Tag Al Baird

We started to live together, as a ‘normal’ worldly couple would do if they had a chance and no one to stop them from doing it. We began our relationship like this but because of my spiritual background and the tremendous love and respect I felt for her, I decided that if my love was real, I couldn’t let her finish as the bad weed of the scripture, burning  in the eternal fire . . . (Matthew 13:36-43).” This is part of an email that we recently received as a response to the official International Churches of Christ website at www.icoc.org. It was written by a brother who fell away from the Lord and his church, but who is asking how he could come back and be restored. It makes my day when good news such as this comes across my desk, and it frequently does. Of the people who leave the church, about 10% eventually come back. But why do so many brothers and sisters who embraced God and accepted his grace, get drawn back into the world by Satan? I believe that a large part of the reason is that they stop being thankful for all that God has given them. 

Our theme scripture cited above says, “. . . let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably. . . .” I believe that we need to discover the power of thankfulness as God’s people. As I prepared to lead a devotional for a group of men, I looked at many verses in the Bible that talk about giving thanks and being thankful. I learned that being thankful is much, much more than just a nice
thing to do. It is a channel through which God works to overcome the power of Satan in our lives.

Forgiven. The word is like magic. This account in Luke 7 describes an incident that transformed the reputation of “a woman who had lived a sinful life” into Mary, the sister of Lazarus and friend of Jesus (John 11:2). Modern-day accounts of this miracle story are still played out in God’s Kingdom today. I am reminded of Ken and Jessica (the names and exact details have been changed for obvious reasons). They were disciples, married for 15 years with three beautiful children. To the observer, they had a beautiful marriage, a beautiful family, and a beautiful life. But things were very different behind closed doors. He was harsh and demanding. She was rebellious and distant. There had been problems from the beginning, but they were not open with other
disciples who could have helped. He increasingly drew his happiness from his work. She was emotionally starving, and Satan was quickly on the scene with just the person to fill her emotional needs. Soon she was in a full-blown affair. For months Jessica was able to keep it a secret, but the inevitable day came when Ken found out. Jessica did the unthinkable; she left
Ken and her three children to be with her illicit lover. Gloria searched for Jessica, went after her, and was finally able to convince her to come home.

Are the International Churches of Christ a youth movement? I hope so. We are trying to be. An often heard comment of older visitors to our church services is, “Everyone seems so young!”  Some of them mean that in a negative way, but I take it positively. The death knell of a religious movement is the loss of its young people. In so many denominations, their dying churches are mostly populated with members older than 40. Now, there is nothing wrong with being over 40 – I am 59. But, shouldn’t there be more young people than older people in God’s church? The young provide so much of the energy, enthusiasm and idealism that the healthy church body needs. For several years in the Kingdom of God, we neglected our young people. But we have repented. 

Things are changing powerfully and rapidly. The first change was to energize our children’s ministries, “Kingdom Kids,” with top-notch curriculums and teaching materials. This project, headed by Kingdom Teacher Gordon Ferguson, took hundreds of hours, several hundreds of thousands of dollars and two years to complete. Now we have children’s ministries that are second to none. The second change was to restore a major evangelistic focus to the many college and university campuses. World Sector Leaders Marty and Chris Fuqua have been given
the charge of coordinating the building of great campus ministries all over the world. The third change came last year when Kip McKean called all of the churches to launch an unprecedented effort to make disciples of our own children, and to reach out to teens in our communities. Strong teen ministries are essential for strong churches.

Twenty years ago a few people in Boston began to dream. By today’s standards it was a small dream – a dream to evangelize the four million people living in the Boston area with its 200,000 university students. But God had much bigger things in mind, planned before time began.

Just this week in Boston, a scene was played out that gives us just a glimmer of the countless lives that have been influenced for eternity by that small beginning. Theresa Slade is dying of cancer at age 59. She is a wife and a mother. In the world’s eyes, this is a tragedy. It is sad, but not tragic, because Theresa became a disciple of Jesus Christ 15 years ago when she was born again in the waters of baptism and became a part of the Boston Church of Christ. Through those 15 years she had an impact on many lives with her example and her teaching. Her spiritual family, physical family and friends decided to do something unique.

The Internet is the fastest-growing and most powerful communication medium in history. If you exit the information superhighway for a few months, you may not recognize it when you return. The growth rate of the Internet is astounding. It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million homes in this country. Television did the same in 13 years. The Internet has done it in only five years! The World Wide Web (referred to as the WWW or just “the Web”) is doubling its number of websites every six months. To get on the information superhighway, all one needs is a computer, a modem and an Internet service provider. Millions of people visit Cyberspace every day to bank online, pay bills, find a job, buy or sell almost anything (even pizza or groceries), book travel, track a FedEx package, read a magazine, research any topic, find a map to anywhere on Earth, trade stock, locate anyone who has a telephone number or e-mail address, make  free international phone calls, play games, find computer programs to do nearly anything, listen to and even watch live events, buy or lease real estate, take college courses, trace their family tree, correspond with people around the world and do thousands of other things. Every day new, innovative uses are being implemented.

LA Story celebrated its fifth birthday in January. I just spent the last hour leafing through all of the past issues. It felt good to relive those five years because God has tremendously blessed them. During that time, I wrote about 50 editorials covering many subjects. As I re-scanned them, I was surprised to realize that I had not written a single one of them about persecution. Why not? Because we have faced very little overt persecution in the United States during the past five years. In one sense, persecution is relative – what may be called persecution in one part of  he world might be considered as nothing in another. Today, brothers are beaten and imprisoned for their faith in several different countries around the globe. But not in the USA. Never let us take for granted the protection that our basic right of religious freedom gives us. People insulting us and “falsely saying all kinds of evil” against us is about as bad as it gets. While I am thankful that our persecution is minor, we had better be careful that we do not try to avoid it. Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 2:12, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Someone has asked the question, “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”