Pastors' Blog

On Monday morning my beloved mother (Barbara Watts Nelson Rienderhoff) peacefully fell asleep in Jesus while resting at her home in Banning CA. The attending nurse remarked that it was as peaceful a way to die as you could wish. She was 88. I’m so grateful I got to spend three days with her on her birthday just before Thanksgiving. Her condition deteriorated rather rapidly in December. My sister Kari flew down from Sacramento twice the week before Christmas to be with her. And while we with our brother Greg and her husband Bert grieve Mother’s death, there is relief in knowing her suffering is over. For her it will be a split second between her last moment of cognition and gazing up into the spectacular panorama of Jesus in the sky, calling His friends to rise. Oh happy day of reunion!

You would’ve loved her, too, had you known her. What was she like, this woman who survived my childhood? Let me share seven of life’s great lessons I learned from my mother, and you’ll get the picture:

1. Remember three rules—read, read, read. Mom was a voracious reader, and she stimulated our appetite for good books from the beginning. In a land where children’s books in English were a rarity (she and Dad were missionaries in Japan where all three of us kids were born), she managed to find the childhood classics, and we read all the time. Junior Guides came by ship from America—we devoured and preserved every issue, eventually binding them into books for rereading. I learned to love reading because of my mother.

2. Learn to love music—it is a beautiful thing. (It’s the practicing that’ll kill you!) And oh boy, did Mom make us practice. Relentless, sometimes merciless—she was our first piano teacher, along with trombone (me), trumpet (Greg), and oboe (Kari). Born with a beautiful contralto voice, she sang at the end of Dad’s sermons all across Japan. She loved music, and music loved her.

3. Never forget God has a purpose for your life. By the age of ten I had nearly died twice (stories for another time). I can’t count how many times my mother drew me aside to remind me, “God has spared your life for a reason—He has something special for you to do.” I grew up with that compound sentence. And because of her conviction and her faith, I ended up one day actually believing her. If you’re a young mother, memorize that sentence and whisper it to your child—because it will be always be true—and one day your child may very well turn out to be true to it.

4. A domesticated mother is a wonderful gift. My mother was an award-winning cook, baker (Sabbath morning sticky cinnamon rolls [to die for]), nurse, seamstress, PE coach, handywoman, boss, and queen of the castle. In a day where perhaps such giftedness is becoming rarer, God bless the mothers who embrace the divine mission of providing for, protecting and preserving a brood of children for society and the Kingdom.

5. A liberated mother is a wonderful inspiration. While it’s true Mom was more exceptionally domesticated than the TV Mom’s we watched in black and white, she embraced her God-given uniqueness as woman and colored outside the box. Somehow she became acquainted with the producers at a local television station in Toyama (a large city in which an American woman was a standout). And before long she was hosting a weekly television program fluently in Japanese (we kids with Dad even got to be her guests once!). Using her unique, God-inspired gifts, coloring outside the box, ministering as a woman—a liberated woman is an inspiration.

6. Be a learner all your life. My mother was Exhibit A that this must be God’s intention for us all. Whisked away by Dad before she could finish nurse’s training—off to Japan and mission life—good-bye schooling—but not Mom. On our second furlough, she enrolled in a school of business to study office administration. Then with her kids finishing college, she found a school that offered her life experience credit and eventually graduated with her Bachelor’s. Before long she was enrolled in Loma Linda University’s off-campus Master of Public Health degree, graduating at the same time Kari graduated from college. Then with her MPH Mother established a community health clinic in Portland OR, for which she was feted at a downtown hotel with a Community Services award. Always learning and growing, you go, Mom!

7. Be friends with God. I not only learned about prayer from kneeling beside my mother mornings and evenings—I also learned from those early mornings when I’d peek around a corner to find my mother alone, quietly reading and marking her Bible and  praying. When I would look inside her Bible at the markings and writing in the margins, I instinctively knew—she never had to tell me—how important this personal daily commitment truly is. For her, religion was a friendship and prayer a conversation. How many times when I was in college was she pouring her heart out in intercessory pleadings for me, as I later learned, at the very time the battle for my own heart was raging. She knew Jesus—and He knew her—and therein was the secret to her loving heart and fruitful life.

Ellen White describes the reunion one day in heaven: “Many will raise their crowns in sight of the assembled universe, and pointing to their mother say, ‘She made me all I am through the grace of God. Her instruction, her prayers, have been blessed to my eternal salvation’” (Reflecting Christ 195). To which I bow my head this day and whisper, “Amen.”

Her nose is hardly the stuff of Christmas, to be sure. But there may be a Noel connection yet. My last blog noted that the French mathematician philosopher, Blaise Pascal, a devout Christian (1623-1662), wrote in his Pensees that had Cleopatra’s nose “been shorter the whole face of the earth would have been different” (No 413). I.e., such a small but attractive detail (her nose) left Mark Anthony’s heart smitten, plunging him into a war for her, forever changing the Roman Empire which changed the world we live in today. Etc. Seemingly small details can have enormous consequences.

In this season of gift giving and receiving, you may remember the promise of Jesus: “‘If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!’” (Matthew 7:11)

Jim Moon, a pastor friend of mine, sent me a quotation the other day—came across it during his time of worship and prayer. He’s been listening to our #RxF4Now series and in connection with the teaching “2nd Hand Faith” he texted the quotation. Throughout the fall season at Pioneer we’ve been focusing on God’s omnipotent word—so omnipotent that when He speaks it, that word immediately creates the reality it describes. Hence, “Let there be light” in half a nanosecond resulted in—no surprise—light! “For He commanded and it stood fast; He spoke and it was” (Psalm 33:6). The astounding omnipotence of the word(s) of God is chronicled throughout Scripture (see also Isaiah 55:11; John 6:63; 2 Timothy 3:16, et al.). When God breathes a word, that very word immediately creates the reality it describes.

But how does it work? Paul declares (2 Corinthians 1:20) that all of God’s promises are a mighty “Yes!” in Christ, because Jesus is both the eternal Creator and the very Word of God (John 1:1-3). In Him every promise (or word) God has ever spoken is powerfully ratified with a divine exclamation “Yes!” All we mortals need do is declare “Amen” to Jesus—“. . . and so through him [Christ] the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 1:20). When you and I declare “Amen” to one of His promises, we are simply adding our “Yes!” to God’s “Yes!” and opening ourselves to receiving that promise, that gift.

Now the quotation Jim sent me:

For the pardon of sin, for the Holy Spirit, for a Christlike temper, for wisdom and strength to do His work, for any gift He has promised, we may ask; then we are to believe that we receive, and return thanks to God that we have received. We need look for no outward evidence of the blessing. The gift is in the promise, and we may go about our work assured that what God has promised He is able to perform, and that the gift, which we already possess, will be realized when we need it most. (Education 258 emphasis supplied)

Ponder those italicized phrases: “any gift He has promised,” “the gift is in the promise,” and “which we already possess.” Take any promise God has made in Scripture—put your finger on it and with childlike faith declare “Amen!” for that promise—believe you have in that moment received that gift—thank God for the gift—and with no further “outward evidence” resume your everyday living—with the assurance that (here’s the astounding part of the quotation)  the gift you “already possess” will be “realized” (made evident, made plain, manifested) when you “need it most.” Amen!

“Yes, but I prayed and believed that God would heal me (heal my loved one), and He has not done so.” First of all, God is not through answering your prayer (no matter the circumstances). And secondly, the same God who answered Jesus’ anguished pleading in Gethsemane—“Take it away from Me, but not what I want, but what You want” (see Mark 14:36)—will just as surely answer your prayer, too—in just the way He answered Jesus’ prayer—at the precise time and through the very circumstances that both maximize His glory and save your life (and the lives of countless others through your radical faith testimony).

Read it again: “We may go about our work assured that what God has promised He is able to perform, and that the gift, which we already possess, will be realized when we need it most.”

Such a small word—but what enormous and eternal consequences for your whispered faith in God’s bountiful promises this very Christmas—“Amen!”

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord” (Isaiah 6:1). The young prophet Isaiah, wrapped in the fog of political uncertainty—his nation threatened from crises without and fears within, his own soul afraid of what might yet come upon his people—turns his despondency toward the temple in Jerusalem. And as he steps into sacred space to pray, to ponder, the towering temple walls collapse into this stunning vision: “I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.” Breathless he gazes at this theophany: “Above him were seraphim, each with six wings . . . and they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’”

The whole earth “full of His glory”? But how could that possibly be when the nation the young prophet loves and serves is at a critical crisis point?

Or could it be that political crises are the grist of divine paradigm shifts, that leadership upheaval and change is the catalyst for new revelation, for understanding?

A quick scan of Twitter hashtags on the morning after Tuesday’s presidential election reveals a community of young and not so young Americans exuding strong and conflicting emotions—triumph and joy, broken and bitter, get-over-it nonchalance, and angry, just plain angry. The election has been labeled the most bitter presidential election in the history of this nation. And America the morning after is as fractured and divided as we were before we cast our votes—perhaps divided even more deeply now.

But in the narrative of the young Isaiah the veil between human politics and divine sovereignty is drawn aside—and in his vision of the “high and exalted Lord” whose glory fills the earth “as waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14) we stand before the stark but abiding truth that there is only one Sovereign, one Supreme Leader—“the only God our Savior [to whom] be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen” (Jude 25).

And it is that “Amen” that promises hope for all Americans, for all earth inhabitants on the morning after. The hope of healing for this fractured nation, the hope of strong and abiding love for all those alienated and rejected by political ideologies or campaign demagoguery, the hope that somewhere there is a deep and abiding compassion that can yet restore this land to its original promise and historic destiny.

So it is we pray on. With this prayer—a prayer I hope you will pray with me—the prayer of the intrepid Protestant Reformer John Knox, who in a land torn by religion and politics, pleaded with God, “Give me Scotland or I die.” On this day after, Iet us cry out to the same God, “Give us America or we die.” Give us, O God, this land of destiny for which the door of spiritual opportunity is yet open a little longer.

Ours is not a political cause to champion. To us has been entrusted the apocalyptic mission to point this civilization to the soon-coming King, whose healing love is the greatest freedom any human can seek. Now more than ever carpe diem—we must seize the day! “Give us America or we die.”

I don’t want to be like the nine lepers who raced away from Jesus, so elated with His healing they forgot to even thank Him. Which is why—before even listing a single lesson we’ve learned from Hope Trending, our nine-night/ten program national/global event last week—I would like to thank God and the hundreds of volunteers at Pioneer and Andrews and across North America, who joined forces to make possible this Kingdom innovation. From its inception via the three think tanks a year and a half ago, we have been praying for God to turn Hope Trending into an evangelistic strategy that would penetrate cyberspace through social media for the Kingdom. That He has done so and that He did so through so many creative volunteers is reason enough to praise Him and thank you!

In Paul’s words: “A huge door of opportunity for good work has opened up here” (I Corinthians 16:9 Message). Were he alive today, no doubt the intrepid apostle would be trolling the Internet and social media for Christ, “a huge door of opportunity” indeed!

What have we learned? While we’ll need more time to carefully, prayerfully comb through the analytics of Hope Trending, here are ten initial lessons for our collective conversation and evaluation:

1    Social media is a frontier wide open for communicating the truth about God. Night after night we repeated our Big Idea, and it was passed from soul to soul in social media: The Maker of all things loves and wants me. I was amazed at how quickly that compelling truth caught on.

2    Social media is everywhere. Including Kazakhstan where a young Muslim began an online chat with our moderators over several evenings. Going to the entire planet through social media and the Internet is truly a no-brainer for the third millennial church. At last count, Hope Trending connected with people from 149 nations.

3    You don’t have to be a Millennial to reach the Millennials. It turns out they (18-35 years old) were the largest demographic slice we were connecting with on Facebook (perhaps not so surprising). (See our HT coordinator Rodlie Ortiz’s initial report in this publication with some additional statistics, including the 835,000+ Facebook connects with Hope Trending.) On Twitter and Facebook (from my scanning) our dominant promoters were Millennials. Reserving the front rows for Millennials (Andrews students) was a wise decision that infused their energy into the live television and livestreaming production each evening. Our HT producer Richard Parke’s production, programming and tech volunteers were all Millennials, but the program presenters were obviously (except for two) not. Go figure. We are grateful.

4    You don’t have to be a Millennial to be reached by social media. Having observed lesson #3, I was glad to discover #4 to be true, as well. Social media is no respecter of persons or ages, according to our adult responses and affirmations. Which further confirms the conclusion we the church need to be doing much more in cyberspace to connect humanity with the soon coming Savior.

5    The budget for an evangelistic endeavor like Hope Trending does not necessarily have to be high in order to achieve a national/global reach. We are grateful for Dan Jackson and the North American Division for going out on a limb with us through their $75,000 grant. And I am thankful for our Pioneer members who gave $55,000 to make Hope Trending possible. We were also grateful for Michigan Conference giving us $5,000. My point is simply that this total is not prohibitive for other congregations and institutions contemplating future initiatives like Hope Trending.

6    Hope Trending is a witness to the power of vision/mission to motivate young volunteers. The design, production, and programming team was Millennial—except for two, all of them serving gratis. Thank you.

7    Hope Trending is a witness to the power of vision/mission to motivate adult volunteers. The 150+ infrastructure and ministry adult volunteers were a huge bonus and essential for Hope Trending’s mission. Thank you.

8    Twenty-minute TED talk length biblical presentations on the truth of God’s character are doable—so is a high octane panel response to each teaching! Kudos to Ty Gibson, Michael Polite, Tacyana Nixon, Melissa Ruhupatty and Randy Sanchez. Not to mention the contagiously warm and energetic hosting of David Franklin!

9    The support of influential bloggers and social media players within our faith community was vital—and they came through with strong promotion. New strategies in social media evangelism will necessitate the support of these experts who have a proven track record in connecting with this hitherto unreached people group. God bless them.

10    If a local congregation like Pioneer can do it, I believe evangelistic innovation through the efforts of a local congregation is possible anywhere. Go for it!

The good news is Hope Trending isn’t over. Thanks to our online archived material (hopetrending.org), it is very possible that Hope Trending’s greatest impact is still future (so pass the word). Consider this promise: “There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears” (Philippians 1:6 Message). With that promise, we can know for certain that with Christ the best is yet to come.