Foundations News for 5/10/12 and Covenant Chronicles

This week will be our last with Carter Stewart.  He has been a wonderful teacher for the last two quarters! If you would like to contact him regarding his lessons or send him a note of thanks, his email is carterwstewart@gmail.com.

 

Prayer Requests:

  VBS: for people to volunteer and invest that valuable time with our children

  Jerod Meherg (son of a friend of David Huddleston) - in a coma after a car wreck

  Dunbar family

  Mary Catherine and Travis Pritchett (sister of Caroline Woods) - moving to Dallas on June 5

  Glascows - transition for Jarrod as he begins a new job, continued prayers for Bo

  Elliot Williams - prayers for her and her family as she battles cancer 

 

 

From: Danny Giffen [mailto:dgiffen@covpres.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 1:16 PM
To: AC Frese; Peggy Frese; Lucy Anderson; Michael Latta; Paul Loyless; Daniel Murray; Eva Shank; Bill Bennett; Barbara Finch; Dave Traylor; Jim Marlar; Brian and Lynn Beckett; Fred Blackmon; Bryan Balogh; Lee Baker; Dory Baker; Grace Padgett; Julie Tapscott; Terri Yates; Tom Marvin; Finch Barbara; Brian Oaks; Martin, Russell; Mark Midyette; Cary Murray; Stephen Fitts; Rebekah Fitts; Lauren Hayes; paula Midyette; John Steakley; Charlie Israel
Cc: Chris Hussar; Martha Boyd; Victoria Williams; Phyllis Hamm; Katie Caldwell; Stacey Loyless
Subject: Covenant Chronicles

 

We have a brief Chronicles this week due to me (Danny) being away from the office, but there are a few things we wanted to draw your attention to:

 

What's Happening

1.  Sandra McCracken – Join many of the staff and families of Covenant as we support singer/songwriter Sandra McCracken at Workplay tonight.  It is 8 pm tonight.  http://www.workplay.com/purchase-ticket/?Page=http://public.ticketbiscuit.com/WorkPlay/Events/128639 Sandra is very involved with Indelible Grace and married to Derrick Web.

 

2.  Summer Schedule – May 27 – Sept 2 we will have one worship service at 10 am.  Sunday School will have a time of fellowship at 8:45 and kick-off announcements and teaching at 9 am.  (No Sunday School on the holiday weekends of Memorial Day and Labor Day).  

                                June Sunday School Shuffle (choose one for the month of June)

                                A.  Theology of Worship – Rev's Tom Cannon & Joe Dentici (S104)

                                B.  Marriage Seminar – Drs Gordon Bals & Bill White (S100)

                                C.  Westminster Assembly – Dr. John Halsey Wood (S101)

                                D.  Women's Study – The Audacity of Biblical Hope – Melissa Hagins (E204)

                                E.  Pastor's Study – A look into Proverbs – Danny, Marty, Dan & TJ (E201/03)

 

3.  Vesper Service – as you may have heard on "from the desk of Bill Boyd", we are beginning a Sunday evening Vesper Service on June 3 – Aug 5.  The services will be in the sanctuary at 5:30 pm.  There will a time of music and preaching.  The first Sunday of every month we will also host a cook-out in the "pit" area after the service for fellowship and some burgers, brats, butts etc.  

 

4.  Covenant Family Camp: Get it on your calendars, but October 12-14, Covenant will be hosting our first ever Family Camp at Alpine Camp.  More information to come but we are very excited about this retreat.  Yes, we have cleared it with diehard WE's and RTR's and both of you all are away that weekend.  However we will be having a section of camp reserved for viewing the TX/OU game.  We will be playing Patrick Swayze movies all weekend long as well. :)

 

5.  When Helping Hurts Seminar – Join us on August 18th here at Covenant Pres as we host with about 15 other Birmingham churches a seminar of Mercy Ministry and Missions.  This event is sponsored by Christian Service Mission.  It will address the question, "What do we do next in our effort to help people who are poor?  How can we shift our efforts from dependency to empowerment.  The seminar is taught by Dr. Brian Fikkert from the Chalmers Institute and Covenant College.  Cost is $45 

 

6.  Children's Ministry Blog - http://www.covpreschildrensministry.blogspot.com/ check us out!

 

 

 

The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel. And there is perhaps no group of people who better embody the sin of self-righteousness in the Bible than the Pharisees. In fact, Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for them, calling them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites. Surprisingly to some, this demonstrates that the thing that gets in the way of our love for God and a deep appreciation of his grace is not so much our unrighteous badness but our self-righteous goodness.

In Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God’s grace as the sailors and the Ninevites. But the fascinating thing about Jonah is that, unlike the pagan sailors and wicked Ninevites, Jonah was one of the “good guys.” He was a prophet. He was moral. He was one who “kept all the rules”, and did everything he was supposed to do. He wasn’t some long-haired, tattooed indie rocker; he was a clean-cut prep. He wasn’t a liberal; he was a conservative. He wasn’t irreligious; he was religious. If you’ve ever read S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, than you’ll immediately see that the Ninevites and the sailors in the story were like the “greasers”, while Jonah was like a “soashe.”

What’s fascinating to me is that, not only in the story of Jonah, but throughout the Bible, it’s always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother.

There is, however, another side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types need to be careful of. There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We “authentic”, anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?

It’s simple: we become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous.

Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, “That’s right, I know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.”

See the irony?

In other words, they’re proud that they’re not self-righteous! Hmmm…think about that one.

Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to the religious and the irreligious, the “buttoned down” and the “untucked”, the plastic and the pious, the rule-keepers and the rule-breakers, the right and the wrong. The entire Bible reveals how shortsighted all of us are when it comes to our own sin. Steve Brown writes:

You will find criticism of Christian fundamentalists by people whose secular fundamentalism dwarfs the fundamentalism of the people being criticized. Political correctness and the attendant feelings of self-righteousness have their equivalent in religious communities with religious correctness. If you look at victims, you’ll find self-righteousness. On the other hand, if you look at the people who wield power, they do it with the self-righteous notion that they know better, understand more, and more informed than others…arrogance, condescension, disdain, contemptuousness, and pomposity are everywhere.

For example, it was easy for Jonah to see the idolatry of the sailors. It was easy for him to see the perverse ways of the Ninevites. What he couldn’t see was his own idolatry, his own perversion. So the question is not whether you are self-righteous, but rather, in which direction does your self-righteousness lean? Depending on who I’m with, mine goes in both directions. Arghhh!

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God’s grace reaches farther. And the good news is, that it reaches in both directions!