But it's worthwhile to note the contrast between the honor accorded Matt as our newest Assistant Pastor, and the honors doled out at the Academy Awards. Matt got no attention from pundits and paparazzi. There was no red carpet welcome for him and his wife Hana. No beautiful starlets in expensive evening gowns paraded up and down the aisle of the Worship Center. The only acceptance speech Matt gave, if you can call it that, was a teary-eyed, one-sentence thank you to those who came to the service before he pronounced his first benediction. Lots of camera clicks could be heard after the ordination service, but the pictures will only show up on Facebook, not Variety or the New York Times.

Yet Matt's ordination as a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America will have far greater impact on eternity than all the Oscars combined. And the honor he can look forward to receiving in heaven - "the crown of righteousness" (2 Timothy 4:8) - is of far greater worth than gold statues. The recognition Hollywood actors receive is fleeting, and the movies they make are here one year and largely forgotten the next. It was interesting to me that Farrah Fawcett, enormously popular in her heyday, was not included in the "In Memoriam" montage at the Oscars. It may have been an oversight, but it illustrates the fact that earthly glory is short-lived.

God told the prophet Samuel, "The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). Millions of people around the world may have been watching the Oscars last night, but there was a greater celebration taking place in heaven over our ordination and installation of Matt Ryman, a man with a big heart for God and his kingdom.

Yet it seems the evangelical church in America has a long way to go in understanding suffering. At one end of the spectrum is the heresy that countless Christians are getting from today's health/wealth/prosperity preachers and authors. At the opposite pole is the notion advanced by some pietists and legalists that the more you suffer, deny yourself pleasure, and punish yourself with guilt and shame, the more God loves you. Where do you hear a balanced, Biblical view of affliction that squares with the sovereignty of God and the gospel of grace? It's rare.

I think the main reason professing Christians today struggle to understand suffering is that we've been trained to see God as the one who answers every prayer (i.e., does what we ask), meets every need (i.e., gives us what we want), and has one driving ambition: to make us happy. For too many people, God is the Being we use to make it through life more successfully - with fewer hang-ups, a better marriage, and a secure, comfortable future. Jesus made it quite clear that to follow him means carrying your cross. The cross is an instrument of supreme suffering, self-sacrifice, pain, and death. But for lots of folks, the cross is a piece of jewelry that makes no demands and calls nobody to discipleship.

Tim Keller recently posted a series of five things Christians should do to prepare to address the big issues facing the Church today. One of them has to do with the need to develop a good theology of suffering. Here is what Keller has to say:

We must develop a far better theology of suffering. Members of churches in the west are caught absolutely flat-footed by suffering and difficulty. This is a major problem, especially if we are facing greater 'liminality'--social marginalization--and maybe more economic and social instability. There are a great number of books on 'why does God allow evil?' but they mainly are aimed at getting God off the hook with impatient western people who believe God's job is to give them a safe life. The church in the west must mount a great new project--of producing a people who are prepared to endure in the face of suffering and persecution.

Here, too, is one of the ways we in the west can connect to the new, growing world Christianity. We tend to think about 'what we can do for them.' But here's how we let them do something for us. Many or most of the church in the rest of the world is used to suffering and persecution. They have a kind of faith that does not wilt, but rather grows stronger under threat. We need to become students of theirs in this area.

Perhaps we can begin developing such a sound theology of suffering with a fresh re-reading of the book of Job - certainly the Bible's clearest statement on the topic. It just so happens that I've been reading Job in my morning devotions lately. Job's three friends strike me as the ancient counterparts to today's prosperity preachers. At one point Eliphaz even says to Job, "Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you" (22:21). Yet Job knows that's a crock. Eventually he comes to see that God's decree includes evil, and submits to God's sovereign though mysterious wisdom. He also discovers the Redeemer who suffers with us and for us.

Faith in Job's suffering, mighty Savior empowers us to endure trial with realism and hope.

I stood, a mendicant of God, before His royal throne
And begged Him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out His hand, but as I would depart
I cried, "But Lord, this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange and hurtful gift which Thou hast given me."
He said, "My child, I give good gifts. I gave my best to thee."
I took it home. And though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace:
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil that hides His face.

Having a daily time in God's Word does not in any way earn God's favor. It does not get you into a bigger or better place in heaven. And hear this: reading the Bible on a regular basis does not even guarantee that you'll experience spiritual growth. The Bible is not like a magic book that automatically changes you when you merely pick it up and read its pages. In fact, regular Bible reading (without repentant faith) has been known to contribute to pride, hardness of heart, and a judgmental spirit!

So why read the Bible regularly?

• Because the Scriptures "are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15).
• Because "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).
• Because "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16).
• Because the Word of God is "the sword of the Spirit" (Ephesians 6:17).
• Because "the Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12-13).
• Because "the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord stands forever" (1 Peter 1:24-25).
• Because "Your Word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens" (Psalm 119:89).
• Because "The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes" (Psalm 19:8).
• Because "the gospel...is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16).

Recently I told the church about a two-year Bible reading plan that I'm enjoying. Currently I'm reading each day a passage from Job and a passage from Matthew. The whole reading takes maybe 10 minutes. There's even a brief devotional thought added at the end of the day's reading. I find that I'm not getting frustrated like I have in the past when I've tried to read the entire Bible in a year. If for some reason I skip a day's reading, I can easily make it up the next day.

A member of our church has been using this same two-year plan. She sent me an email in which she said,

I just wanted to share with you that I've been following the New Life Bible Plan you suggested and it has been really helpful. I am loving getting a broader sweep of Old Testament books and seeing bigger themes in the books. I read this morning in Job: "If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God's rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more," and was struck by how wonderfully privileged we are with the knowledge of the work Christ completed for us on the cross. Anyway, just wanted to share how useful the plan has been, so thank you!

If you'd like to start this same two-year reading plan, visit this website. When you sign up, you'll get a daily email that takes you to that day's reading. Or, if you have an iGoogle home page like I do, you can put a NewLife Bible Plan widget right on your home page, and you're just a click away from the Scriptures. How easy is that.

At UPC we have a vision for Biblical and theological literacy. We want to be a church where people get discipled in the Word - not so that they are puffed up with head knowledge, but so that the gospel can get its roots down deeper into our hearts and transform us from the inside out.

1. The opportunity for extensive culture-making in the U.S. In an interview, sociologist Peter Berger observed that in the U.S. evangelicals are shifting from being largely a blue-collar constituency to becoming a college educated population.

His question is-will Christians going into the arts, business, government, the media, and film a) assimilate to the existing baseline cultural narratives so they become in their views and values the same as other secular professionals and elites, or b) will they seal off and privatize their faith from their work so that, effectively, they do not do their work in any distinctive way, or c) will they do enough new Christian ‘culture-making' in their fields to change things?

2. The rise of Islam. How do Christians relate to Muslims when we live side by side in the same society? The record in places like Africa and the Middle East is not encouraging! This is more of an issue for the western church in Europe than in the U.S., but it is going to be a growing concern in America as well.

How can Christians be at the very same time a) good neighbors, seeking their good whether they convert or not, and still b) attractively and effectively invite Muslims to consider the gospel?

3. The new non-western Global Christianity. The demographic center of Christian gravity has already shifted from the west to Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The rising urban churches of China may be particularly influential in the future. But the west still has the educational institutions, the money, and a great deal of power.

What should the relationship of the older western churches be to the new non-western church? How can we use our assets to serve them in ways that are not paternalistic? How can we learn from them in more than perfunctory ways?

4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel. The basic concepts of the gospel - sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife - are becoming culturally strange in the west for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to ‘think like a missionary'-to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian western culture.

How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic ‘mental furniture' to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?

5. The end of prosperity? With the economic meltdown, the question is - will housing values, endowments, profits, salaries, and investments go back to growing at the same rates as they have for the last twenty-five years, or will growth be relatively flat for many years to come? If so, how does the western church, which has become habituated to giving out of fast-increasing assets, adjust in the way it carries out ministry? For example, American ministry is now highly professionalized-church staffs are far larger than they were two generations ago, when a church of 1,000 was only expected to have, perhaps, two pastors and a couple of other part-time staff. Today such a church would have probably eight to ten full-time staff members.

Also, how should the stewardship message adjust? If discretionary assets are one-half of what they were, more risky, sacrificial giving will be necessary to do even less ministry than we have been doing.

On top of this, if we experience even one significant act of nuclear or bio-terrorism in the U.S. or Europe, we may have to throw out all the basic assumptions about social and economic progress we have been working off for the last 65 years. In the first half of the 20th century, we had two World Wars and a Depression. Is the church ready for that? How could it be? What does that mean?

A common way of settling the argument is to side with one extreme or the other. Man's choices mean nothing, say some. At the end of the day, your prayers don't matter - God will do what he's going to do, he will save whom he's going to save. So don't worry about evangelism or prayer or civic responsibility or charity; don't try to better the world. It's 100% God and 0% man. This is the view often identified as hyper-Calvinism. For a few years of my early Christian life I was a member of a hyper-Calvinistic sect. It was not healthy.

At the other extreme is the position that says it's all up to you. God merely reacts to human choices. If people need to be saved, it's up to you and me to get out there and save them. If our children are going to grow up to be godly men and women, it's totally up to us to parent them right. Nothing is foreordained; destiny is what we create by our decisions and actions. This is the view of Pelagius (AD 354-420), who denied divine sovereignty and said that man's will is free and untainted by original sin. Arminians do not go that far; they believe in the depravity of the human race and know that God's grace is required for salvation. But Arminians do affirm man's free will and believe that God's choice of human beings is based on their prior choice of him.

So which option is right: hyper-Calvinism or Pelagianism?

I ran across a great quotation from Charles Spurgeon, a famous Baptist preacher of late 19th-century England. Spurgeon believed that both destiny and contingency (i.e., divine sovereignty and human responsibility) must be maintained:

I believe in predestination, yea, even in its very jots and tittles. I believe that the path of a single grain of dust in the March wind is ordained and settled by a decree which cannot be violated; that every word and thought of man, every flittering of a sparrow's wing, every flight of a fly...that everything, in fact, is foreknown and foreordained. But I do equally believe in the free agency of man, that man acts as he wills, especially in moral operations - choosing the evil with a will that is unbiased by anything that comes from God, biased only by his own depravity of heart and the perverseness of his habits; choosing the right too, with perfect freedom, though sacredly guided and led by the Holy Spirit.... I believe that man is as accountable as if there were no destiny whatever.... Where these two truths meet I do not know, nor do I want to know. They do not puzzle me, since I have given up my mind to believing them both.

Spurgeon, a staunch Calvinist, hit the nail on the head. It's not either-or, but both-and. God is sovereign, yet man is responsible and accountable for his actions. As another British preacher, Charles Simeon, put it: "[T]he truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes."

I read these quotations in an essay by Robert Rayburn titled "Parental Conditions and the Promise of Grace to the Children of Believers" (Benjamin Wikner, ed., To You and Your Children: Examining the Biblical Doctrine of Covenant Succession. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2005, pp. 3-27). Rayburn goes on to say, "If the history of theology proves anything, it is that destiny and contingency are spark and powder" (pg. 11).

Unless we believe in and rest upon God's promises of sovereign grace, we will melt in a pile of anxiety and despair. Unless we believe in our own accountability, we will grow lazy and worldly. I don't understand exactly how the two doctrines fit together. But like Spurgeon, "I have given up my mind to believing them both."

You might be wondering how our strategic plan came about. In May of last year, I gathered a team of men and women who are good at strategic thinking. I told them that UPC needed a clearer sense of its identity and purpose. I said that I felt UPC had a "shotgun" approach to ministry - that is, we were trying to do too many different things and needed a sharper sense of focus. We've gone through strategic planning sessions before, but nothing seemed to "stick" for very long. So we formed the Strategic Planning Team as an arm of the Congregational Life Team, and set about the work of clarifying our purpose, goals, and action plans for the future.

Lane Cohee was our team chairman. Lane did an excellent job keeping us on track using Bobb Biehl's strategic planning model. During the summer we did a lot of self-assessment and solicited congregational input via a survey. By early fall we had identified seven Ministry Areas that led to the development of a new organizational chart. These seven areas are Worship & Arts, Local & Global Outreach, Discipleship, Fellowship & Community, Youth & Children, Adult Ministries, and Operations. Each Ministry Area is overseen by at least one elder or pastor, and everything that happens at UPC fits into one of these Ministry Areas.

One of the critical questions we dealt with early on was about the future growth of UPC. Specifically, we asked ourselves how we expect UPC to grow, at what rate, and from what people groups. After much prayer, research, and discussion, we concluded that - God willing - UPC will probably make a net gain of 50-100 new members a year, and that these new members will likely come from the same zip code areas our current members are from: 32828, 32825, and 32765 (i.e., Waterford Lakes/Eastwood/Avalon, Cypress Springs, Oviedo, etc., as well as the UCF community). This means that while the area immediately around UPC will be the target of our outreach efforts (see below), we do not expect a lot of people from our immediate community to settle at UPC. Not only are there significant demographic differences between our current membership and the 32817 community, there really aren't that many households in 32817. Of course, our doors are open to everybody, and we hope and pray for an increasing amount of cultural diversity in our church. But the fact is, people generally invite their neighbors, school friends, and co-workers to their church, and we want friendship evangelism to continue to be the practice of everyone at UPC. Finally, will UPC grow "up" or "out"? We concluded that, with God's blessing, we should grow "up" - that is, rather than planting numerous daughter churches, we have been given remarkable resources - a lot of land, a large Worship Center, visionary leaders and members, proximity to UCF, etc. - and we believe God wants us to steward those resources by growing significantly on our present campus. We plan to participate in our presbytery's aggressive church planting program, but it will likely be about 10 years before we try to plant a daughter church of our own. Again, all this is said in submission to God's will. God may have very different priorities in mind for us! He will do what he wants to do, and he can certainly override our plans. But we believe that strategic planning is part of our responsible stewardship of the opportunities he has given us.

Another critical piece of the strategic planning process was identifying the needs UPC is passionate about and uniquely gifted by God to meet. Our team identified eight such needs. It is as we meet these needs that UPC will be a healthy, growing church. Five of them are "internal" - that is, they are needs of the people who attend UPC that we must meet if we are going to thrive as a body. Those five are:

1. Equipping believers with Biblical and theological literacy
2. Engaging the UPC family in genuine corporate worship
3. Discipling one another to spiritual maturity
4. Helping believers experience the transforming power of the gospel, freeing them from the bondage of sin and idolatry
5. Building our children and youth to know, love, and serve God

Then we identified three needs that are "out there" in the East Orlando community. We worded them according to the acronym "UPC" to make them easy to remember. Those needs are:

1. Reaching the UCF community with the gospel and engaging students, faculty, and administrators in the ministry of UPC
2. Promoting and building healthy families
3. Caring for the poor & marginalized in our community

Having these eight needs before us will give focus to the ministries and activities of UPC going forward. If a proposed activity does not enable us to meet one of these eight needs, it will be scrapped. And if someone asks you what UPC hopes to do to glorify God in East Orlando and win disciples for Jesus, all you have to do is remember the acronymn "UPC"!

The final part of the strategic planning process was coming up with short-, mid-, and long-range strategic goals. Throughout the fall and winter the Strategic Planning Team worked with steering committees of each Ministry Area to develop ambitious but realistic goals for the future. Space does not permit me to list all these goals here. Moreover, some of them are tied to facility and staff enhancements that need further review and approval. By Vision Awareness Sunday these goals will be finalized and ready to share with the congregation. In the meantime, these goals provide us with train tracks to run on as we look ahead.

I am so very thankful for the time and effort put into this plan by the Strategic Planning Team. My thanks go to everyone who contributed to this process. Now let's move forward and resolve not to let this plan become an artifact of UPC's history. I believe that with united prayer and effort, we at UPC can and will make a significant contribution to the advancement of God's kingdom.

If you plan to see the movie and want to be surprised, stop reading here because I'm going to give some things away.

I say again, STOP READING HERE!!

OK, so if you're still with me it means you don't plan to see The Book of Eli. The big question, of course, is what book the title refers to. The answer: the Bible. And not just any version of the Bible, but the New King James Version of the Bible. The movie takes you years into the future, after a nuclear holocaust has wiped out most of humanity, scorched the earth, left cities in ruins, and taken most everyone's hope away. The movie suggests that it had been at least in part a religious war, and the Bible was at the center of hostilities. Somehow every single copy of the Scriptures had been burned or destroyed - except one. Eli (Denzel Washington) managed to save that one copy from destruction, so he hid it away in his backpack and guards it with his life. He reads it daily and knows it by heart. Some time back he heard God's voice directing him to take his Bible across the country to the West. So obediently he packs up what little belongings he owns and starts walking across America - or what's left of it anyway. Along the way he meets up with assorted pagan bad guys and protects the book from theft and damage. He's an amazing sharpshooter and an accomplished martial artist who can handle a sword with deadly force. 

While this is a religion-friendly film, be aware that a lot of blood gets spilled, heads and hands get severed and go flying, and the body count is very high. It's a dark, violent movie filmed without color to give it a post-apocalyptic tone. Not only that, some of the language is offensive. If you don't mind those things and decide to see the film, what you'll see is a movie with a message that Christians will appreciate: The Word of God is divinely inspired, authoritative, powerful, and life-changing. There's even a scene where Eli prays before a meal and it's a humble, sincere prayer that catches the attention and warms the heart of Eli's traveling companion (played convincingly by Mila Kunis).

Those are the positive elements. On the other hand, I don't remember the name of Jesus ever being mentioned. And at the end of the movie, when Eli finally gets to his destination, the Bible is placed on a shelf alongside the Koran and other religious texts, as if to say that at the end of the day, all religions are equally valid and will get you where you need to go. Also, at one point Eli sums up the entire Bible with the Golden Rule. So he completely misses the meaning of the Bible. The Word of God is not a book of maxims designed to help you get more out of life and become a nicer person. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ, our Prophet, Priest, and King. Every page, every story, every psalm, every proverb, every narrative reveals the Savior and our need of him.

Still, I'm willing to give mild kudos to whoever came up with the story. Perhaps some who discredit the Bible or never bother to read it for themselves will pick it up and find it to be the entryway to light (Psalm 119:130).

Reaction to the upcoming ad by pro-abortion groups has been strong and immediate. The Women's Media Center launched a campaign to force CBS to "abort" the ad. Jehmu Greene, director of the center, tied the ad to the kind of hate that she said led to the killing of Kansas abortionist Dr. George Tiller last May. The National Organization of Women and other groups have circulated petitions to CBS not to air the ad.

George Diaz, sports columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, wrote, "Here's what I don't want [to see during the Super Bowl]: Tim Tebow telling me that abortion is wrong. My moral beliefs don't matter...What's not amusing is people getting preachy during my leisure time...." Diaz ended his January 27 editorial with,

"Sunday morning can be all about church. But come kickoff on Sunday, our attention turns to gridiron gods Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. Give me more talking frogs and dancing lizards, and less preachy Gators."

How ironic that a 30-second ad with a positive message about life should awaken such sarcasm and vitriol. Focus on the Family, which produced the ad, has obviously touched a tender place on the collective conscience of America. For it takes a huge amount of denial for someone to say that a baby in the womb is not a human being. Modern medical technology, with its ultrasound 3-D images of the fetus and other measuring devices, has erased all doubt about that, if there was any doubt. So advocates of abortion must try to shout louder than conscience. They have to call the ad "preachy." They have to complain that it belongs in church, not in the public square. They have to label it hate. That way, they don't have to watch the ad with an open mind and give its message serious consideration.

Let's pray that the ad will find its way into the hearts of Super Bowl watchers. Let's hope that the winning team that night will be the millions of unborn babies looking for a champion.

As the situation in Haiti nears the transition from immediate crisis to the early stages of long-term recovery, Mission to the World (MTW) is preparing to send Disaster Response teams into the area. These teams work though missionaries and their networks of churches and national pastors, which are concentrated in the central part of the country. The initial assessment team is leaving for Haiti on Friday, January 22.

MTW’s Disaster Response teams consist of specially trained and experienced professionals, the same teams that have responded to 20 disasters around the world, most notably in the Southeast Asian tsunami.

“Just as they did in the tsunami, [the teams] will set up their ministry and living quarters in tents so that they can live and work in the midst of the people they serve,” said Oscar Aylor, director of MTW Mercy Ministry. “Please pray for their safety. It is a potentially dangerous situation.”

MTW has begun communicating with churches and ministry partners around the world who are concerned for the people and the Church in Haiti, and envisions an opportunity for the worldwide Church to come together around this effort.

“The need for resources will continue for a long time,” said Aylor. “MTW is committed to Haiti and its people long after the media attention has turned elsewhere. Updates will soon be posted on the MTW website as well as information about volunteering. More frequent updates and information will appear on MTW’s Facebook page.”

To learn more, or to give, visit www.mtw.org/caring/haiti.asp.