When the news broke yesterday that the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention had a recommendation on the name change AND it hadn’t come via the normal fighting, backbiting, hysterics that normally follow the SBC dealing with issues of change, I gotta admit – I was hopeful. I mean – this is a big deal for the SBC and to get this far in the discussion without WW III is a major accomplishment.

It’s refreshing to hear a majority in the convention finally understand that “Southern Baptist” is incredibly limiting and carries with it significant racist and religious baggage. It is an unnecessary stumbling block – so let’s deal with it.

Then I heard the recommendation – too many legal issues with changing SBC on top level, use a informal title instead. I understand that. I can live with that. Makes sense. Other companies do that all the time. What’s our informal label?

Great Commission Baptists.

This is the alternative to Southern Baptist? Really? Facepalm, moment. This feels like being told we are updating our house! We are so excited to update our house!! We’ve got the whole 1950′s look going on and it’s time for a makeover!! And the big update is …..

Putting in shag carpet.

Before somebody goes all “WHAT??? Are you anti-Great Commission??” on me, I am NOT anti-Great Commission. It’s just that 95% of the world has no idea what those words mean. And before the SBC starts patting themselves on the back – according to our stats on church-planting and baptisms – neither do most of our churches. Instead of removing a religious baggage term, seems like we’ve just swapped one for another.

The SBC is ‘updating’ to 1970′s shag carpet.

Big sigh….

I guess it’s an improvement. I’m not sure that anyone outside the South will use that one either. I’m glad that as a convention we are not at each other’s throat in the middle of this conversation. So, that is an improvement.

But “Great Commission Baptists” just further proves the point of what most people think about SBC anyway: we mean well and have great hearts, but are completely culturally clueless.

Maybe this will open the door for SBC churches to drop the labels and just focus on being the church.

That’s my prayer, anyway.

This originally appeared as the weekly devo on whillschurch.org.

I wish I could say that Whitney Houston’s death came as a surprise. When the news broke, I thought to myself – this is going to play out with typical Hollywood shallowness. Sure enough, the Grammys became part love-fest for Whitney. I wonder how many of those people really liked her. Just the night before, Whitney was escorted away from a party due to her own abrasiveness.

The real tragedy in Whitney Houston is we have seen this before, we will see this again. An artist or star who blows us away with their craft and their talents, all the while on the inside they are slowly decaying. They have this sense of longing or inadequacy that needs to be fulfilled. They are not limited in their resources in searching for this something to fulfill this void in their life. No matter how many movies they make, hit songs they sing, or famous they get, that empty void still haunts them. Since they are not limited by resources, they will try anything to fill this void – sex, drugs, cars, houses, charity, business. And for some of them, the search will kill them.

Whitney Houston’s voice was unmatched. Her rendition of the national anthem for Super Bowl XXV in 1991 will leave you speechless. In fact, I think they should just play this version from now on, I doubt any artist will ever come close to matching that performance.

As pure as her voice was, what was going on inside her wasn’t. She shocked the world with her marriage to bad boy Bobby Brown. She shocked us again by telling us she wasn’t all that different from him. Then their reality tv show removed all doubt that the Whitney image of the 80s was just that – an image. Her rocky marriage, the drug and alcohol abuse, and the violence just made most of us extremely sad for her.

And Jesus loved her.

Houston always said that was her favorite song – Jesus loves me. Despite the profane lifestyle, the failures and the escapades – she consistently said that “Jesus Loves Me” was her favorite song.

Why couldn’t she grasp that in a deeper way that translated into a different lifestyle? The same reason so many of us can’t. It is difficult to see Jesus among the deadly distractions this life has to offer. My distractions may not be prescription pain killers or alcohol, but I’ve got them. And so do you if you are honest with yourself.

One conversation my kids and I constantly have when an artist comes on tv and mentions God is – “So you think he’s a Christian? You think she’s a Christian?”

It breaks a parent’s heart to tell their kid that their hero or favorite artist is just a broken, messed up person trying to figure out life. The only difference is they have the money to make some really, really bad mistakes that last forever. But if the music and entertainment industry has taught us anything – that is it. Fallen, messed up people are fallen, messed up people no matter what their income is.

And one of Houston’s songs seems to sum it up fairly well – Didn’t We Almost Have It All? Almost is still NOT having it all. Houston’s distractions cost her life. For whatever reasons, it never seemed she allowed Jesus to have the last word in her life. It’s easy to see this in her life, harder to see it in our own. But are our distractions of kids or marriage or success or titles or houses or money any less deadly? Is our obsession with our own happiness any different than Houston’s?

Scale – maybe. The question is still valid for us all – What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose his soul?

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35 NIV)

This originally appeared as a weekly devo for whillschurch.org.

This has been one heck of week for our family. My ongoing battle with the pinched nerve in my neck has sort hit a stand still. I got better but I still have sporadic shots of pain down my arm depending on what position I get my neck in. I haven’t been able to play basketball in over a month and my exercise plan has sort been non-existant.

So the doctor ordered an MRI. Easy peasy, right?

I’m not claustrophobic. So the idea of laying down in huge magnetic coffin isn’t all that terrifying to me. The problem is they lie me flat on my back, strap my head down on the board exactly in the position where that nerve is pinched and it sends this flaming stream of pain down my right arm.

The pain was intense. Couldn’t finish it. Tried it again yesterday with some hydrocodone — lasted all of 5 minutes when the tech said – “This isn’t going to work.”

So today, we upped it to Valium. The last time I took Valium…well the nurse said I was extremely funny and ought to think about a career in public speaking. And that was how I got started in ministry…

In fact, I’m starting to feel the effects right now as I type this. jfkla;sdifq9′j’m3ic Just kidding…sort of.

Yet for all the bravado and macho talk, I hate pain. I realize that most of us do…

More to come after the Valium wears off…

LATER: The valium didn’t work. Well…it sort of worked. It made me sick at my stomach and groggy but could not cut through that pain once I got on the table. So now they are going to schedule me for an IV sedation. I’m not confident this will work either but hey…

My point? My point is that we spend an inordinate amount of time avoiding pain. A friend of mine told me yesterday (he just got done with a knee surgery) that pain was God’s way of reminding us that we are still alive. As we talked, we joked that between the two of us there was one whole, healthy person. We enjoyed a good laugh but he reminded me of another famous person’s perspective on pain.

C.S. Lewis said “Pain is God’s megaphone.”

Pain is inevitable. It has been that way since Genesis 3. I don’t believe that all pain is God’s fault but I do believe that he USES all pain. That’s the subtle message of Romans 8:28 – ALL things work for good…, not all things ARE good.

So the real question for the Christ follower in the middle of their pain is this – what good is God going to work out in all of this? Hard question to deal with at times because not all pain is equal. But…all pain is painful.

In a few weeks (after the Go! series) we will start a series called Beyond Pain. We’ll get to explore these kinds of questions and more by studying how some of heroes in scripture dealt with pain. Some of the insights are going to be very, very surprising. We’re going to see that God Himself is not immune to pain.

In the meantime…hang in there. And find a friend to laugh with.

Let me get this out of the way – I thought the worse possible Super Bowl matchup was New England vs. New York. Two franchises that most people love to hate and picking between the two was like choosing between broccoli and cauliflower.

However, I decided from the minute the Ravens missed that kick that I was going to pull for the Giants and I’m so glad they defeated the evil Patriots. Multiple reasons.

First, the arrogance/cluelessness of Belicheck. To cut a player the night before the Super Bowl just because you can and is just pointless. It’s heartless. That player practiced all week, was ready to play, had probably got his family all situated and then to get called to the coaches room less than 24 hours before the game to get cut? Add it to the long litany of Belicheck stories where he does something just to show everybody that he is still the boss. Remember him fining players for being late to team meetings during the blizzards last year?

Second, Belicheck hasn’t won a Super Bowl and has lost 4 out of 6 playoff games since he got caught cheating by video taping opposing teams pre-game walkthrough. McDaniels brought that act with him to Denver and it got him fired. It didn’t help him win either but that is another post.

Third, The Manning Drama. You think your family has drama? How’d you like to be a Manning? Actually…I’d like it very much but that is not important right now. Eli has always been in the shadow of big brother Peyton and daddy Archie. This was supposed to be his week – 2nd Super Bowl, opportunity to have 2 rings, the confirmation that maybe Peyton was Eli’s brother instead of the other way around.

Instead, we have Peyton-Irsay war of the roses breaking out. Peyton started it with the “we’re walking on eggshells, everything has changed” comments. Irsay firing back with his “protect the Horseshoe” and calling Peyton a politician. To top all of that off, Peyton announces that he has been cleared to play (further proving Irsay’s point) while his team says — ‘uhhhh, that’s news to us.’

The bottom line – it was a lot of incredibly selfish behavior from Irsay and Manning during a week that should have been about their city and his brother. Apparently, neither one got the memo.

I didn’t really like anything either party said all week long – speaking of Irsay and Peyton. All of Irsay’s talk about the “Horseshoe” was just pathetic. There is no “Horseshoe” without Peyton Manning. The Irsay family had gutted and killed the Colts until Manning walks in and gives them double-digit wins every single year. There is no Lucas Field, Super Bowl, full stadium, or anything remotely successful about the Colts without Manning. To paint Manning as just another player to wear the uniform is wrong and petty.

However, Peyton seemed to forget that Irsay made him a very, very, very, rich man even though he didn’t play a down this year. It was Irsay that didn’t move Peyton to injured reserved and thus allowed him to collect his full salary this year. That should have in the least bought some public civility between Peyton and the Irsays. Apparently 28 million doesn’t buy what it used to buy.

(And as a sidenote – the Colts needed to make some drastic changes – despite what Peyton thinks. The team just went 2-14, looked woefully out-coached, and had no depth in any position on the field. That’s an epic fail of epic proportion and Irsay was completely justified in dropping the hammer on the coach and general manager.)

Back to the Giants — maybe now the New York media will believe that Eli Manning is not a bust and Coughlin can keep his job for a year or two. How Marvin Lewis keeps his job and Tom Coughlin seems to have to fight for his every season is beyond my understanding.

And to Eli’s credit – he has not changed at all over these years. Just the same old, calm, nothing phases me guy.

The commercials were not so Super this year either. Hands down the M&M and Dog Burying The Cat Doritos commercials were the best. The rest – mweh.

Halftime show? Great stage – loved the video/production of that. But it wasn’t incredible, wasn’t terrible. Then we got the “We just spent millions of dollars on this 20 minute half-time to sell our albums but we want World Peace ending.” Complete with MIA giving the world the middle finger.

Really? Leave to the music industry to completely miss the point of the Super Bowl halftime once again. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!!! You can have wardrobe malfunctions and political statements and whatever else you want at YOUR OWN CONCERT!! Not at the Super Bowl. I wish they would just give up on the music scene and try something else. Cirque De Solia, maybe? Dancing penguins?

The only thing super about the Super Bowl as the last 3 minutes of the game. And maybe that’s how it is supposed to be…but then again, watching the Patriots celebrate New York scoring a touchdown with a minute left in the game while the Giants looked stress was surreal.

And while I’m disappointed with the Super Bowl, the only thing worse is having no football until August. Sigh….. Welcome to the offseason.

Oh.

My.

Gosh.

It has been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard. Growing up around firemen, I’ve learned that every station has a story. Some of the stories are the same – getting in a wreck on the way to a wreck, not quite having the garage door up before you completely pull out of the bay, teaching the rookies some crazy technique that will help them fight fires better that really isn’t a technique.

But they are still funny. And firemen are great story tellers. They know how to ‘spin a yarn.’

They also know how to cook. Am really honored to have the opportunity to serve with these men.