On Television

Well over a year ago, JFB began an ambitious project that involved broadcasting our services on the CW network out of both Eau Claire and LaCrosse Wisconsin at 10:00 am each Sunday morning. When we made that decision, we did so with a missional albeit realistic heart of knowing, or at least understanding, that the likelihood of increasing our attendance was a longshot at best. But for us, that was never the point. We wanted to increase the kingdom attendance. So we stepped out into the crazy world of TV and multiple volunteers have worked diligently each week to make this project a reality. On a fairly regular basis we have heard from those who are out there watching which is wonderful and certainly reinforcing, and then…

Suddenly we started hearing from the dark. Perhaps you are unaware of this unique place we live, one aspect of which is the multiple state correctional facilities within a couple of hours drive time from Menomonie. This caveat may have no specific bearing upon your life, but apparently, it did upon our Tv broadcast. For we have already heard from inmates in 6 of those prisons, and they are watching…take the example below:

One of several recent letters

2 / 21 / 19 – Dear Pastor Tim,

My name is ……………. and I am currently incarcerated at New Lisbon Correctional Institution in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. I’m actually from Menomonie, though. In 2008, I actually visited Jesus Fellowship of Believers a couple times. I had just come home after serving 4 years in the Army and had lived on 9th next to Our Savior’s. I’d call myself a Christian for years, but was clinging tightly to my secret sins. I was very convicted by your preaching, but I wasn’t ready to give up myself for the truth. I found a church that delivered a feel-good message and I continued to live my life trying to be a Christian and chase after strange flesh and indulge in an addiction to pornography. Your words on the days I visited JFB stuck with me for years. You said, “Going to church makes you as much a Christian as going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.” I was really good at going to church, but I was a terrible Christian, if one at all.

So, why am I writing you? I’ve been in prison for 3½ years and will continue to be until 2031, and will have to serve part of that in Minnesota prison. I finally gave my whole heart to Christ and made Him Lord of my life in 2015 with my knees hard-pressed on a cold concrete floor in a jail cell. I’d hit rock bottom after I turned myself in. I lost my wife, my kids, my home, and my career because I believed the lies of the enemy and molested my step daughter. I’ve spent the past 3½ years growing closer to God and studying Scripture. I even enrolled in Bible college through correspondence courses. We are blessed here with a chaplain who is on fire for prison ministry but, I still often find myself needing to be fed spiritually. I’ve moved past the milk and desire more meat. Understandably, the message preached at the services here are usually along the lines of a “milk” message.

Recently, our institute upgraded our TV antennae and I found your service on the CW on Sunday morning. I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing you preach again, be “fed” by the JFB service, and get a little taste of home. I just wanted to give you my brief testimony and thank you for making the service available on TV. It’s a joy to be a part of the JFB congregation, even if it’s just through the TV. If Menomonie winds up being my home again after my release, I intend to make JFB my permanent church home. Until then, I’ll continue to enjoy the service on TV; at least for the next 3 years while I’m still in Wisconsin. Thanks again and God bless!

For His Glory, 2 Timothy 2:21

Correctional Ministry

Now we might be wonderfully pleased by the letters we are receiving, but since when has “wonderfully pleased” been enough for us? So with 25 years of correctional ministry under our belts, we have lit upon a unique and, we hope, a creative pursuit to answer what we see as a golden opportunity. We are currently praying and moving forward on expanding our TV ministry into the very next 30 minute slot after our current Sunday service. In that ½ hour we are looking to develop a ministry TV broadcast engineered to specifically meet the needs of the believer that is incarcerated in those state facilities. This broadcast would have some footage from our regular Sunday services, and then application commentary from others, mostly our chaplain Ryan O’Gara, and lastly other media material directed toward discipleship and maturation of those who have turned to Christ despite being incarcerated. As far as we know, no one as attempted such an outreach endeavor in this manner. One reason of course, is few have the plethora of “captive” audience that we have within our reach via broadcast TV and at a cost that is affordable. The potential is unlimited, but of course so are the unknowable battles we may come up against. Please pray for this endeavor and wisdom on the part of your community leaders. And of course, if you feel so inclined, more volunteers for this ministry would be welcomed! Thank you for being a part of it…financially, prayerfully, and in unity!

PASTOR TIM

Repeat

It’s hard to see, but we are often creatures of routine. Unkept calendars and schedules often become a redundant prison that keeps us contained until death, and to top it off, the older you get the faster time goes by. We often hear the Christian life is an adventure. Christian literature paints pictures of lives that appear so foreign to our own yet we rarely stop to ask ourselves why. When we read the Bible, we can look past the lives of the historical figures on the page to mine for meaning beyond the words; nuggets of knowledge that will allow us to feel good about ourselves for the time being. The alarm goes off; it’s morning. Time to wake up and do it all over again.

Disconnected

Do you have a routine? For me, the routine starts when my phone begins beeping. I get up and let the dog out to do her business. Then it begins… a series of choices. Repeat or renew? Before we get into this, I need to warn you. A life that is moving forward with God has to indeed be “with God”. Honestly, I think this is the key issue when it comes to truly living. But for most of us our schedules do more of the driving than God. It’s not His fault but ours.

Many Christians attempt to live disconnected from God and instead go by what they know or believe or think. They believe they already know what God would want, they just need to do it. It’s like our lives are a Rubik’s Cube puzzle that we just need to solve and so we start twisting it until we make all the colors match. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s prayer but its superficial, generalized, and riddled with requests for God to bless things; things we already know we want or have already set in motion. It’s more like speaking wishful words into the air than having a real conversation. I hear the words of Paul echoing, “…having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect in the flesh?”

Alas, living like this keeps us imprisoned. We’re not moving forward. You’re not living your life, your life is living you. And what makes it worse is that people can’t see there is something missing in the equation. So, they look deeper into the Bible to make sense of who they are while missing the point.

John 5:39 says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me…” Listen, Jesus said this to the Pharisees. Are you a Pharisee? Doing rather than being makes us unintentional Pharisees. Living lives trying to do a level best to stay on track for heaven. Nothing more. The alarm goes off; it’s morning. Time to wake up and do it all over again.

Reset

Have you ever been working on a computer, things seem to move along well when all of a sudden everything locks up? If you forgot to save your work it’s a real pill. Thankfully, hours of IT Crowd has taught us that we need to try turning it off and on again; hit the reset button. When we do, things seem to go much better. How do we reset as Christians? It’s simple math. First of all, we need to come to terms with the fact that 6 + 0 does not equal 7. Well of course, right? Yet it seems this is the equation we are trying to make work every day with our lives. We count our fingers and use calculators to try to make 6 + 0 equal 7… it never does. The alarm goes off… you get the idea.

Our spiritual lives are incomplete without the missing integer. You + Nothing does not equal “moving forward”. It only equals “incomplete”, “perpetual motion”, “repeat”. What am I saying? You and I can only “move forward with God”… with God. Oh, how we try to do so without him, don’t we? The only way to break the repeat cycle is by including God. If your life has been on repeat, start with repentance. Imagine how the Christian life would be so different for us if we learned to repent to God (with words) instead of trying to manage or control our sins!

From there, talk to God more about your life. Are you angry or bitter at someone? Talk to God about it. Do you have plans for your family? Talk to God about it. Are you wondering how to handle a person you work with? Talk to God about it. Don’t just operate like you know what He would have you do… remember, God is the one who told Joshua to march around Jericho playing music for 7 days. That’s not exactly the most sensible battle plan. God chose David, a weak little boy among strong brothers, to defeat Goliath. He does amazing things, indeed, but both Joshua and David were people who talked to God. They moved forward because they included him in the equation.

Renew

For 2019 and beyond, I encourage you to stop living your life on repeat. It’s time we make changes in our day to actually converse with God… connect with him about what’s actually happening in our lives… include him and commune with him regularly. Maybe we drop the superficial prayer altogether and get away on Saturday mornings once in a while just to hear him better, and seek to put him first conversationally when we make plans for our future and our days. Perhaps we pause more often to listen for his voice. You + God = Moving Forward. When you do that, your life will begin to look more like Peter James and John and less like a redundant prison. The Pharisees had no functioning relationship with the one they referred to as “Father”. That was their error. Don’t make the same mistake. Get alone with God and be renewed day by day.

Well, that was fast! 2018 was here and gone overnight it seemed. The church, and its pastor, is another year older and a year closer to home. I don’t know that I have gained any wisdom like that of Solomon, but I have garnered some of the same attitudes and cynicism.  Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that “History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.” Yes old king…there really is “nothing new under the sun!”

After nearly 30 years a part of this fellowship, I have noticed that time so often has a way of repeating itself. I often remark from the pulpit that life is so very fast and fleeting…that we all get but “one pass” through it…and we need to make our time count, with zeal and thankfulness. What I usually get back is “blank stares” of seeming “blank understanding.” You know that body pain you felt this year that you never felt before? That’s what I’m talking about.  Ahhh, “tick-tock, tick-tock….”

As Paul sat chained in a Roman prison, waiting for his imminent execution, he wrote to Timothy saying “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6–8)

Paul was confident as he neared the end of his life that he had finished well. Sadly, however, just a few sentences later he had to write concerning one of his coworkers saying “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10).

So two men who had ministered together — Paul and Demas — mentor and mentoree, both finishing very different than the other.  One endured and finished the race and looked forward to the crown of righteousness. The other man peeled off, deserted his mentor, and was never heard from again. Demas was apparently a promising young man with a promising future, yet as far as we know he did not make it to the end. May we note that the stumbling point was that Demas “was in love with this present world.” Yes…that’s the killer punch…that’s the toxic poison that gets us every time.

I do not pretend to have some magic answer on this issue. But I do know that our walk in Christ cannot ever be static… cannot ever be “level.” Unless we are growing, maturing and advancing today in our discipleship and faithfulness, we are most assuredly slipping backward! We are fighting or we are retreating. We must be more and more in love with Jesus, or we will fall more and more in love with this world.

And so very many folks have ignored those warnings until it was too late and are now essentially wandering around Menomonie like spiritual derelicts… no place to go, no place to call home, and nothing to do accept clutch white-knuckled to their pride. It’s a sad thing to watch as their lives melt away and all that is left is a memory of what used to be! But I do not speak of such with any kind of elitist attitude or an incredulous spirit, but rather with a personal “fear and trembling,” as I know I too must continue to “work out my own salvation.” (Philippians 2:12)

What will 2019 hold for you personally? Will you broaden your world? Reaching out beyond your comfort zone and take on new challenges and therefore new blessings? Pastor John Piper says that he has come to the conclusion that there are four fundamental actions that a person can take to help them finish well. They are:

1. daily time of focused personal communion with God
2. daily appropriation of the gospel
3. daily commitment to God as a living sacrifice
4. daily firm belief in the sovereignty and love of God

Note that the key word here is “daily.” That’s appropriate, because whenever we speak of time, there is no tomorrow, just “today.” 

My desire for JFB as well as all the souls who make up its community is that we boldly step into the next year… excited and zealous to live large for Christ, and always packed and ready to catch that final flight home…

Php 3:13  “No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…”

Pastor Tim

“31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”  -Ephesians 4:31-32

What’s up with all the Sin?

One thing I have learned from reading and studying the bible is that the writers of the epistle letters spent an awful lot of time talking about problem sins in the church. There is so much practical direction given in these letters. It was eye-opening for me to realize that the reasoning wasn’t primarily so that churches and Christians could establish a code of doctrine to run the church by. What I mean is, when Paul addressed lying and immorality in his letters, it wasn’t just for the sake of writing a how-to manual on church management. People were actually committing these sins in the church.

It was no shock to the Apostles that sinners would, well… sin… and sin badly sometimes! So, they wrote the letters to help correct these issues. See, sin is expected from church people, but sin is not excusable and the writings clearly convey that sins in the church need to be corrected for the sake of the people and for righteousness and growth. If you have a heart for God, you will be thankful for the instructions in the bible.

I have a dang good reason!

In the scripture we’re looking at, Paul conveys a switch of progression for us that I think we have a hard time with. He tells us to let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander be put away along with malice. I don’t know about you but all of these things can really puff me up inside and they have NEVER produced positive results. It is interesting that something so evil as this list of emotions and feelings is something we so easily allow. We defend our right to feel these feelings because it’s possible we had been unfairly treated or have had our rights infringed upon. At any rate, we allow these feelings and emotions to pressurize in us slowly over time.

“He can’t talk to ME that way! Who does he think he is?”
“How is it I am ALWAYS overlooked when the church is picking someone to help with _________”
“All the guys seem to fawn over THAT girl? if they only knew what she really was like.”
“Did you hear about SO-AND-SO? Something bad happened to them and it’s about time!”
“They didn’t ask for my help. They must think something bad about me.”

The Time-Bomb

We often feel justified in the way we think. When you harbor sinful feelings like these, they don’t remain controlled. They will eventually rupture into other attitudes and reactions. When we give in and leave space for our hearts to be devilish, something gets altered inside. We begin to accommodate the darkness in us. Where this leads in time is isolation. Consider this scenario: if there is a brother or sister you begin to feel this way about, you will begin to avoid them. When other brothers and sisters don’t feel the same as you, you separate from them. When sermons and the Bible convict you, you separate from it. Then you begin to feel like there is a secret vendetta; covert meetings and discussions organized to set you aside.

Over the years I have observed that people in melt-down mode have one commonality between them. All of them have it in one degree or another: isolation… disconnection. Eventually, that person will explode, no holds barred, writing off and tarnishing every friendship and relationship they once held dear. I have seen people even do it to their own spouses and children.

Nothing Good Will Come of It

Wake up, guys. Big explosions like these are always fueled by this crop of permitted feelings inside: bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. James adds in his first chapter, “19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” The anger of man does produce something: self-righteousness. That’s about it.

In my past and even in the present but to a much lesser degree, I would go through dark times in my life where rough feelings would stew within. I would become cynical and suspicious about what people were doing around me. It drove me to feel like I couldn’t trust anybody. Isolation was the result and I felt like everyone around me was trying to stick it to me in some way or that they just didn’t care about me. I still get duped by my emotions today but the presence of the Holy Spirit and the practical thinking of the Bible offer help to re-focus… dispel the pressure… disarm the bomb.

What’s a person to do?

Paul in Ephesians 4 gives us something simple to do. He says to “let” these feelings and emotions “be put away.” It’s like he is saying “turn it off!” and that’s not easy, right? He doesn’t stop there (because Paul is not a moron). He knows it requires a change of mind; correct perspective. We need the Holy Spirit to empower us to replace destructive thinking with correct thinking. He goes on to instruct us to “be” something else. He says “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving.” Here’s where Paul’s direction amps up, and follow me by assessing your life with these questions:

Are you a sinner? -yes. Are you born again by the grace of Christ? -yes. Before salvation, where you aimed for hell? -yes. Did you do vile things? -yes. How vile? -Extremely vile. Did you think vile things? -yes. Often? -yes! So, listen… we are to use that measuring stick (how much God forgave us in His kindness and tenderheartedness) to measure our kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness toward others. When you contemplate how much God forgave you, you cannot help but to humbly forgive those around you. The side effects of this are unity, fellowship, and love. Inclusion… family… connection. The death of Christ for each of us should level us… it disarms us… to humbly love.