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Fulcrum Express: A Journey of Faith Embracing All of Life

Insight on the Kingdom of God, all of life, and the state of the church, society and culture from a minister, attorney, entrepreneur and writer who's occasionally taught apologetics and theology at a liberal arts Christian college. My roots are evangelical and essentially reformed, while also drawing on the rich history of thought from other Biblical traditions.

Whole Health

March 5, 2010 in confession, counseling, faith, forgiveness, healing, repentance | Leave a comment

The more pastoral counseling I do, the more I realize how often people deal with life’s traumas, hurts and disappointments by suppressing their hearts and their spirits. Instead of being healthy, integrated people, they numb out or otherwise retreat exclusively into the realm of their minds — i.e., their analytical logic and reason.

They are alive, but hardly living.

I’ve also come to realize how God created our hearts and spirits to be equally vital aspects, along with our minds, of the whole, complete individuals He wants us to be.

Becoming integrated, healthy individuals requires that we stop the oppression of our hearts and spirits that happens when we make them subservient to our logic and reason.

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True Ministry

February 27, 2010 in Table Church, brokenness, community, fellowship, gifts, grace, ministry, podium church | 4 comments

Last night, we had one of our best times of “table church” as we seamlessly shared a meal, partook of communion, fellowshipped and ministered one with another — and none of it depended on me!

The last several weeks have been very emotionally and physically exhausting for me. On top of my best friend dying, I’ve been struggling to keep up with my various professional and counseling commitments while concurrently experiencing a particularly bad bout of chronic fatigue from my autoimmune condition.

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Ken Hornby (1945 – 2010)

February 16, 2010 in Ken Hornby, compassion, faith, grace, love | Leave a comment

Kenneth Lewis Hornby — a pastor, mentor, mutual confidant, fishing partner, flying buddy and friend who was closer than a brother — died early this morning after an extended battle with cancer.

Ken and his wife, Mary Lou, loved to go flying in my plane

Although he was my best friend, Ken and I had a relationship that transcended mere friendship.

We were so opposite, but so complementary, that it was sometimes scary how God nonetheless knit us together. Ken taught me heart, while I taught him rock. We irrevocably changed each other.

Last summer, I felt the Lord gently tell me that Ken was going to die. When we met a couple of days later for breakfast, Ken on his own initiative — and without me mentioning anything — said God showed him in a recent dream to prepare for an prolonged, painful death. I knew in my spirit that Ken was right, and as we continued to talk that morning about his own inner — and very human — struggles, I quietly resolved to be a pillar of support for him in the coming months.

Although Ken had previously battled cancer, including two major surgeries, his long-term prospects until then had been hopeful.

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Repentance, Forgiveness and the Kingdom of God

February 13, 2010 in Kingdom of God, confession, counseling, forgiveness, healing, ministry, repentance | 2 comments

Recorded before a group of men in the local jail, this 55 minute audio teaching explains how we find peace and freedom when we allow God, through authentic Biblical confession, repentance and forgiveness, to change what we think, believe and perceive. That, in turn, allows us to know the righteousness, peace and joy that comes from finding and doing His will — which is what the Kingdom of God is all about.

This teaching arises from hundreds of intense pastoral counseling sessions through Fulcrum Ministries. In those sessions, I’ve seen how God uses Biblically authentic confession, repentance and forgiveness to bring quick resolution and lasting freedom from the lies, hurts and deceptions we carry from life’s circumstances — including routine disappointments to extreme situations like sexual abuse, occult ritual practices, childhood abandonment and many other life-crippling situations.

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A Very Public Confession

February 11, 2010 in abuse, confession, healing, repentance | Leave a comment

Here’s a news brief I came across that really stood out.

In it, the CEO for Continental Airlines admits that his company in the past was racist and refused to hire black pilots. Past racism, in and of itself, is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is the candor of Continental’s public confession and the public amends it made to set things right.

It is rare to see anyone anymore who is willing to publicly admit to public sins, mistakes and improprieties — especially among our leaders. In this case, I was very impressed by what Continental and it’s CEO did, and hope this can be an inspiration for us all.

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Good Christian Satire

February 3, 2010 in faith, humor, podium church | 1 comment

I often get a chuckle from Lark News, and their latest spoof definitely rings all-to-true.

It reminds me of a very large (huge, in fact) evangelical church in town — where the pastor preaches his sermons on a vast stage each Sunday while a smoke machine bellows out measured amounts of awe and mystery in the background. For real!

It’s very good theater, plus the sermons aren’t half bad if you’re into that kind of thing.

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Improbable Church

January 31, 2010 in Kingdom of God, Table Church, community, faith, fellowship, gifts, joy | 6 comments

The church that meets together at my home each Friday evening to share a meal, encounter God and minister one to another is an improbable assembly of believers and even not-yet believers. We cut across races, cultures, nationalities, social status, and so many other lines — producing a rich tapestry of interwoven lives.

It reminds me of Adullam’s cave, where “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” went to flee from Saul. While there, God began the process of forging them into leaders who eventually established and became pillars in David’s kingdom. 1 Sam. 22:2.

Likewise, if you saw us you would laugh and wonder, “what can God do with these people?” Yet, isn’t that God’s way: to establish his Kingdom on earth by transforming lives, cultures, nations and history not with the ordained, but with the ordinary?

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Lest We Forget

January 30, 2010 in America, courage | Leave a comment

A fellow pilot, David Lytle, discovered a cassette tape in a small recorder he purchased for $3 at a flea market last week. It contained a recording made in 1978 of a few World War II bomber gunnery crew members who hadn’t seen each other in many years and were reminiscing about their experiences during the war. David mentioned the tape on a forum for other pilots that I frequent, and with everyone’s encouragement converted the recording to an MP3 file and posted it online.

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Worship

November 9, 2009 in Charismatic, Pentecostal, church, faith, worship | 2 comments

This is another YouTube video posted by a friend on Facebook (give credit where credit is due!). It’s a hilarious spoof on worship.

It’s good, sometimes, to laugh even if it’s at ourselves!

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Regeneration

November 2, 2009 in Evangelical, absolutes, broken, conversion, faith, forgiveness, grace, repentance, sin | 1 comment

A friend posted this short video on Facebook and it’s too precious, timely and relevant to pass up. As you listen, may God mercifully and lovingly wound you in order to heal you.

It’s by Paul Washer, who I first mentioned in a blog back in March (see God Is Not Passive). His burden for the Church touched my heart then, and continues to do so now.

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Pimping the Gospel

October 30, 2009 in Kingdom of God, Manassas, New Covenant Fellowship, abuse, faith, fakes, gifts, prosperity gospel, sovereignty | 12 comments

As I’ve previously ministered in other parts of the world, I’ve been alarmed at the growing influence of the so-called “prosperity gospel”.

Money or Life?

The prosperity message is simply the latest incarnation of the historically persistent “gospel of self” that’s been a blight on the Church since the beginning. Going back to Simon the Samaritan in Acts 8, there’s always been those among us — with gifted personalities and beguiling, mesmerizing spirits of seeming sincerity — who pimp the gospel for personal gain.

Such God pimps have become a dominant force overseas — much more so than in America (where they nonetheless have a significant but I think shrinking foothold). John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and other self-promoting, heretical TV preachers are all over the airways outside the U.S. through TBN and other so-called “Christian” media peddling their seductive gospel of “self”.

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The Lost Art of Dialogue

October 18, 2009 in Bible, Table Church, church, faith, fellowship, leadership, ministry, truth | 4 comments

As last Friday’s church met over a shared meal (nothing fancy — KFC this week!) around a kitchen table, someone asked a question that opened up a great discussion on God’s sovereignty and human will. We must have spent at least an hour in dynamic exchange — with amazing questions, comments and seeking Scripture together as God’s truths opened up for everyone.

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Evangelical Prophets or Martyrs?

October 6, 2009 in Catholicism, Charismatic, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, Great Commission, Joel Osteen, Kingdom of God, Lord's Prayer, Pentecostal, Randall Terry, church, community, culture, dualism, eschatology, faith, fellowship, gifts, leadership, pastors, pietism, politics, sovereignty, state, transcendent, truth, virtue, worldview | 6 comments

I vividly recall leafing through World magazine back in 2006 and reading the unsettling but hardly surprising news that Randall Terry – the Coming Out firebrand evangelical who formerly headed Operation Rescue and was then financially wiped out following a series of lawsuits by pro-abortionists – had joined the Roman Catholic Church.

“Unsettling,” because it provides further evidence of the growing weariness and disillusionment I’m seeing among spiritual “entrepreneurs” who’ve been laboring within evangelical circles to expand the Kingdom of God in all spheres of life and culture.

“Hardly surprising,” however, as those “on point” for the Kingdom increasingly seek refuge from the prevailing pop-theology (or dare I say lack of theology) and me-focused brand of Christianity that pervades evangelicalism (which includes charismatics and Pentecostals), animates many of our local church and national leaders, and cuts believers off from the great historic doctrines and creeds of our faith.

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Table Church, Podium Church and Facilitating Leadership

September 17, 2009 in Great Commission, Kingdom of God, New Covenant Fellowship, Table Church, authority, church, community, elder, faith, fellowship, gifts, grace, leadership, ministry, pastors | 12 comments

Recent events forced me to confront the troubling truth that “church” for the last several decades has been a habitually disappointing part of my spiritual journey. This could be saying more about me than about the state of the church, except that I hear the same lament from many other believers.

While trying to summarize my thinking earlier this year, I coined the term “podium church”. That phrase describes much that is wrong, and unbiblical, about the typical church in America and what happens in most of those congregations each Sunday morning. (See The Sunday “God Show” at Your Friendly Podium Church.)

Since then, I’ve been struggling to likewise coin a phrase that captures the positive aspects of what I’m now seeing, and doing, as part of a growing movement to reform — using Biblical principles — the whole concept of “church”.

So here it is: “table church”.

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The Challenge of Intercession

August 27, 2009 in Bible, Christians, church, culture, emotions, intercession, leadership, objective truth, pastors, pietism, politics, prayer, repentance | 4 comments

The intercessory prayer movement of the last several years is at a crucial junction.

Heavy Lifting Driven by angst over our nation’s declining commitment to basic principles and the growing malaise of our increasingly dysfunctional churches, many Christians are crying out for God’s intervention. What I’ve rarely seen, however, is a matching embrace of effective, transformational repentance — which Biblically involves changing the way we act by changing the way we think.

While desperately seeking to touch the heart of God, few intercessors seem willing to do the hard work of understanding the mind of God. The challenges facing our nation, and the Church, require both. We need intercession, but we also need God’s understanding followed by corresponding action.

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The Gift of Mercy

August 4, 2009 in abuse, emergent, gifts, grace, healing, hurts, joy, leadership, mercy, woundedness | 6 comments

Of the seven spiritual gifts listed in Romans 12, the last — and I believe the most powerful but least appreciated and most abused — is mercy.

As I watch and sense what God is doing with an emerging new spiritual generation, I see that their dominant characteristic is mercy. I also have begun to realize that God wants to use “mercies” (those with the primary spiritual gift of mercy) as catalysts to unleash additional gifts in others. That, in turn, will bring this rising generation to new pastures where God’s presence can dwell among us.

This doesn’t mean everyone in this new spiritual generation has mercy as their dominant individual spiritual gift. But as a whole, they nonetheless seem to collectively exhibit the main motivations of mercy — which are a deep, personal craving for the presence of God and for genuine intimacy with others.

As a result, this rising generation has little interest or patience with the moral and cultural wars of my generation, or with our prevailing hypocrisy as we tried to fix everyone else but failed to exhibit God’s presence in our own lives. Nor can they understand the isolation, loneliness and lack of authentic community among older Christians.

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Following God’s Presence

August 2, 2009 in blessing, church, faith, ministry, new wine, pastors, prayer, tears | 9 comments

Today in the jail, after two hours of powerful ministry between the men one to another, they stopped and said they decided earlier this week to do something for me. They then stood around me, laid hands on me, and prayed the most wonderful, tender prayers of blessing I’ve ever heard.

I cried as I realized what they were doing, because they’ve learned — maybe with some of them for the first time in their lives — to give rather than always take or receive. After months of mentoring them in “being” the church (see my blog, The Church in D Pod), they heeded God’s gentle call to new pastures. As a result, they now “get” it and wonderful life is flowing between them and from them — even to me!

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Gifts, Calling and Validation

July 28, 2009 in Christian, faith, joy, ministry, pride, sin, validation | 5 comments

Each of us is born with a personality that’s uniquely tailored to what God wants us to do with our lives.

Options Understanding God’s calling and the associated personality gifts he’s given us is not difficult: We find joy and fulfillment in doing what we are gifted in, and we are gifted in what we are called to do. Furthermore, when we use our gifts and fulfill our calling according to God’s will, we feel his pleasure – in addition to our own.

There’s a problem, however, in seeking validation from using our gifts or pursing our calling instead of pleasing God. Instead of being content with God saying “well done, thou good and faithful servant,” we seek legitimacy in who we are, what we do, how others react or in the results of our actions. Such validation comes from and is about us, rather than God.

If you look at Romans 12, there are seven “gifts” that correspond to seven very different personality types. With each of those personality “giftings”, there are different abilities, motivations and validation issues.
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The Church in D Pod

July 26, 2009 in Kingdom of God, Table Church, faith, grace, jail, joy, mentor, ministry, new wine, sovereignty | 4 comments

This Sunday, like most Sundays, I will be fellowshipping with the “Church in D Pod” at the local jail.

D Pod is a unit housing around a hundred men, and God has been pouring out his new wine in an exciting way among those inmates.

A couple of months ago, I started shifting my focus from “conducting” church services “for” the men. God was challenging me to start mentoring and training them instead to “be” the church by learning to minister one to another.

At the same time, God sovereignly arranged for two brothers from Africa — where Christians generally are way ahead of their American brothers and sisters on these issues — to be jailed in that unit. They, too, understood the concept of ministering one to another and started fostering authentic fellowship among the men.

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The Sunday "God Show" at Your Friendly Podium Church

July 19, 2009 in church, community, ministry, new wine, repentance, tears | 1 comment

I urge you to watch this ten minute video, then ask: When did “church” become a podium-focused “God Show” watched by passive spectators for an hour or so each Sunday morning?

Friends, the days of the “podium church” and the Sunday “God show” — where we go each Sunday to look past the backs of the heads of those sitting in front of us as we passively watch and receive carefully scripted ministry from the front podium through a tightly controlled microphone — are passing.

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The Growing Idolatry of Civil Government

July 17, 2009 in America, Obama, church, faith, family, liberalism, politics, self government, state, truth | 2 comments

“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” — Margaret Thatcher.

Some may think we’ve not yet sunk into the clutches of socialism — Unexpected Slip which happens when we have a state-run economy. But consider this: In 2009, federal and state governments will consume 40 percent of the United States’ TOTAL gross domestic product. This means that nearly half of all the wealth generated in America this year will be taken by civil government to fund its ever expanding control over more and more of our lives and our economy. As a result, we have run out of money while undercutting the means for producing future wealth.

Yet the federal government seeks to expand its reach even more.

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New Wine Sucks

July 7, 2009 in Kingdom of God, Table Church, community, faith, joy, leadership, ministry, new wine, pastors | 3 comments

As God brings forth new wine in a new generation, there’s a fundamental dynamic that can’t be ignored. To put it bluntly, new wine sucks!

In my younger days, I was an amateur wine maker. So I know what Jesus means when he says, “no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’” (Luke 5:39)

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The Charismatic Movement is Dead

July 5, 2009 in Charismatic, church, faith, new wine | 4 comments

On June 30, 2009, no less an authority than J. Lee Grady, the editor of Charisma Magazine, declared that “the Charismatic Movement is dead.”

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When I Fell In Love

July 3, 2009 in America, epiphany, faith, liberalism, politics, state | 3 comments

It’s the 4th of July weekend here in the United States, and I was thinking about the first time I truly fell in love with America.

Constitution

It was during my first trip overseas on my own, at the ripe old age of 21, after a year of grad school at Westminster Theological Seminary. I was sitting in Trafalgar Square in London on Independence Day, after more than a month of backpacking through the British Isles. It had been a grand trip of personal discovery as I hitchhiked from town to town, ate my meals in open air markets, slept on church steps, and occasionally visited youth hostels to take a shower. During my stay in Scotland, someone had given me a book by then Senator Helms called “When Free Men Shall Stand,” and I had been reading it off and on during my travels.

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New Wine And Old Skins

July 1, 2009 in Kingdom of God, Table Church, community, faith, jail, joy, leadership, ministry, new wine, pastors, sovereignty | 1 comment

Here’s an interesting article, reprinted below, on how people will stick to what they believe or think even in the face of contrary facts or circumstances. As I’ve watched people react to challenges and controversies Something New over the last couple of months, and to God bursting old wine skins as he brings forth new wine, I can believe it!

Isaiah 9:6-8 tells us that God’s Kingdom, from the incarnation onward, has been and will continue to be ever advancing. As such, God is constantly fermenting new wine — and providing new wine skins to contain it — as his progressive plan of redemption moves forward from one spiritual generation to each successive spiritual generation (which can include individuals of all ages!). God’s active and ever expanding intervention in history is clear, and his tendency to discard the old while bringing in the new is repeatedly seen in Scripture.

Yet it never failed to fascinate me, as a graduate student in church history back in the 1970s, to see how — time and time again — most Christians reject God’s new wine of new anointing for new generations. Instead, they choose to stick with their old wine and old wine skins.

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