Did he mean that you have to be careful to NOT ever dare put too much water into the reactor, or did he mean that there is no way you could ever put too much water in, so just keep it flowing? The skit ends with people on the other side of the world seeing a bright flash of lightning on the horizon.

Final words from someone: They are important. The final words of instruction from Christ to the disciples about their mission were really not unclear at all. The gospel of Matthew ends with these words from Jesus in chapter 28 …

¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Our third of four statements about our topic of “Why Mission?” is this: Mission means cultivating a culture of discipleship.

We tend to think of the word “discipleship” as merely encompassing the process of teaching and learning the Scriptures in an applicational way. But the word is used here in Matthew 28 more broadly of both evangelism (making new disciples, or new followers) and instructional discipleship (growing disciples).

Everything in this passage is what we call “durative” in language studies, speaking of an ongoing aspect of action, not something that is done, finished, packaged up and put away.

We could read the phrases this way: “As you are going … be making disciples … be baptizing them (identifying them with the faith) … continuously teaching them (never ends) … knowing always that Jesus is with you ALL THE WAY. In other words, Jesus is telling them, “This is your mission; it is a mission possible; nothing is going to blow up and disappear; I will not disavow knowing you but will be with you the whole way.”

It is instructive for us to also note that these words are given to individuals … yes, to those who would form the new institution of the church. Yet again, this is not a passage that is instructional specifically for how to run a church organization, but rather, how the people who are the church are to conduct their lives. As we’ve said in this series in our intro paragraphs that “Church” isn’t a program you attend; it’s a community you embody. Following Jesus means being a part of a larger network of believers who gather to celebrate this new society through the worship of God. What if we thought of Church like that? What if we were just crazy enough to do Church the way the Bible says?

When we are living this way and doing this individually, in a group with mutual support, we can see the cumulative effects over time. All of this takes time – to share the gospel and bring people along; but we can enjoy seeing the fruits of being on mission as we live out a culture of discipleship.

Budgeting Your Way Through Life (Colossians 4)

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Randy Buchman

If you think about it, we spend all of our lives working with budgeting. Certainly we do it with financial resources. Few are there among us who don’t have to consider this practical matter of being wise both for today and for the future.

Beyond material resources, we need to also be considerate of budgeting our time and energies. Coming out of high school, we think through what we are going to do with those transitional years of life. Are we going to invest in education, in military service, or jump immediately to a career?

In any event, we are thinking about our skills, our time, our passions and our resources, evaluating how to put it all together for the best.

In terms of fulfilling our mission in life as believers, we also should think of this in the vein of budgeting … considering how to use our talents, spiritual gifting, energies and time, all for God’s glory and the expansion of the Kingdom.

Our second statement this week about being on mission for God is this: Mission demands walking wisely in a world that is out of step with God’s truth. Paul says the following in Colossians 4:2-6 …

²Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. ³And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. ⁴Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. ⁵Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. ⁶Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

We think of Paul as a great communicator, and it is interesting to see that he requests prayer that he will have the opportunity and capacity to present the gospel clearly.

Beyond that, he encourages his readers to consider how they handle themselves and speak before a watching world. Our political discourse in the current day has taken on a terribly crass tone. For many of us, though we may agree with the ideas and concepts, we may disagree with the way it is said and presented. It is not an attractive vehicle for the message, and the message is either not heard or not understood with clarity.

And so it is with our faith. We represent Christ and his kingdom. And we need to understand that it is natural for people to judge or evaluate any program, cause, or organization by the people who belong to it. And our presentation of the gospel message is not ultimately about winning an argument and proving ourselves to be correct. Yes, we need to contend for the truth and be able to communicate it with clarity, but the attitude that comes along with it carries a huge portion of the message as well.

But the phrase in which I’m most interested in this passage is this: “Make the most of every opportunity.” This literally translated means to “buy up the time.”

If you knew a particular commodity was going to massively increase in price tomorrow – something like gasoline, bread, water, or whatever essential to life – you would buy as much of it as you could today. Time is a commodity that is passing away (and will someday be suddenly gone) and needs to be bought up as well.

Multiple times in Scripture it speaks of counting time. For example in Psalm 90, where it talks about the span of life being 70 or 80 years as the average, that passage finishes with the exhortation to “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” This is teaching about living wisely, meaning to develop skill in living.

So our mission in life is about understanding the time we have been given, the message we have to give, and the way we live our lives to communicate that message with both clarity of words and with an attractive skill in living our daily lives. It is essentially all about budgeting our way through life.

How Much Do You Know About God?

Posted on May 24, 2016 by Randy Buchman

Something that has always made me cringe is when someone is giving a personal testimony and says something like, “I’ve always known God for as long as I can remember.” And I think to myself, “No you haven’t.”

I do understand that a person stating this is communicating essentially that, as far back as they have conscious memory, they have always known about God, Jesus, the Bible, etc., and they have accepted these things. I could say the same, though I would clearly identify a moment in time where I understood the debt of sin and necessity for trust in the specific payment of Christ on the cross.

I understand also that the concept of God does not need a great deal of definition for children. My boys never looked at me in lost confusion when hearing about God, even as toddlers. There is an innate sense of the divine that is there in every life, though some suppress it at great length.

Even so, what does anyone know about God apart from being told specific information? It is in Romans chapter 1 where there is some measure of discussion about this, and in theology we refer to this knowledge of God as general revelation or natural revelation. It involves a sense mankind has of being a creature of a divine being, a sense of something more vast and powerful, something to hold in awe (if not also to fear), something to venerate and appease …

¹⁸The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

So there was enough knowledge of God from the created world to condemn a person, but not enough to save him or her. Apart from specific knowledge, mankind over the years has come up with all sorts of objects of worship, mostly from the created world and cast into the form of idols …

²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

So, logically, there needs to be a messenger of the truth that brings the truth to those who do not know it or trust in it. And so it is later in Romans 10, as Paul speaks of the need for the Jewish people to hear the truth of the gospel of Jesus as the Christ, that he says …

¹⁴How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? ¹⁵And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” [from Isaiah 52:7]

The feet speak of the messenger who brings the good news, and the good news of salvation is the best news of all. That is a blessed and privileged person to be a bearer of this news – the words that are so completely necessary for life eternal and a relationship with God. This lost world needs speakers of the gospel and senders of the speakers.

The step-by-step logic of this passage therefore speaks to the topic for this week: our mission as members of the body of Christ, the church. A first of four statements we’ll make about mission is this: Mission is necessary because no one is born believing the right things about God.

It is the only way, the only hope, for those who do not yet know the truth of the most important message ever. Delivering such truth is an important mission to be on! It should define who we are and how we view our lives in this world.

Your Mission That Chose You

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Randy Buchman

Many of you will remember the television program of the past that began with words from a hidden tape recorder (along with an envelope of photos and instructions) that spoke like this: “Good morning Mr. Phelps. Your mission Jim, should you decide to accept it is… (with a brief description of the challenge … then going on to say…), “As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.” And then there would be smoke from the machine, and the tape would blow up … kinda like my computer did last week.

The program, and multiple movies that followed later, went by the title of “Mission Impossible.”

We often speak about our role in life, particularly as God’s servants and emissaries, as being our “mission.” We talk about going on a “missions trip” and we support “missionaries”. And this week as we conclude our seven weeks of discussion called “Why Church,” we talk about what is our ongoing mission and responsibility, both individually and collectively, as members of the Church, the body of Christ.

But for many people, being on “mission” for God is about as confusing to understand and impossible to accomplish as maybe it would seem to be for Jim Phelps in the famous TV show.

However, our mission as God’s people is not impossible, it is very possible. It is necessary, it is divinely empowered, and it is the greatest thing to be a part of that the world has ever known.

This gets to the core of what is our purpose. The purpose of God’s people is the worship of God. In the present age, this is accomplished through the Church. The mission of the Church, therefore, is to bring outsiders into the family of God so that they, too, might worship the one true God.

We were called to this by our salvation, as Peter said, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” So in a big way, the mission chose us before we chose to accept the mission.

So stick with us this week as we share with you four components of being on mission for God … after all, you were chosen to do this – the greatest thing ever!

The Pleasure of Giving Money Away (1 Corinthians 16)

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Randy Buchman

As all of you know who have known me for a while, one of the great experiences of my life that I enjoyed so very much was coaching distance runners at Williamsport High School for 13 years. I invested a lot in it and in the lives of the kids, almost all of whom are now adults. When I read about or see their successes as they move on in life, I feel like I had a small part in shaping some of that. It gives me great joy and personal satisfaction, beyond the state championships and 50+ titles.

A fifth principle about giving that we are identifying in 1 Corinthians 16 is the “personal” element of being a part of what God is doing. Paul wrote to the Corinthians about how some of them might go along in delivering the gift. Imagine the stories that they would bring back with them of that trip and that experience. They would be sharing with the larger church about the people they met and how the offering was meeting needs and advancing the kingdom.

The text says in verses three and four … Then, when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me.

So I am speaking of the personal pleasure and sense of satisfaction that comes from giving to a cause and seeing and hearing about the results of how God is blessing it. Really, how many things are there in the world that you can be a part of that has eternal reward and benefit attached to what you do or give?

This giving topic coincided with the “Project Zero” program we have going on right now, which is our effort to pay down the remaining roughly $100,000 in debt that we have on our church building, 29 acres and house. This is out of about $2 million in total costs over the past 20 years.

It may not seem like giving toward mortgage payments on a steel building is very Kingdom-oriented, but let’s just mention a few things that we have seen done at TSF because of the building that we have as a place for God’s people to meet.

Think about how on Sunday mornings we see regularly some of our teens as a part of the worship team, thinking about how many others before them have gone on to serve in this way with us and in dozens of other assemblies where God has taken them. Think of our youth who have come to know Christ in this place and have been discipled and are serving the Lord, even around the globe. Think of all the biblical instruction that has gone on in all of the classrooms in the building … for all ages. Recall all of the local ministries that have used our facility for their banquets and programs, including the FCA camp that happens every year with annual dozens of commitments for Christ. Every Thursday we have hundreds of women and children growing in Christ through the Community Bible Study program. Even the local Mennonites use our building for programs and graduations, etc. This is all but a tip of the iceberg.

So, relative to our Project Zero campaign, and reviewing the five principles of this week, we hope that you find giving toward this facility debt elimination to be PURPOSEFUL. We hope you will be PERIODIC and PERSISTENT about it over the next year. We would like, as did Paul, to see it be PARTICIPATORY BY ALL. We understand that it needs to be PROPORTIONATE BY PROSPERITY as God blesses you and makes you his steward of resources. And we trust you will find in doing it that there is the pleasure of a PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE.

A point that I grieve I did not make strongly enough in preaching on this last Sunday is the following. Though I reflected a good bit in my remarks on events of 19 to 20+ years ago, I did not say enough about how overwhelming it looked at the time to the people committing to be a part of this original structure and the expansion of it and the properties associated with it. If you have not noticed this truth in looking around at TSF, we’re not a very wealthy bunch. The debt and the expense we were entering into was HUGE! It was audacious faith. Scary even. But, like the old question goes … “How do you eat a whole elephant?” The answer is “one bite at a time.”

God has been very good to us. We’ve been blessed, even in ups and downs and times when people have come and gone. God is very, very good.

Blessed Bigger to be a Bigger Blessing (I Corinthians 16)

Posted on May 12, 2016 by Randy Buchman

One of the most intense job experiences of my life was working for UPS in Dallas, Texas the first two years I was in seminary. It was a nighttime shift from about 6:00-10:00, loading outbound trucks to other states. Though that was probably at the time of my peak health and fitness, I always said that the company only had part-time jobs for this task, because you would drop over before you got to eight hours of doing what we did.

The company started you out by loading trucks (in the heat!), teaching you how to do it just right. They constantly counted everything you did and tracked it in charts they would show you once in a while. When beginning, there was a certain number of boxes you should load in an hour (counting what you did in three minutes and multiplying by 20). As time went by, you were to get better, for which you were paid more.

Later, you might be moved to a “secondary sort” by picking boxes off a conveyor belt and funneling them to one of four or five trucks. If you did well with that, you got to work on the “primary sort” aisle, picking packages and sending them on one of seven belts that went to the pick-off guy, who sent them to the loaders on the trucks. It was a lot of memorizing zip codes, many of which I recall to this day.

With more responsibility came more accountability and expectations … and better pay as well. It was essentially the shipping world’s equivalent of a biblical principle stated by Jesus in Luke 12:48. In the context of teaching about diligent service and watchfulness, and using a parable about faithful stewardship when the master is away, Jesus said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

We should see our time, talents and treasures as resources given to us by the Lord — the ultimate Master — to be used as a stewardship. And in terms of our giving, the fourth principle that rises from our 1 Corinthians 16 passage is that giving is to be proportionate by prosperity.

From the text it says … each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made.

Paul never gives a number or a percentage that should guide giving. Tithing is an Old Testament concept that is difficult to apply in exact science to New Testament giving. We should strive to be generous, even happily so, recognizing how we are so blessed on the receiving end.

I have always promoted with people that tithing is a worthy goal to work toward early in life, family and career … to establish it early as a baseline financial discipline. For those with greatest need, this is a difficult goal; for those with the greater blessings of resources, mere tithing could be the definition of falling quite short of being generous toward God as a faithful steward of what HE has prospered a person with.

But you all get the idea. As you are beginning in life and careers and so on, times may be tougher; but later when blessings are greater and multiplied, more can likely be done.

I have often said this: In my years of ministry experience, I am yet to find any person who has ever said that they regret what they gave to the Lord. Be generous; you simply can’t go wrong.

Seriously

The Goal-Oriented Christian Life

Author Archives: Randy Buchman