Pastors' Blog

By Pioneer Pastors

January 1, 2010
By Dwight K. Nelson

Poor Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary—he can’t even show up at a holiday party without being cornered by another distraught denizen of the English-speaking world with the query, “What are we supposed to call the decade that’s now ended?” Pretend you’re the editor of the dictionary—how would you answer all those emails? After all, we call the 80’s the 80’s and the 90’s the 90’s. But what shall we call the 00’s? The Zeroes? Hardly. How about the Aughts (English for the number 0)? Or the Ohs? Or the Oh-Ohs (I like that one!)?

Fact of the matter is the English language isn’t going to melt down simply because we can’t come up with a word for the decade that’s now behind us. And it won’t be a philological crisis if we never do. “‘It’s really amusing to me,’ said Dennis Baron, a University of Illinois linguist and curator of a Web site that decodes language in the news. ‘People think if we don’t have anything to call the decade that maybe we will forget it, that it will be some kind of orphan decade, that it won’t exist. But it’s simply not true’” (SBTribune 12-28-09). As it turns out there are other words we’ve been missing for a long time. What do you call former in-laws? (Perhaps it’s best not to call them at all.) What about a romantic friend of an older adult who isn’t married? “Girl friend” sounds too teenager-ish, doesn’t it?

And what does God call the decade that is now behind us? Interestingly enough, he uses a non-chronological term. A word that isn’t bound by the passage of time. A single word that is both descriptive and proscriptive. One word that transcends the idiosyncrasies of the English language . . . or any other language, ancient or modern, for that matter.

Just one word. But in it is contained the divine DNA of the gospel we still call everlasting. The word? Forgiven. That’s it. Forgiven. Because two hundred decades ago “on a hill far away” God from his cross forgave this rebel race of all our sins (there being no shortage of adjectival modifiers and synonyms in the English language for that very human reality that is all ours—sin). “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (I Timothy 1:15). Forgiven. God’s one word to describe the decade of your life and mine that is now past. And the one–word reason for you and me to bow down this New Year and worship him. Forgiven indeed. Thank God!

December 22, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

Sir Isaac Newton called it “the foundation stone of the Christian religion,” this not-so-easy-to-decipher prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27.  It’s connected, “determined” or “cut off” in biblical terminology, from a much more extensive prophecy in Daniel 8 which includes a symbolic ram, goat, little horn and 2300 prophetic days or literal years.  The angel Gabriel had explained to Daniel what the ram, goat and little horn stood for, and informed Daniel that the 2300 days/years would reach “to the time of the end.”  Then after Daniel’s extended prayer in chapter 9, Gabriel returned to explain to Daniel how the 2300 year prophecy of Daniel 8:14 would be initiated by a series of events that would occur over a period of 70 sevens, or 70 weeks (a period understood by many Protestant scholars through the centuries as 490 years).   It’s this 490-year prophecy that Newton was so excited about.

Daniel 9:25 revealed that this 490-year prophetic period would commence with the decree to rebuild and restore Jerusalem. At the time this prophecy was given (6th century B.C.), Jerusalem lay in ruins and the Jews were in captivity in Babylon.  Then in 457 B.C., the third in a series of Persian decrees allowing Jerusalem to be restored was issued, and the 490-year prophecy began to be fulfilled.

Daniel 9:25-26 indicates that 7 prophetic weeks (during which Jerusalem was rebuilt) plus 69 prophetic weeks (which added together computes to 483 prophetic weeks or 483 literal years) after 457 B.C., the Messiah the Prince, that is, God’s anointed One, would come.  When that’s figured out mathematically, it works out to 27 A.D. (456½ + 26½ = 483). What is absolutely fascinating about this is that there is only one year in the life of Jesus to which the Bible assigns a date, and that is the year of His baptism, when He was anointed by the Holy Spirit, became the Messiah and began his ministry: according to Luke 3:1, 21-23, this occurred in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, or 27 A.D., exactly as had been prophesied in Daniel’s prophecy given over 500 years earlier!

In Daniel 9:27 the focus shifts to the final seven to fulfill the prophecy.  And here the drama intensifies.  The focus of that final week is on what happened when Jesus came in the middle of it: “In the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering” (NKJV).  Verse 26 adds that “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.”  Based on the number of annual Passovers Jesus attended after His baptism, scholars near unanimously agree that His ministry lasted for 3½ years (which reaches to the middle of that final prophetic 7 year period), and then He was crucified, “cut off,” “but not for Himself” (because He died not for His own sins of which He had none, but for ours).  And His death for us “brought an end to [the animal] sacrifice[s] and offering[s]” which had pointed forward to His death.  It all happened just as it had been prophesied.  Newton believed that this prophecy, which foretold over 500 years in advance the very time when Jesus would be baptized and crucified for our redemption, was proof positive that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament.

Cataclysmic consequences for our world resulted when Jesus came in the middle of the final week of that prophecy.  But then, cataclysmic consequences always occur when Jesus comes in the middle of anything, or anyone.

December 7, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

Boy—even our Santas are in trouble. At its recent conference in Philadelphia, the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas (that really is their name!) declared that their priority this Christmas is not keeping their long white facial growth curly and clean. Their number one concern is H1N1. Come to think of it—that’d be your chief concern and mine, wouldn’t it—given all the little runny-nosed tikes sitting upon your rotund lap and cheerfully coughing and sneezing straight into your cherry-cheeked face! So for this Christmas our department store, WalMart and city mall Santa Clauses have requested that they be given national priority for the swine flu vaccine. And who can counter their logic? “After all, you wouldn’t want us passing on the last kid’s nasty swine flu virus to your little cherub, now would you?”

But then again, maybe it’s not such a bad idea—being contagious at Christmas time. Can you think of a more opportune season for your contagious faith to spread to others—the others at your office Christmas party, or the others next door where you live, or the others you’ll be sitting beside for that plane ride across the country? Turns out Christmas is a glorious time to be contagious for Jesus.

And if you need a Christmas precedent for going contagious over him, how about that eighty-four year old widow prophetess named Anna. “She was very old . . . . [but] she gave thanks to God and spoke about the [Christ] child to all” (Luke 2:36-38). Because when you’re infected with joy over the promised Savior, it’s OK to spread that contagion to all who will listen to you. Just like Anna.

So this Christmas here’s your H1N1 checklist: remember to wash your hands often, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, go easy on the sweets, take along some Kleenex and grab a handful of Happiness Digest’s in our pamphlet racks by the entrances to our church. Don’t go to church at Pioneer? Then stop by your local Christian bookstore and buy some colorful pamphlets that you can contagiously spread all along your way through this joyful holiday. Catching the H1N1 can be deadly. But catching the contagious truth about Jesus will save the life of the one you infect. So go and spread him . . . with “great joy!”

November 20, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

“I complained to God that I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” That dusty line from Thanksgivings past finds fresh meaning in Derek McGinnis’ new book, Exit Wounds: A Survival Guide to Pain Management for Returning Veterans and Their Families. November 9, 2004, Navy corpsman McGinnis was in Fallujah, Iraq, racing in an ambulance to pick up injured Marines, when a Mercedes Benz packed with homemade explosives crashed into his side of the ambulance, severing his left leg above the knee and exploding shrapnel into one eye. After years of rehabilitation at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, 32-year-old husband and father Derek is focusing his life now on assisting other veterans and families who are having to pick up the pieces and cobble together a life beyond the war. A consultant with the American Pain Foundation, he is spreading a message of hope beyond adversity. “It’s OK to have mental pain, it’s OK to have physical pain. There are methods to have a productive life” (SBTribune 11-18-09). The proof hangs in the McGinnis garage at home—the racing bibs of a long distance runner: the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon, the 2006 Army 10-Miler, and the 2007 Alcatraz Challenge. All of the races run with a flexible prosthetic left leg replete with a neatly-laced running shoe at the end of the metal post. Derek McGinnis is grateful to be running at all.

“I complained to God that I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name” (Psalm 100:4). Amen.

November 12, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

While the nation continues to mourn over the senseless Fort Hood tragedy last week, let us be cautious about jumping to at least one conclusion. Thirteen families grieve the deaths of their soldier loved ones tragically killed on homeland soil, and one family grieves the yet inexplicable actions of a loved soldier who “snapped” into that killer. But exacerbating the post-mortem analysis is the fact that the alleged killer was not only an Army psychiatrist, but a Muslim, soon to be deployed to Afghanistan. Was it Nidal Hasan’s faith that prompted his actions?
Some say Yes. Why else would the killer reportedly have been shouting, “Allahu Akbar” (God is great!), as he sprayed his deadly fire? While I am not defending this American Muslim soldier’s betrayal and actions, I am, as a member of a minority faith community myself, concerned with how quickly elements of the public and press can raise insinuations against a misunderstood minority religion. How quickly those who share the same minority faith convictions can become suspect in the eyes of the larger community. President Obama, in his eulogy this week at the Fort Hood memorial service for the victims, carefully threaded the needle upon which public opinion seems to teeter: “‘No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving god looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice—in this world, and in the next’” (South Bend Tribune 11-11-09).
And what would be our just response to Muslims, whether neighbors or strangers to us? To live by Jesus’ Golden Rule, whereby we treat them with the same fairness and understanding we would want to be treated with were another David Koresh of Waco infamy to rise up and claim kinship with our own community of faith. I.e., the vast majority of any community of faith is a God-devoted, faith-filled part of our human family. And while our faith understandings differ and our perspectives about God/Allah are not always alike, nevertheless we can and must affirm the common ties of faith in God, compassion to all, and hope born of the belief that the Holy Book of God promises a better day for his earth children. If tragedies such as this one could become the catalyst for our own intentional (though halting) efforts to reach out to the Muslims we may yet meet and come to know, imagine the good that God himself might yet bring.
“For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!” (Romans 5:15) It’s that “how much more” that will yet “overflow to the many” that must spur us on to love even as God does, no matter which grieving family we belong to.

November 6, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

Amen to AMEN! Karen and I had the privilege of joining several hundred physicians and dentists and their families this past weekend in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. You should’ve heard their stories. Here they are—medical professionals in the thick of their careers across this nation—pursuing Christ in the marketplace of health care. Or, as dentist Dusong Kim described it, it was Christ in hot pursuit of him, as the Cessna twin engine he was piloting in the dark over an invisible patch of California below, dropped out of the night sky, its engines shut down. Clutching the stick in desperation, his mind racing, his wife and two small children strapped in beside and behind him, this dentist at the apex of a lucrative practice recounted those life-altering moments as he blindly crashed the craft into an orchard of almond trees. But out of that survival, his testimony described a redirected career, ignited by a new passion for God and his mission. Or there was young orthopedic resident Joshua Drumm, who discovered that his lifelong ambition to become an orthopedic surgeon was tanking, simply because he refused to attend the residency application interview on Sabbath. The drama of his pleading before God, the subsequent rejections from elite orthopedic residencies across the nation once his Sabbath conviction became known, his refusal to compromise his commitment to his Creator, the Philadelphia hospital orthopedic chief’s repeated attempts to persuade Joshua otherwise—his was a shining testimony of trust in God for all of us who listened, medical professionals or not. Today Dr. Kim and his family are missionaries in Bolivia. And Dr. Drumm and his wife are in a successful orthopedic residency in Philadephia. “Faith in practice”—the weekend theme for this retreat—is more than evident in the lives of these many medical professionals. And on this campus of over 3500 young adults, how many of them, how many of you, will also hear the call of Christ to follow him as a medical missionary? Perhaps not to some foreign shore, but nevertheless you are being called to be a missionary for the kingdom right here at home in this nation. Massive student loans, society’s drumbeat to reflect the affluence accorded your medical station in life—there will be myriad pressures to turn a practice into a lucrative career. But I was impressed with this hotel ballroom full of medical professionals who have chosen to reject societal norms and instead plunge into a self-sacrificing life of healing our broken world in the name of Jesus. You can be one of them one day. Why the name AMEN? Because it stands for Adventist Medical Evangelists Network. Doctors, dentists, health care professionals as evangelists? Why the surprise? After all, God had only one Son—and he called him to be a medical evangelist. Could you be in better company?

October 30, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

“20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable.” Not exactly the sort of headline that CBS’s staid economic website, MarketWatch.com, is used to running. In a sobering, columnist Paul B. Farrell opens with the pronouncement, "We've lost 'America’s soul.' And worldwide, the consequences will be catastrophic." He suggests it’s a gut sense we all have: "You know something’s very wrong: A year ago, too-greedy-to-fail banks were insolvent, in a near-death experience. Now magically, they're back to business as usual, arrogant, pocketing outrageous bonuses while Main Street sacrifices, and unemployment and foreclosures continue rising as tight credit, inflation and skyrocketing federal debt are killing taxpayers." His indictment of Wall Street is biting. It "has lost its moral compass." Farrell outlines twenty top reasons why he believes American capitalism is doomed—from the life cycle of empires to today’s financial disparity (where "America’s top 1% own more than 90% of America’s wealth") to the explosion of the federal debt from $11.2 to $23.7 trillion. He concludes, “The coming collapse [with a “high probability by 2012”] is the end of an ‘inevitable’ historical cycle stalking all great empires to their graves. Downsize your lifestyle expectations, trust no one, not even media. . . . [T]here’s absolutely nothing you can do to hide from this unfolding reality or prevent the rush of the historical imperative.” (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-soul-is-lost-and-collapse-is-inevitable-2009-10-20) What a bleak prognosis! And yet, while this financial analyst may be right in his prognostication, he is wrong in his despair. I’ve invited two young adults to the Pioneer pulpit today. Why? Because I believe this new generation of young (from 18 to 30) represents the greatest potential for God’s kingdom in the history of earth. Farrell may be right—they have come on the scene in a time of great impending crisis. But that’s precisely the genius of divine timing. For here are young men and women—undaunted by statistical doom, unafraid of immense challenge, unashamed of the gospel—who are volunteering their lives in the mission of Christ! And this year at Andrews University we are inviting them to focus first on their own peers on this campus. For the last two months a team of them has been in training, preparing to lead this campus this winter in a university-wide week of revival and reformation. Young adults ministering to young adults—there is no more effective combination for the Spirit of Christ. No wonder that great messianic prophecy predicts that it will be the young that flock into the Messiah’s army in the final battle: “Your troops [the Messiah’s army] will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor your young will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb” (Psalm 110:3 TNIV). The commentator Derek Kidner describes these young warriors as “a splendid army silently and suddenly mobilized.” And that is why I believe we can be unabashedly optimistic about earth’s future, no matter how economically doomed it turns out to be. For in the final battle it will be the young on Christ’s side through whom God will triumph! “With such an army of workers as our youth rightly trained might furnish, how soon the message of a crucified, risen, and soon-coming Savior might be carried to the whole world! How soon might the end come—the end of suffering and sorrow and sin!” (Ed 271) Who needs twenty reasons for doom—when God has one reason for hope! No wonder he gave us the young.

October 21, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

My Twitter alert went off yesterday, informing me of a breaking headline: the Vatican had just announced a new set of canon laws, called “the Apostolic Constitution,” whereby disaffected Anglican priests and parishioners, in fact entire Anglican congregations, can now be welcomed into Rome’s embrace and communion. The decision, “reached in secret by a small cadre of Vatican officials” (Associated Press), apparently caught even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, by surprise. What is no surprise is that growing segments of conservative Anglicans in both the East and West—distraught over the blessing of same-sex unions and openly gay clergy—have been seceding from the Anglican communion. Rome’s move is an unsubtle gesture, in spite of the Vatican’s esprit de corps of ecumenism, to draw all to her. As the Associated Press writer noted, “The Vatican move could be taken as a signal that the ultimate goal of ecumenical talks is to convert Anglicans to Catholicism” (SBT 10-21-09). But is anyone surprised?

And in our quiet corner of the world we gather to celebrate Creation Sabbath, a liturgical festival that joyfully reminds the worshiper we are children of the loving Creator, who after shaping our planetary home into existence in six days then rested on the seventh day, bestowing it as a gift day—the Sabbath day—to the human race exclusively for the enjoyment of our friendship with him. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy,” he later etched with his finger into his granite Decalogue (Exodus 20:8). Why? “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (v 11).

The seventh-day Sabbath remains the greatest ecumenical gift ever entrusted to the human race. For what more tangible and periodic bestowal could the Creator have conferred upon humanity—to unite his children to each other as one, as well as to bind them to him in strong ties of love—than the universal bestowment of the seventh day of the week as the divine-human Rest Day for all earth inhabitants? If on every seventh-day Sabbath humanity gathered to worship our Creator, celebrate our unity and remember our destiny, would we ever need secretly-formed canon law to make us one? The truth is, if we hadn’t forgotten our Creator and abandoned his Sabbath, the only breaking headline these days would be, “Peace on earth.”

October 14, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

Television is huge on hospitals lately, have you noticed? “Three Rivers,” “House,” “Trauma,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and of course the ubiquitous “ER” reruns—the entertainment industry is in the health care business, it seems. Why? Because everybody loves a healing. Third millennial life on the edge (the real thing) can get as messy as an emergency room, can’t it? So what’s not to like about a fifty-eight minute show that ends (more often than not) with a fractured life put back together, a broken body (or heart) healed just before the final credits roll? Do you suppose that’s why people go to church, too? Hoping against hope for a healing, a mending, a broken life reset, a heartsick spirit rejuvenated and cleansed? Having spent a few nights with my mother-in-law in an emergency room, I’ve learned—though I don’t have a medical bone in me—that ER’s can be messy places, sort of the soiled and stained “living room” of the hospital. It isn’t hard to figure out why. Because people who come to emergency rooms are in the grip of a crisis. That’s why you can experience the coagulating odors of vomit and urine and blood and Lysol-like antibacterial agents wafting in the frenetic air of that saving place. Gurneys and beds once wrapped in sterile white sheets are now splattered and contaminated. But that’s OK, because everybody that works and lives in a hospital knows: “This is why we exist—why we’re here—to get dirtied and stained and exposed, while we scramble to save another life.” Isn’t that true about the church, too? The well-worn yarn about it being a hospital for sinners more than a haven for saints still rings true, worn or not, doesn’t it? Because the community of faith is also a community of love. Radical believing is matched by a radical and sometimes countercultural kind of loving that doesn’t insist on political correctness, but rather embraces the broken life and the fractured soul for who he, for who she is—another earth child of the Father in desperate need of healing and wholeness. So of course we or they come to this community in the grip of crisis—that’s what an ER is for. Who defines crisis by esthetic beauty? The non-virtual reality of human life is defined by its urgent need for urgent care. Which was Jesus’ point: “‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:12, 13). Heterosexual sinners, homosexual sinners, all of us in the grip of life’s survival crisis are the very ones for whom Christ raised up this healing community we call church. That we come as we are but do not stay as we are is simply a shining tribute to the transforming power of the Physician who drew us to him and to each other in the first place. Which still makes this the best place for the Doctor in the House to practice his healing work, doesn’t it?

October 7, 2009
By Dwight K. Nelson

What if praying were as contagious as the swine flu? My newspaper, South Bend Tribune (10-7-09), did a piece (replete with graphics), tracking an imaginary family (John, Karen and Billy) through the hazardous world of the H1N1 virus. John’s feeling great, as he heads out of the office for lunch. But while he’s gone, an office worker sneezes in her hand and then picks up his phone to make a call. (66% of office viruses can survive for an hour—33% surviving for up to eighteen hours.) John lunches at a fast food joint, paying for his meal with a contaminated five dollar bill. (Flu viruses can survive for up to ten days on paper currency if someone sneezes on it.) John spends the evening with his family, unwittingly passing on to them the viruses he’s picked up from the phone and money. Billy hurries off to school the next day, contaminating his classmates. Kissing John good-bye, Karen is now a virus carrier. You get the picture. In less than 24 hours, John and Billy have come down with flu symptoms, spending three miserable days in bed and waiting to be symptom-free for another 24 hours before returning to school and work. Oh the joys of contagion! (BTW—to avoid living that story, keep the 3 C’s in mind this flu season: clean your hands with soap or a sanitizer often; cover your cough/sneezes in your sleeve—if you use your hands, wash them immediately; and contain the flu by staying at home until you’re 24 hours past your fever.) Wouldn’t it be great if praying were as contagious as sneezing . . . if whenever you prayed, those all around you caught that spirit and began praying, too? Maybe prayer is infectious! I got an email from one of our university coeds this week who told me about a prayer group that she’s started with friends at 5:30 every morning. That’s right—5:30 a.m. I won’t be surprised at all if that contagious faith in Jesus through praying spreads. Because sometimes, all some people need is an invitation from a friend or colleague to join them for a few moments of prayer. It can be that contagious. And it doesn’t have to be at 5:30 a.m. every day. It could be at noon once a week. Or at 5:30 p.m. when the office is closed for the day. It could be a Friday evening gathering with a few kindred spirits in a living room or a dorm room. And what should we pray for? Why not claim God’s promise: “I will pour upon you a spirit of grace and supplication” (Zechariah 12:10). If we banded together to seek that spirit of asking, of petitioning God, can you imagine what would happen if prayer groups sprang up all over the campus and around the community? Can you think of one reason why God wouldn’t want that spirit of prayer to be as contagious as the flu? So go ahead—spread your prayer virus—and see how many you can infect for Christ.