This blog is the combined effort of four senior pastors of different churches. Their desire is to point you toward living a God-centered, gospel-focused, Christian life.
I’m Scott. Art and
Daniel are friends and sincere partners in faith. Ritch is my younger brother (he would say much younger) which does not necessarily mean that he and I can’t be
friends and sincere partners in faith. I
serve as the senior pastor at East White Bible Church in Carlock, Illinois. I love our church because she reveals so much
beauty as the bride of Christ. My precious wife, Carol, and I have been married
for 31 years. We have three grown sons,
two daughters-in-law, one grandson, and a grandbaby on the way.
I’m looking forward to this blog because while Art, Daniel,
Ritch, and I think alike about many things (and all the important things), we
each have a way of expression and even of thought that is different enough that
our dear readers will get a more fully orbed perspective than if only one
contributor participated.
My goal in this blog is to get famous and be asked to write
incredible best selling books. This will
enable me to quit my day job and be one of those famous “former” pastors who
only have to prepare one sermon every 4-6 months or so and be regarded as an
“amazing” thinker and man of God as well as a well compensated conference
speaker.
Not really—I just want to see if anyone is still reading
this. What I really want to do is to
point people to the Bible as our authoritative guide for how to think and how
to live, to reveal the Gospel of grace as the only means to salvation and
holiness, to grow in Christlikeness by interacting with my three brothers, and
to reveal the joy of abandoning all I have for the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Without blogs, I would never have been introduced to this (which was cool the first eight times I saw it)...
...or this (which I still find funny)...
...or the genius of OK Go:
Of course, I also would have been spared this:
So, I guess if I'm arguing for or against blogging on the basis of youtube videos...it's a mixed bag.
At
the end of 2006, Time magazine published
an issue celebrating the way in which the internet (and blogging in particular) served as a great
equalizer. Millions of people now had
the ability to make their voices heard.
They could publish their thoughts on the latest geo-political
development. They could express their
support or opposition to an upcoming piece of legislation. They could download a video of their grandmother
slipping on the wet pavement and falling into a vat of chocolate.
George
Will, alas, was not impressed. In his article, “Full
Esteem Ahead,” Will disagreed with Time’s
assertion that Thomas Paine had been the first blogger and Benjamin
Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was
basically MySpace (*Note for younger readers: basically, MySpace =
Facebook). He writes:
Franklin's extraordinary persona informed what he wrote but
was not the subject of what he wrote. Paine was perhaps history's most
consequential pamphleteer. There are expected to be 100 million bloggers
worldwide by the middle of 2007, which is why none will be like Franklin or
Paine. Both were geniuses; genius is scarce. Both had a revolutionary civic
purpose, which they accomplished by amazing exertions. Most bloggers have the
private purpose of expressing themselves for their own satisfaction. There is
nothing wrong with that, but there is nothing demanding or especially admirable
about it, either. They do it successfully because there is nothing singular
about it, and each is the judge of his or her own success.
In other words, Will (1) believes that most blogs are ultimately
self-serving and (2) are not likely to contribute something substantial to the
public discourse. As he puts it, “George III would have preferred dealing
with 100 million bloggers rather than one Paine.”
Nevertheless,
I’m excited to tread into the blogging waters with my fellow pastors. Ritch, Art, and Scott are dear friends. Each of them have had a significant impact on
my walk with the Lord and my ministry.
I’m
confident that the three men who are joining me in contributing to this blog—and others who will be contributing occasionally—will be a great resource for your spiritual edification. I’m confident that I will grow as I read the
posts of the other men. Far from pursuing a running narrative about themselves, I'm excited as the bloggers here pursue exalting Jesus Christ.
Even
though I run the risk of “expressing myself for my own satisfaction,” let me
share just a few things about myself by way of introduction. My wife, Whitney, and I have been married for
almost thirteen years and have four wonderful children. I’ve been on staff at Bethany Community
Church for almost four years and, prior to that, was on staff at Bethany
Baptist for eight years.
Today
as I was cleaning my office, I found a copy of my ordination
certification. I glanced at the portion
of the certificate where the men who had served on my ordination council signed
the document. The first three names on
the certificate? Ritch Boerckel, Scott
Boerckel, and Art Georges.
These men were instrumental in helping me begin my pastoral ministry and I'm excited they will help me continue to grow in it.
I own a Grandfather Clock that I haven’t used for some time
now. We bought it years ago, when
we had no sleeping babies in the house; we stopped winding it (or whatever you
call what you do to keep the thing going) when we had more sleeping
babies. As it stands in the corner
of our family room, it reminds me of the adage “a broken clock is right twice a
day”. Whatever place the hands of
the clock stopped at when we ceased using it, they render our clock accurate
twice in each 24 hour period, when the actual time coincides with its frozen
time markers.
It would be foolish to use a broken clock as one’s source of
time-truth, for it would be wrong 23 hours and 58 minutes out of 24 hours. That is a 99.9% inaccuracy. In fact without an accurate source of
time keeping, the two minutes per day it was spot-on would be unknowable! In order for a broken clock to be
useful even for two minutes, one needs an accurate source of time, a clock that
represents truth.
As I thought about this, it caused me to think about truth,
our society, and the times in which we live. More and more, it appears that the mechanism of our culture
is broken, and yet like a stopped clock, we still get some things right, there
is enough of a focus on morality and ethical matters, such that it appears we
are right at least twice a day.
Yet, the only reason we might assess some measure of moral rightness is
because we still have the voice of truth, God’s truth, as our basis of
comparison.
Are we, as God’s ambassadors, the Christian community of
Bible-believing followers of Christ, going to be satisfied with such gross
inaccuracy and unwilling to herald the true time that the clock should
mark? I trust that your answer is
the same as mine, “No!” Yet, as we
proclaim God’s truth, exposing great dissonance between truth and belief
systems prevalent today, we must do so with gentleness, reverence, and
compassion. We must trust that for
some, the gentleness in our answer can help to turn away the wrath that often
accompanies the shame and guilt of exposed sin, whereas harshness in our words
is sure to stir up anger, unnecessarily.
My hope is that my own contribution to this blogging effort
will force me, and help others, to think through some issues that the Christian
faces in living by faith in a world that does not encourage doing so. I have never considered blogging before because I am never so confident that my own thoughts are of
great value to others. But, by the
request of my colleagues and by virtue of the responsibility of my calling as a
shepherd, I do embrace this effort as something that the Lord might use to help
the saints in our efforts to glorify Christ. Jesus prayed that our heavenly
Father would set us apart from the world we live through the study and practice
of God’s truth (John 17:3). Please know as you read my contributions that,
while I have been gloriously saved by God’s grace through faith in the atoning
work of Jesus Christ, I am a work in progress. My mind is an integral part of that process as I renew it
through study and meditation of the truth of God’s word. Join me in that endeavor!
