Grief and Hope

One of my favourite Biblical Scholars and prolific bloggers is Ben Witherington III. Frequent readers of this blog will note that his name, and his thoughts have shown up in these posts frequently in the time I've been blogging and today it saddens me that I have occasion to share one of his posts again.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2012/01/24/good-grief-soundings-part-one/

It saddens me not because of what he says in this post - truly it is a poignant and moving proclamation of what I understand to be the truth of the character of God - but because of the circumstances that prompted it. Dr. Witherington and his family recently and suddenly lost his daughter Christy to a pulmonary embolism. She was my age - cut down in the prime of her life and over the past week Dr. Witherington has been using his blog as a place to process his pain and loss with the aim of honouring her memory and allowing God to use this tragedy for redemptive purposes.

As a pastor I have often, in the midst of people's grief, been asked the questions of theodicy that no one is truly able to answer; and while I believe that the true answer to the age old question of why good people suffer, and why tragedies strike good people who love the Lord is in the category of those questions that we will never be able to fully grasp (I have serious questions if the expectation of understanding these things as finite beings will ever be fully realized even in the eschaton) - I think that Dr. Witherington's profession of faith in a good, loving, compassionate and sovereign God is as close to that answer as I may have heard.

I'd encourage you to click over to read this post and appreciate in reading it the great strength it takes at a time like this to say these things; but more than that, to appreciate the great God who is worthy of having these things said of Him.

This is the God that I worship.

Blessings,
Chris

Religion and Jesus

Recently there has been a viral video that has taken the internet by storm of a young man doing some very well produced slam poetry about the problem with religious people. Most of you with an internet connection and a Facebook account have probably seen it – it’s become extremely popular registering over 15.5 million views in less than two weeks – the video is titled “Why I hate religion but love Jesus” and if my friends list on Facebook is any indication it has been met with great applause and appreciation from Christians and non-Christians alike.

The central message of this video is that the legalists (or the religious people as the presenter identifies them)  have lost sight of who Jesus was and what he called the church to be by transforming the community into a religious (legalistic) and judgemental place where Grace is merely an abstract idea – not something that is practiced; and where plastic people put on false facades of perfection while their lives underneath bear little resemblance to the standards they inflict upon everyone else.

When the video first appeared in my Facebook newsfeed I really resonated with what he said – as many of his statements are things that I have said from the pulpit to my congregation (probably not as eloquently or with as high a production value mind you). I especially loved one descriptor of the church he gave: he says at about the half-way mark of his poem that the church is, “Not a museum for good people, but a hospital for the broken”.

AMEN to that and to many of his other statements about grace and atonement and the like. But later the message gets a little troubling – He goes onto say that “Jesus HATES religion” that “Jesus came to abolish religion” and that “Jesus and religion are on opposite sides of the spectrum”.

As exciting and galvanizing as that sounds – it just doesn’t hold up when tested against scripture.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” And

“Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The truth of the matter is that Jesus came to redefine what acts of righteousness and devotion were – but he didn’t come to abolish religion. He came instead to call us to lives of lawfulness in response to his free gift of grace upon the cross. Yes, he challenged legalism and yes, he seemed to be in constant conflict with the Pharisees over their hypocrisy and blind adherence to rules – but that wasn’t because he was against religion; it’s because he wanted them to understand that God calls us to a different type of religion.

James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

This is a different definition of religion than the ones the Pharisees and teachers of the law had, and it is also a different definition of religion than our poet purports. Jesus’ sort of religion looks markedly different than what the Pharisees were practicing – than the Sabbath laws that Jesus was constantly accused of breaking; than the ritual purity codes that Jesus was continually running afoul of – but it is still religion.

True religion, as Jesus modelled and James describes, helps us fulfil the two greatest commandments – to love God, and love our neighbours. I’m really simplifying things here but the reality is that religion according to Scripture is a good thing. And for that reason Jesus came to fulfil the law – not abolish it.

I applaud the work of our internet poet who has rightly called the Church out for some of her hypocrisy and exhorted her to resemble more the redeemed community of God’s people while at the same time bringing the Gospel message back into the public consciousness through this well produced video. I admire his evident passion for Jesus and his love for the church – but we need to be careful how quickly we allow ourselves to get carried along in the latest internet fad and swallow whole an explanation of the Gospel without critically taking it back to the Bible for evaluation.

I’m a religious person who loves Jesus –and I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The King Revealed - Part Two: Genre

Here as promised is part two of a series on the background of the Gospel of Mark – because the story behind this Gospel is far too rich and detailed for me to possibly cover in my sermon series. A week and a half ago I posted part one which took a deeper look at the identity of the author of this Gospel – today we’re going to take a look at the genre of the text and see what implications it may have for our study.

The first thing we need to do however is unpack the importance of genre when reading a biblical text. Genre is the classification of the type of document that a given text comprises – it is the difference between a love letter and a foreclosure letter; between an email and a sermon; between a Victorian novel and a recipe book. To understand a document’s genre is to understand a whole host of information that goes unstated about the text but is at the same time indispensible to grasping the meaning of the text. Or to put it another way:

"Genre, as many students of the subject have observed, functions much like a code of behavior established between the author and his reader. When we agree to attend a formal dinner, we tacitly accept the assumption that we will don the appropriate attire; the host in turn feels an obligation to serve a fairly elaborate meal and to accompany it with wine rather than, say, offering pizza and beer. Similarly, when we begin to read a detective novel, we agree to a willing suspension of disbelief."(Heather Dubrow, Genre. Taylor & Francis, 1982)

Genre is the reason we must read Daniel differently than Isaiah and Genesis differently than 1 John. Each Biblical text has a genre that we must understand if we are to interpret in good faith the message that the original author wanted us to hear. Part of discovering the genre of a text is knowing with confidence who the author is – and since we looked at that issue in the last post in this series we are going to move forward with the reasonable conclusion that John Mark of the book of Acts is the author of this Gospel.

Just identifying the document as a Gospel is in itself a genre label. Gospel has in itself evolved into a literary genre all its own – encompassing not only the four canonical gospels of the New Testament but many other extra-canonical (meaning that they weren’t found worthy of being included in the Holy Scriptures) gospels that tell the story of Jesus from other vantage points with varying historical and theological deficiencies.

However if we are to believe that the author of this gospel is John Mark then we have a peculiar problem with just labelling this text a gospel and calling it a day – because the genre of gospel evolved out of a proliferation of similar texts that began to line up with common themes, form and style – eventually it could be argued that people wrote gospels – but what of the earliest documents in this genre? If Mark truly is not only the first canonical gospel – but one of the first (if not THE first) gospel(s) period – then it couldn’t have been written in the genre of Gospel – it would have to have been written in another genre altogether as the genre of gospel didn’t yet exist.

So following along this line of reasoning – what sort of genre is the Gospel of Mark? What are the implicit expectations that the author has upon the reader in the contract of genre? What does John Mark expect us to know and take for granted when we read his book?

Well some have proposed that Mark is written as a Greek drama; that the story of Jesus is presented in a 2 act play that brings him from crisis to resolution and tells the world of his saving work through theatre. There is a certain air of plausibility to this suggestion as the prologue of the Gospel (remember what I was saying in the first sermon about the wilderness theme) bears many of the telltale signs of the prologue to a Greek play. The problem here becomes identifying the sub-genre of drama; is this comedy or a tragedy? The narrative arc of the story fits neither category particularly well. So while drama is plausible it’s not overly likely a fitting genre for our text.

Another suggestion has been the genre of historical monograph. A historical monograph is a study of a particular historical event in encyclopaedic detail. It would be like writing a book on the Cold War and detailing the events that transpired from the end of WWII to the fall of the Soviet Union. Some have made the argument that Mark’s Gospel is just such a document chronicling the ministry, death and resurrection of one Jesus Christ – the Son of God. The weakness of this hypothesis is that the Gospel of Mark is missing many of the telltale signs of an ancient historical monograph – explanations of the culture and times, detailed analysis of the connection to the political and cultural realities surrounding the events, and stories from differing vantage points to round out the picture. The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah is a story that is singularly focused on Jesus to the out and out exclusion of many of the other facets that a historical monograph would examine which leaves us with door number three...

Mark as ancient bios

The genre of ancient biography fits Mark better than any other contemporary genre. It shares many of the characteristic of an historical monograph while remaining narrowly focused on the life of one individual. It also allows for the dramatic narrative that makes the gospel seem so much like a drama and, most importantly, comports well stylistically with many ancient biographies of the same era. The labelling of Mark as ancient biography also has some important implications then for how we read, study and understand his message.

Firstly – Mark is a story about Jesus. Not about a movement, about a period of history, not about the beginnings of the church or about the disciples/apostles; Mark is a story about Jesus. In understanding this we need to resist the urge to make the story about other people. While it is interesting to focus on the 12 disciples, or the women, or Peter in particular through the way the stories are told (and good reasons why Mark is a good place to go for information on these people) we must never lose sight that every word in this document is meant to draw us back to the story of Jesus.

Secondly – Mark wants the story to speak for itself. Mark is not known for lengthy exposition or editorial explanations; the text is written to let the words and actions speak for themselves. We need to then pay attention to what Jesus is doing at all times because it is in his every little word and action that the true story of the gospel unfolds.

And thirdly – the Gospel of Mark is the story about a real man who walked the earth. That may seem like a silly thing to point out to a Christian audience but the genre of Ancient biography doesn’t allow for mythologizing or stories of legend to be mixed in with the account. This genre is for the stories of real people which mean that unbelievable and miraculous events should not be downplayed or explained away as hyperbole. When Mark talks about the feeding of the 5,000 or the 4,000 or Jesus walking on water he means to convey a literal and accurate account. He is not being poetic in his portrayal of Jesus or taking license with events to craft a grand narrative – he’s telling the raw story of Jesus – just as it really happened.

This is the importance of genre in general and specifically as it pertains to the Gospel of Mark. I hope to see you at church this Sunday as we continue our series by looking at the account of the Misunderstood Messiah.

Until then,

Chris

Not a theology of salvation...

... but a great point that Christians too often miss.

Have a blessed day,
Chris

Lessons in how to read the Bible

Recently controversial pastor Mark Driscoll has set off another firestorm with the release of his new book (co-authored with his wife Grace) entitled Real Marriage. I have not read the book, nor will I voice any substantial opinions on it until I have done so, but it's hard to avoid the rhetoric being spewed by both his advocates and opponents on his views of marriage, submission and the role of women.

One of his harshest critics in the blogosphere is a woman by the name of Rachel Held Evans. A popular blogger and published writer herself, she has repeatedly gone toe to toe with Driscoll over many of his claims and writings (although I'm not sure if Driscoll has ever responded to her) and recently has attacked the interpretation (by Grace to be fair) of the role of Vashti in the story of Esther. You can read her whole post on the matter here - but what struck me as worth sharing in this post (because I don't think necessarily that everything she says is worth sharing) is the way in which she advocates dealing with Scripture.

Part of learning to love the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be is resisting the temptation to either gloss over or glorify the culture in which these women lived and to instead allow their stories to speak for themselves. Only in the midst of the true contours and colors of the text do the characters of the Bible find their depth. 

To me this resonates as truth. The stories contained within the Bible are rich and wonderful and so many of the characters - even bit players in background roles - have tremendous significance when one takes the time to learn about them and about their stories in context. We do the Scriptures, and ourselves, a disservice when we arrogantly force the characters of the Bible to bend to the cultural conventions of 20th or 21st century western Christianity. Let the Bible speak, and hear the stories of the people it speaks of and perhaps we can learn to look beyond our own cultural myopia and into the lives of people who's stories have the power to produce a real Christ-like response in our lives.

Blessings on your day,
Chris

Church: Where everybody knows your name...

I've taken the bait and jumped into another book that tickled my fancy even though I have a couple very good ones already on the go and a pile of "books to read" left on my shelf that I have promised myself I'll get to sooner or later. This time the fuel for my addiction is the fairly recently released memoir of Eugene Peterson, simply called The Pastor.

Peterson is a name that is familiar to many evangelicals as the man behind The Message paraphrase of Scripture, but he also has a distinguished career as an author, speaker, scholar and most importantly - Pastor. In this book he tells the story of the evolution of his understanding of that role, falling in love with the calling of pastor and relating that journey to his experiences growing up in small town Montana (at least that's what he's done so far - I'm only about a third of the way through!!!). What struck me in the sample chapter that I read online (and what prompted me to click purchase on the Kindle store) was the resonance his story has with my own - or at least my journey to this early juncture in my life and career.

Like Peterson I grew up and entered ministry training and immediately became enamoured with Christian academia. I loved to learn, I loved the atmosphere of the Bible College and I operated under the idea for quite some time that the greatest thing I could do for the Kingdom of God with the gifts he had given me was to study, learn, and one day teach. My goal from the day I graduated was to get  into ministry, get some experience in the field and one day return to seminary to complete my training and preparation for the real good work the Lord had called me to. I had it all planned out - but as time has marched on I realize that I had misunderstood my calling completely. Somewhere along the way God showed me something - it wasn't a damascus road sort of encounter - it wasn't writing on the wall, it was a slow and gradual changing of my heart toward a calling that for me has become the greatest job in the world. God called me to be a Pastor, to work among, within, alongside, for, and through the people of the local church. To live life with a local family of God and to experience alongside them the highs and lows, victories and defeats, celebrations and struggles and joy and despair of life this side of Christ's immanent return. What I have loved about Peterson's story as I have read it so far is that he (in his wonderful way with words) gives voice to and articulates the feelings that I have been so far unable to nail down in my experience.

For certain his life and mine are far from a direct correlation - he was well on his way to a PhD before he understood his call to be a Pastor and has leveraged his considerable education into quite the scholarly career that I will likely never experience but he speaks of his heart for the office of Pastor in a way that gives me goosebumps. Consider this quote form his introductory remarks:

I wonder if at the root of the defection is a cultural assumption that all leaders are people who “get things done,” and “make things happen.” That is certainly true of the primary leadership models that seep into our awareness from the culture — politicians, businessmen, advertisers, publicists, celebrities, and athletes. But while being a pastor certainly has some of these components, the pervasive element in our two-thousand-year pastoral tradition is not someone who “gets things done” but rather the person placed in the community to pay attention and call attention to “what is going on right now” between men and women, with one another and with God — this kingdom of God that is primarily local, relentlessly personal, and prayerful “without ceasing.”

I resonate with the rejection of the church business model of ministry even as I struggle with pressure (both internal and external) to pragmatically do what works to produce the results that are expected from a worldly definition of "success". Peterson goes onto reject that idea of leadership instead putting forth the idea of a Pastor being called to be with the people and in the community. 

Later on in recalling some formative experiences from his childhood in small town Montana he talks about his years of working in his father's butcher shop - wearing his own priestly ephod (he draws a beautiful paralel between his experience the experience of young samuel growing up in Shiloh) building community with the customers that came in week after week. Getting to know their names, their quirks, their favourites, their lives and bestowing on each one of them a sense of dignity - from the civic leaders to the lonely women working across the street at the brothel. He describes that sort of community in this way:

Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them. A church can never be reduced to a place where goods and services are exchanged. It must never be a place where a person is labeled. It can never be a place where gossip is perpetuated. Before anything else, it is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus’s name. A place where dignity is conferred.

That sounds to me like the type of community we are trying to build at Estevan Alliance. A place of belonging that resembles Cheers more than a country club. Where everyone from the greatest to the least is named, and dignified and welcomed. I don't want to run a successful business, I don't want to provide the best services or put on the most exciting events - my desire is to be a Pastor; to encourage the type of community that Peterson describes - and to contend with the people of that community (including the man in the mirror) who's failings and struggles slow it's development into reality -  in love.

It's not that I never get that twinge in my spirit drawing me back to the world of academia - I do frequently, and I'm terribly envious of my friends and colleagues who have taken the plunge into masters or dortorate level studies - - but Peterson has given voice to the feelings of certainty that I have that the local church is where I belong.
Well that's all I have to say for today - I'm sure I'll have more insights as I get further through the book - but that was just burning on my heart today and I needed to blog it out.

Blessings on your Monday and I hope to see many of you bright and early for prayer tomorrow morning.

Chris

Breathing Jesus

I announced this morning at Church that we were joining with those in the Alliance family of churches in celebrating 125 years of worldwide work for the C&MA in 2012. For my own personal celebrations I'm working through A.B. Simpson's "Days of Heaven upon Earth" along with my personal devotions this year.

Today's reading struck me as especially poignant as we talked about being called into the wilderness with Jesus in today's sermon - and it paints for my soul a beautiful picture of what happens to our troubles when we choose to bring them to Christ. Simpson says it better than I ever could so I'll leave you today with his words:

“It is I, be not afraid” (Mark vi. 50). 

Someone tells of a little child with some big story of sorrow upon its little heart, flying to its mother's arms for comfort, and intending to tell her the story of its trouble; but as that mother presses it to her bosom and pours out her love, it soon becomes so occupied with her and the sweetness of her affection that it forgets to tell its story, and in a little while even the memory of the trouble is forgotten. It has just been loved away, and she has taken its place in the heart of the little one. 

This is the way God comforts us Himself. “It is I, be not afraid,” is His reassuring word. The circumstances are not altered, but He Himself comes in their place, and satisfies every need of our being, and we forget all things in His sweet presence, as He becomes our all in all. 

I am breathing out my sorrow
        On Thy kind and loving breast;
Breathing in Thy joy and comfort,
        Breathing in Thy peace and rest. 

I am breathing out my longings
        In Thy listening, loving ear;
I am breathing in Thy answer,
        Stilling every doubt and fear.

The King Revealed - Part One: Author

This week we begin the first volume of our two volume sermon series through the Gospel of Mark. A word of warning – this series is going to dominate most, if not all of 2012. And as long as that sounds to be working on one book of the Bible, we still don’t have time in that schedule to do a thorough teaching of the background, authorship and setting of the earliest Gospel, so over the course of this series when there is more to be said than can fit into a 30 minute sermon (I’m honestly working on getting my times down – really!) I’m going to make use of this blog to go into further detail for those of you who crave a deeper engagement with the text.

Today I want to begin by setting up our first message in the series with some historical background on the author. In future posts I will go into some detail on other topics including the genre, audience and historical context (date). I’m also working on a bibliography for those of you who don’t mind reading and doing some of your own research into these things. Keep an eye out for these future instalments but for now let’s look at just who this Mark is.

Part One: The author

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”

2Timothy 3:16

In a sense it is fair to say that all books of the Bible have the same author (I was having this argument with someone just recently about that reality) and that because of that the identity of the human author is of little consequence to the veracity of the claims and the applicability of its teachings – but our scriptures did not arrive on stone tablets from above (well except for those verses) and the human component of the creation of the texts that made it into the cannon is of great importance because the life, experiences, motivations, setting, language, audience and theology of these writers greatly influences what was said as well. The author of the Gospel of Mark is no exception – his story (if we can with any certainty know it) affects THE story and how we understand what is being said.

Marks Gospel is formally anonymous – that is to say that the content of the Gospel itself makes no internal claims of authorship. The superscript – that is to say the title of the Gospel – is in the Greek “euangelion kata Markon” which literally means “The Gospel according to Mark”. These superscripts were frequently added at a later date than the original writing and the content of the superscript in this case implies that Mark needed to be differentiated from other Gospels of Jesus in circulation at the time of publishing which becomes problematic as the evidence seems to imply that this was one of the earliest (if not the earliest) formal Gospel – and certainly significantly earlier than any of the other three Gospels that survived to make it into the canon of Scripture.

The author (who we will call Mark for argument’s sake) was most certainly a Christian – this is not a document written from a cold dispassionate position of historical record keeping – this is Good News and the author writes as one wanting to persuade his readers of the truth of it. It is also likely (though not a certainty) that the author was a Jew. We infer this from his familiarity with the Jewish Scriptures (or at least the Septuagint or LXX which was the Old Testament in Greek) and from his knowledge of Aramaic and Hebrew, both of which are used and explained in the text of his Gospel.

We also can safely assume that the author was educated. He is competent (although not exceptional) in the Greek language and understands not only Greek but intersperses his writing with several noticeable Latin words and phrases. It is likely then that the author has not only been educated but also has travelled and experienced some life in more entrenched Roman culture as well.

More than the internal evidence, there is external evidence as well that would peg the author of this Gospel as a man named Mark who was an associate of Peter. Church fathers Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria both attribute this Gospel to that person and the earliest endorsement of Markan authorship comes from an early second century church leader named Papias. Papias who was called the Bishop of Hierapolis and may or may not have known personally the author of the fourth gospel – is quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea as saying:

“Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could”

Clearly Papias believes that the author of this Gospel is a Mark who was with Peter – which lines up nicely with Church tradition claiming that this was the John Mark of the book of Acts - Consider the following description of John Mark by scholar Richard Bauckham:

"John Mark a member of a Cypriot Jewish family settled in Jerusalem and a member of the early Jerusalem Church, was then in Antioch, accompanied his cousin Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journey as far as Pamphylia, later accompanied Barnabas to Cyprus and is finally heard from in Rome, if Philemon is written from Rome, where 1 Peter also places him"

Couple this with evidence that Peter called Mark his son in 1 Peter 5:13 and that we know the Apostle had on occasion visited the home of John Mark (Acts 12:11-17) it seems to be a compelling case that the author of our first Gospel was the John Mark of the New Testament – a sometimes travelling companion of the Apostle Paul, of Barnabas and of the Apostle Peter.

There is one other interesting piece of evidence that would lead us to believe that the John Mark of the New Testament is the author of our earliest Gospel – it appears to many that the author himself makes an unnamed Alfred Hitchcock/Stan Lee-esque cameo near the end of his account. Consider the following verses from the account of Jesus arrest:

“A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.”

Mark 14:51-52

This little aside in the midst of the story of the disciples abandoning their master in the face of the authorities seems to have little reason for inclusion other than to draw attention to the young man. We know that John Mark lived in Jerusalem and that he was associated with the early church from the beginning – we also know that chronologically he would have been a very young man at the time of Jesus’ arrest. This would seem to be a way for the author to insert himself into the story as a way of claiming credibility – as one who knew Jesus and was present for at least some of the events. It would also be a way for those insiders within the community to identify him in the story. Many believe that this young man is John Mark himself.

So if all of this evidence mounts to a critical mass that allows us to confidently believe that the author of this Gospel was the John Mark of the New Testament – what does it mean for us as we study this book?

Well firstly it means that Mark is in some places dealing with primary sources. The events of the passion narrative in particular would be coming from in many ways a firsthand account of the events. Secondly, where the author was not present for transpiring events the account comes from the recollections of the Apostle Peter – Mark has long been known as Peter’s Gospel for his heavy influence on the account of what occurred. And as Peter’s recollection as transcribed by Mark we get very little by way of editorializing by the author as it’s not his story he’s largely telling. Mark let’s Jesus words and actions speak for themselves which leads to a dynamic and action packed telling of the Gospel.

In the end, it is true that God by the Holy Spirit working within the human authors is the true writer of Scripture and its veracity comes primarily from that fact the holy Word of God is active by the pen of John Mark – but knowing the human side of the equation opens up a whole world of new understanding to us as we read the text as it not only gives the narrator personality – but it opens up a number of other avenues of study to us as far as context, audience and date go.

Hopefully that will prime the pump a little for you all as we get into the Gospel this Sunday with our first message in the series: Where the wild things are.

Until next time,

Chris