Gossip

The Bible itself is so clear against gossip, probably because we are so inclined toward gossip:

O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who does not take up a reproach against his friend. Psalm 15:1, 3

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: . . . one who sows discord among brothers. Proverbs 6:16, 19

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. James 4:11

Argue your case with your neighbor himself, and do not reveal another’s secret. Proverbs 25:9

God gave them up to a debased mind . . . . They are gossips. Romans 1:28-29

There are many biblical passages confronting gossip. The witness of God against this sin is overwhelming.

What is gossip? It is not necessarily false information. Slander is false. Gossip might include true information, and maybe that’s why gossip doesn’t always feel sinful. What makes it sin is, first and foremost, that God says it’s sin. But gossip spreads what can include accurate information to diminish another person. That is not how people behave when they are living in the power of the grace of God.

Gossip is our dark moral fervor eagerly seeking gratification. Gossip makes us feel important and needed as we declare our judgments. It makes us feel included to know the inside scoop. It makes us feel powerful to cut someone else down to size, especially someone we are jealous of. It makes us feel righteous, even responsible, to pronounce someone else guilty. Gossip can feel good in multiple ways.

But it is of the flesh, not of the Spirit.

Adultery too is a serious sin, and one likely to be disciplined in a church. But I have never seen a church split over the sin of adultery. Gossip is a sin rarely disciplined but often more socially destructive than the sensational sins.

Gossip leaves a wide trail of devastation wherever and however it goes – word of mouth, email, blogging, YouTube. It erodes trust and destroys morale. It creates a social environment of suspicion where everyone must wonder what is being said behind their backs and whether appearances of friendship are sincere. It ruins hard-won reputations with cowardly but effective weapons of misrepresentation. It manipulates people into taking sides when no such action is necessary or beneficial. It unleashes the dark powers of psychological transference, doing violence to the gossiper, to the one receiving the gossip and to the person being spoken against. It makes the Body of Christ look like the Body of Antichrist – destroyers rather than healers. It exhausts the energies we would otherwise devote to positive witness. It robs our Lord of the Church he deserves. It exposes the hostility in our hearts and discredits the gospel in the eyes of the world. Then we wonder why we don’t see more conversions, why “the ground is so hard.”

What should we do when a conversation starts slipping into gossip? We should immediately challenge the sin: “Hey friend, sorry to interrupt, but this is gossip. So here’s the deal. This conversation is now on hold until you go get _____________, and then you can start over and say whatever you feel you must say right to his face. I am willing to be a witness to that conversation, but I will not participate in gossip. What do you choose to do?” Amy Carmichael, a famous Protestant Christian missionary in India established this rule at her mission station:

“Never about, always to.”

“Let all things be done for building up” (1 Corinthians 14:26). Therefore, let’s always ask ourselves, “These words about to rise up out of my mouth or go out through my keyboard – do they build up? Am I being constructive? If the person I feel like discussing were here with me right now, how would his presence change what I feel like saying?”

As I reflect more and more on this subject I see how easy it is to fall prey to this and how important it is to heed biblical instruction.

The Fatherless Generation Statistics

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (US Dept. Of Health/Census) – 5 times the average.

• 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.

• 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  (Center for Disease Control)

• 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes –14 times the average.  (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26)

• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  (National Principals Association Report)

Father Factor in Education - Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are 40% less likely to repeat a grade in school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are 70% less likely to drop out of school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are more likely to get A’s in school.

• Children with Fathers who are involved are more likely to enjoy school and engage in extracurricular activities.

• 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes – 10 times the average.

Father Factor in Drug and Alcohol Abuse - Researchers at Columbia University found that children living in two-parent household with a poor relationship with their father are 68% more likely to smoke, drink, or use drugs compared to all teens in two-parent households. Teens in single mother households are at a 30% higher risk than those in two-parent households.

• 70% of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average.  (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Sept. 1988)

• 85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average.  (Fulton Co. Georgia, Texas Dept. of Correction)

Father Factor in Incarceration – Even after controlling for income, youths in father-absent households still had significantly higher odds of incarceration than those in mother-father families. Youths who never had a father in the household experienced the highest odds. A 2002 Department of Justice survey of 7,000 inmates revealed that 39% of jail inmates lived in mother-only households. Approximately forty-six percent of jail inmates in 2002 had a previously incarcerated family member. One-fifth experienced a father in prison or jail.

Father Factor in Crime - A study of 109 juvenile offenders indicated that family structure significantly predicts delinquency. Adolescents, particularly boys, in single-parent families were at higher risk of status, property and person delinquencies. Moreover, students attending schools with a high proportion of children of single parents are also at risk. A study of 13,986 women in prison showed that more than half grew up without their father. Forty-two percent grew up in a single-mother household and sixteen percent lived with neither parent

Father Factor in Child Abuse – Compared to living with both parents, living in a single-parent home doubles the risk that a child will suffer physical, emotional, or educational neglect. The overall rate of child abuse and neglect in single-parent households is 27.3 children per 1,000, whereas the rate of overall maltreatment in two-parent households is 15.5 per 1,000.

Daughters of single parents without a Father involved are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 711% more likely to have children as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a pre-marital birth and 92% more likely to get divorced themselves.

Adolescent girls raised in a 2 parent home with involved Fathers are significantly less likely to be sexually active than girls raised without involved Fathers.

• 43% of US children live without their father [US Department of Census]

• 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. [US D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census]

• 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. [Criminal Justice & Behaviour, Vol 14, pp. 403-26, 1978]

• 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father. [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release, Friday, March 26, 1999]

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. [US D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census]

• 85% of children who exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. [Center for Disease Control]

• 90% of adolescent repeat arsonists live with only their mother. [Wray Herbert, “Dousing the Kindlers,” Psychology Today, January, 1985, p. 28]

• 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. [National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools]

• 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes. [Rainbows f for all God’s Children]

• 70% of juveniles in state operated institutions have no father. [US Department of Justice, Special Report, Sept. 1988]

• 85% of youths in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. [Fulton County Georgia jail populations, Texas Department of Corrections, 1992]

• Fatherless boys and girls are: twice as likely to drop out of high school; twice as likely to end up in jail; four times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems. [US D.H.H.S. news release, March 26, 1999]

Census Fatherhood Statistics

• 64.3 million: Estimated number of fathers across the nation
• 26.5 million: Number of fathers who are part of married-couple families with their own children under the age of 18.
  Among these fathers -
  • 22 percent are raising three or more of their own children under 18 years old (among married-couple family households only).
  • 2 percent live in the home of a relative or a non-relative.
• 2.5 million: Number of single fathers, up from 400,000 in 1970. Currently, among single parents living with their children, 18 percent are men.
  Among these fathers -
  • 8 percent are raising three or more of their own children under 18 years old.
  • 42 percent are divorced, 38 percent have never married, 16 percent are separated and 4 percent are widowed. (The percentages of those divorced and never married are not significantly different from one another.)
  • 16 percent live in the home of a relative or a non-relative.
  • 27 percent have an annual family income of $50,000 or more.
• 85 percent: Among the 30.2 million fathers living with children younger than 18, the percentage who lived with their biological children only.
  • 11 percent lived with step-children
  • 4 percent with adopted children
  • < 1 percent with foster children
  Recent policies encourage the development of programs designed to improve the economic status of low-income nonresident fathers and the financial and emotional support provided to their children. This brief provides ten key lessons from several important early responsible fatherhood initiatives that were developed and implemented during the 1990s and early 2000s. Formal evaluations of these earlier fatherhood efforts have been completed making this an opportune time to step back and assess what has been learned and how to build on the early programs’ successes and challenges.While the following statistics are formidable, the Responsible Fatherhood research literature generally supports the claim that a loving and nurturing father improves outcomes for children, families and communities.
• Children with involved, loving fathers are significantly more likely to do well in school, have healthy self-esteem, exhibit empathy and pro-social behavior, and avoid high-risk behaviors such as drug use, truancy, and criminal activity compared to children who have uninvolved fathers.
• Studies on parent-child relationships and child wellbeing show that father love is an important factor in predicting the social, emotional, and cognitive development and functioning of children and young adults.
• 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father.
• Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
• 43 percent of first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children each year experience the divorce of their parents.
• Fathers who live with their children are more likely to have a close, enduring relationship with their children than those who do not.
• Compared to children born within marriage, children born to cohabiting parents are three times as likely to experience father absence, and children born to unmarried, non-cohabiting parents are four times as likely to live in a father-absent home.
• About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.
• Children who live absent their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
• From 1995 to 2000, the proportion of children living in single-parent homes slightly declined, while the proportion of children living with two married parents remained stable.

9 Myths About Sex & Relationships Among Emerging Adults

Social researchers Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker expose nine myths about sex and relationships among emerging adults in America (ages 18–23) in their book, Premarital Sex: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, And Think About Marrying. What follows are their myths:


Myth: Long-term exclusivity is a fiction

• Truth: Half of all marriages last a lifetime, and extramarital affairs are not as common as assumed.

 Myth: The introduction of sex is necessary in order to sustain a fledgling or struggling relationship

• Truth: The quicker sex enters a relationship, the sooner the relationships fails, and most relationships fail.

Myth: Boys will be boys. That is, men can’t be expected to abide by the sexual terms that women may wish to set. You may not want the double-standard to be there, but it’s there

• Truth: Women may enjoy sex as much as men, but they do not think and feel the same way about it. Generally they “set higher standards for their relationships.”

 Myth: It doesn’t matter what other people do sexually; you make your own decisions

• Truth: The actions and attitudes of others do affect your decisions: “If a critical mass of men and women enjoy an extended series of sexual relationships and expect sex fairly promptly within them, it becomes quite difficult for a minority to do otherwise.”

“It is emotionally challenging for women to engage in casual sex and to experience a broken sexual relationship. ”

Myth: Porn won’t affect your relationships

• Truth: Because more and more men are viewing porn regularly it “cannot but shape sexual market dynamics.” And studies have shown that the tandem of porn and masturbation actually “reduces the value of intercourse” because it is much more physiologically satisfying than masturbation alone. “Porn becomes easier, and so must women (on average).”

Myth: Everyone else is having more sex than you are

• Truth: You are less conservative than you think. “Most still overestimate how much sex is actually going on around them.” The authors write about this phenomena of pluralistic ignorance, “it happens when individuals within a group begin to believe that their own private attitudes, beliefs, or judgments are more conservative and rare than the public norms they see displayed by others.”

 Myth: Sex need not mean anything

• Truth: This myth can occur broadly between the sexes, but exists especially among women. It is emotionally challenging for women to engage in casual sex and to experience a broken sexual relationship.

Myth: Marriage can always wait

• Truth: Most emerging adults still want to get married—eventually. They put off marriage for years and years and thus the marriage market “does not grow deeper and more impressive with age.” Thus, the authors encourage “men and women who’ve met someone who is ‘marriage material’ to think twice before rejecting the notion that they’re just not ready yet.”

 Myth: Moving in together is definitely a step toward marriage

• Truth: In most cases, cohabitation does not last. “It overwhelmingly leads to either marriage or breakup within a few short years.” It is also more advantageous to men than to women as it gives them “more stable access to sex, without the expectations or commitments of marital responsibilities.”

Thoughts on Summer Vacation

School’s out, the temps are climbing, the sun is shining, the grass is green, the flowers are blooming, the hills and the lakes are beckoning (ok, maybe not in Portland), gas prices are killing your vacation plans (sorry, I shouldn’t have reminded you) – it’s summer time!  I like summer.  Most people do.  The pace is generally a little slower and I get more time with my family.  It’s not so cold and rain soaked (ok wishful thinking hugh) all the time and I get to enjoy some of my favorite outdoor activities.  As a pastor, one of the things I dislike about summer is the tendency some Christians exhibit to take a vacation from God.  I don’t mean you shouldn’t take a vacation (we will!), I mean that while we are enjoying the fun of summer, we begin to leave God out of our lives.  Some folks stop going to church on Sunday and Wednesday nights.  Others stop giving or plan to give less (gotta’ pay those gasoline bills!).  Still others continue to attend but they drop their commitment to ministry.  May I offer some pastoral advice?  Don’t let your soul wither simply because the earth is in bloom.  Stay connected to the Savior and involved in His church.  It’s fine to enjoy the season, just don’t let the season rob you of your vital relationship with the Lord. 

Dear Pastor, It’s Worth It!

Every pastor I know has, at one point, wrestled with the question, “Is THIS really worth it?”

I will admit that I’ve had that thought more than once in my eight year journey as the pastor of Eastside Foursquare in Portland.  There are days when I feel like I can conquer the world…and then there are others where I feel the world has conquered me.

If you are a pastor then I know you’ve been there…

• You feel like the sermon was horrible.
• You had a staff member go south on you.
• You lose sleep at night while you wrestle through a decision.
• People lie about you (or tell half truths, same thing really!)
• The critics take shots at you.
• The level of spiritual warfare in your life increases.
• You feel inadequate to do the job most days.
• You experience being lonely on a level that very few people can understand.

I could go on and on…but you get the point.

In the past 8 years in being the pastor of this church I’ve experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  AND…yes, I have caught myself asking the question many times, “Is it really worth all of this?”

And EVERY TIME God speaks to me and says, “YES!”

Hey pastor…if He called you then He has equipped you and will sustain you!  He is WITH YOU and will NEVER leave you.  HE is SO worth it!

Yesterday was one of those days for me…Jesus completely overwhelmed me and reminded me that following Him has been worth it.  Yes, there is a price to pay in ministry…but it is NOWHERE near the price the ONE we follow paid for us!

It’s worth it!

And…as Jesus was drawing people to Himself yesterday during the invitation I kept thiniking to myself, “I am SO GLAD that I haven’t quit or given up on the vision God gave me in 2002 to start a church…following Him has not been easy, but it is SO worth it!”

Pastor, God did not call you so that you could prove yourself to Him (and others,) but rather He called you to “prove” His Son to the world!  The reason so many of us wrestle with wanting to give up so often is that we feel like we have something to prove…

BUT…there is tremendous freedom found in a ministry where the man of God has fully determined that he has nothing to prove and dedicates himself to working for the applause of heaven and NOT the applause of man.

Yes, it’s worth it!  So…stay in the game, focus on Christ and beg Him to make His voice so clear to you so that you will know what He wants next!

Don’t EVER give up on the God who has never given up on you!  (Philippians 1:6)