Another lesson I’ve learned is that it helps for a pastor to be somewhere for a while. It helps build the trust of your community. Then when disaster strikes, you’ve got that trust, and the community knows it can depend on you. If you’re always moving to work your way up to a big church, you lose that opportunity to minister to folks. You haven’t been there long enough to build trust. I’ve been here for 18 years. At times I’ve thought, I wonder why I have to stay in this little church, this little town. I wish I could move on to bigger and better things. But now I know that God was having me build a long tenure so I’d be ready for this. (emphasis original)

Thanks to Mike Garrett for pointing this article and this paragraph out to me.

These three verses powerfully communicate the need to stand for truth whether or not you will be successful. They communicate in verses a principle I state often with my kids and in classes- better to die nobly than to survive ignobly.

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

 

- James Russell Lowell

I am excited to post that the audio is now available from our sessions. All the plenary sessions and most of the breakout sessions are available (we had technical difficulties with the recording of a few sessions). By common assent, one of the most powerful parts of the event was the Psalmfest, where we had the opportunity to put into practice what we talked about, singing the Psalms corporately. I am glad that we have audio of that portion as well.

Here is what is available in audio:

Ray Van Neste- Theme Interpretation, “Read, Pray, Sing: The Psalms as an Entryway to the Scriptures”

Chris Mathews, leading, Psalmfest

Plenary Sessions:

Heath Thomas, “God, Israel, and the Nations: Praising God and His Salvation in Psalm 117″

Andy Davis, “The Sufferings of Christ and the Subsequent Glories in the Psalms”

Breakout sessions:

Heath Thomas, The Magnificent 7: Seven Ways of Reading (or Misreading) Scripture 

Andy Davis, The Bible Comes to Life: How Scripture Memory Transforms One’s Life

Harry Lee Poe, “C.S. Lewis on the Psalms”

Paul Jackson, Don’t Miss the Forest for the Trees

Kevin Chen, God as a Poet: The Poetry of the Psalms

Be Strong!

Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle―face it; ‘tis God’s gift.

Be strong!
Say not, “The days are evil. Who’s to blame?”
And fold the hands and acquiesce―oh shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God’s name.

Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not―fight on! To-morrow comes the song.

-          Maltbie Davenport Babcock

The quote below captures the point of the conclusion of the book and is worth contemplation.

Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing more.” “… I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal.

“Determination”

I’ll see it through, whate’er the danger be.
One death is all that God assigns to me.
I’ll stand erect against the odds and shout:
“I may be whipped, but will not turn about!”

I will not play the coward! Fail I may,
But at the post of duty I will stay.
Nor dread of loss, nor fear of being hurt,
Nor softening pride shall tempt me to desert.

I’ll play the man! What if the way seems long?
I will not whimper that all care is wrong.
Blunder I may, but none shall ever cry
I died a failure, since I would not try.

-from Life’s Highway, by Edgar A. Guest (Chicago: The Reilly and Lee Co., 1933), 28

Here is a link to several of Guest’s works at Amazon

I want my boys to learn dogged determination and perseverance and this poem captures that well.

Battle Cry 

More than half beaten, but fearless,
Facing the storm and the night;
Breathless and reeling but tearless,
Here in the lull of the fight,
I who bow not but before thee,
God of the fighting Clan,
Lifting my fists, I implore Thee,
Give me the heart of a Man!

What though I live with the winners
Or perish with those who fall?
Only the cowards are sinners,
Fighting the fight is all.
Strong is my foe–he advances!
Snapt is my blade, O Lord!
See the proud banners and lances!
Oh, spare me this stub of a sword!

Give me no pity, nor spare me;
Calm not the wrath of my Foe.
See where he beckons to dare me!
Bleeding, half beaten–I go.
Not for the glory of winning,
Not for the fear of the night;
Shunning the battle is sinning–
Oh, spare me the heart to fight!

Red is the mist about me;
Deep is the wound in my side;
“Coward” thou criest to flout me?
O terrible Foe, thou hast lied!
Here with my battle before me,
God of the fighting Clan,
Grant that the woman who bore me
Suffered to suckle a Man!

by John Gneisenau Neihardt

I was taken with the robust singing of male voices and the sense that this was a song of a people, one that had been passed down and which told their story, where they had been and where they were going. In singing this song the dwarves reminded themselves of their identity and embraced it anew. They also steeled themselves for their difficult task as the song called them to their duty. The song placed their lives in continuity with the past, calling them to play their part in the history of their people. The song reminded them of a kingdom lost and their duty to reclaim it. I was mesmerized. We bought the soundtrack, and as I listened to it I found myself thinking, “I wish my family had a song like this.”

Then it hit me- We do have songs like this. Not the Van Nestes, not even TN nor the US (though we have national songs as well), but the church. The church has songs which have been passed down through the generations which tell of our past, victories & defeats, which remind us of our identity & remind us of our task and where we are going. These songs are the Psalms. The Psalms retell the history of our people, the people of God, and remind us of the kingdom that was lost due to a dragon’s destruction. They remind us of our role in obedience to the true King who has come and will return to destroy the dragon and re-establish his kingdom. In singing these songs we steel ourselves for the difficult road ahead, and we reaffirm our identity as God’s people as we take up the songs of our forefathers. With these songs we also internalize these truths and shape our characters so that we might be faithful and honor our King.

Let us sing!

Courage

This is courage: to remain
Brave and patient under pain;
Cool and calm and firm to stay
In the presence of dismay;
Not to flinch when foes attack,
Even though you’re beaten back;
Still to cling to what is right,
When the wrong possesses might.

This is courage: to be true
To the best men see in you;
To remember, tempest-tossed,
Not to whimper, “All is lost!”
But to battle to the end
While you still have strength to spend;
Not to cry that hope is gone
While you’ve life to carry on.

This is courage: to endure
Hurt and loss you cannot cure;
Patiently and undismayed,
Facing life still unafraid;
Glad to live and glad to take
Bravely for your children’s sake,
Burdens they would have to bear
If you fled and ceased to care.
-from Life’s Highway, by Edgar A. Guest (Chicago: The Reilly and Lee Co., 1933), 36

a free copy of B&H’s bible software, WORDSearch,

and a free copy of one of the following books:

Forgotten Songs: Reclaiming the Psalms for Christian Worship, ed. Wells & Van Neste

The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying & Praising with the Psalms, Gordon Wenham

Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Prayers from the Psalms: From the Scottish Psalter of 1595, ed. David Calhoun

We are especially grateful to the generous donations from B&H Academic and Crossway Books.

Also, we have just updated the conference website so that it includes the titles for the plenary addresses as well as titles and summaries for all the breakout sessions. Our plenary addresses will be:

Andy Davis – “The Sufferings of Christ and the Subsequent Glories in the Psalms”

Heath Thomas – “God, Israel, and the Nations: Praising God and His Salvation in Psalm 117″

Then the titles for the breakout sessions are as follows:

Andy Davis — “The Bible Comes to Life: How Scripture Memory Transforms One’s Life”
Heath Thomas — “The Magnificent 7: Seven Ways of Reading (or Misreading) Scripture”

Kevin Chen – “God as a Poet: The Poetry of the Psalms”

Mark Dubis – “Ancient Backgrounds in Bible Study” 
George Guthrie – “Hearing the Psalms: Reading with Head and Heart”
Paul Jackson – “Don’t Miss the Forest for the Trees”
Harry Lee Poe – “C.S. Lewis on the Psalms”
Ray Van Neste – “Singing & Praying the Psalms at Home”
Scott Winter (B&H Academic)- “Inductive Bible Study using WORDsearch Bible Software”

Come join us!