Not Just Another Day

One of the interesting and sad things about the English language is that we are enamored with the cliche. When we have a special day to honor a particular segment of our society the cliches seem to flow more freely. Such is the case when it comes to Mother's Day. Those of us who are skeptics will make our case that Mother's Day is an occasion that is contrived by the greeting card companies. That may be true, however there is no group of people more deserving of their own day than moms.

I could load this up with a bunch of cliches and bore you with the typical Mother's Day droning, but I will spare you the excruciating torture. What I want to say is that God has blessed us with mothers to care for us, lead us, teach us, and train us to make us more like Christ. God has commanded us to honor our mother and father. We should. We will honor the moms on Sunday. We should honor them everyday. We should thank them for the investment that they have made in our lives. We should thank God for the blessing of mothers. Moms are a gift and every good and perfect gift comes from God. Thanks be to God and to our moms! Give them what they deserve. Respect, y'all!!

Going to Texas

Amy and I are privileged to travel to Luckenbach, Texas for the wedding of Alex Sears and Christy Ware this weekend. We are making our final preparations for our trip. We leave Thursday evening and return Tuesday evening.

Please pray for safe travel for us and please pray that nobody in Texas finds out that we are from L.A. It is dangerous living in L.A. When you live in L.A. you could get shot or something and that is scary, but a Texan will keep you and that would be even worse. "Oh...look at these cute little Californians. Let's keep 'em, you want to?"
(Don't panic. It is just a joke that I stole from Tammy Pescatelli!)

We will miss being with you on Sunday, but I know that you will have a great time together and I know that we will have a great time as well.

Many Blessings and...
Remember the Alamo!

Craig

The Contender

I don't do reality television much. If it were not for TIVO I would not watch any of it. You can skip the dumb stuff and watch a one hour program in 30 minutes or less. I guess I go for the obvious. I watch American Idol. There are some pretty good singers on there. I also watch The Contender. That is the boxing show with Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard. Each week there is a team challenge. The team who wins the challenge will send out their "champion" for the week and he gets to select his opponent. There is just something compelling about one man calling another man out and then the two of them just settling it like men in the ring. Even though you do not get to see the entire 5 round fight, blow by blow, you get the idea and you can tell who won the fight. It is quite entertaining and I have noticed something about the show that is really reflective of real life.

The "Christian" competitors suffer from a very poor understanding of the Scripture. They have been taught false doctrine. They remove Scripture from its proper context and use it to their benefit. I see this a lot in Christianity today. Sunday evening’s episode took the cake. At the end I felt very sorry for the young man who lost. A great deal of the episode centered on this young man's faith. He repeatedly made statements like, "God will give me the victory" or "I will overcome because of Jesus". On his way to the ring he said (and I will not quote it exactly), "It will be just like Samson in the Old Testament when he slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a monkey!" (That is not a typo. That is what he said. I know because we ran it back on TIVO three times. For those of you who do not know, Samson did slay 1,000 Philistines but with the jawbone of a DONKEY!) Now, I understand a bit about television. I am sure that the producers played the "let's make the Christian look absurd card". I am sure they played it way up, however he made the statements. He said that God would give him the victory in the ring. He said that he would overcome in the ring because of Jesus. He proceeded to get shellacked and the fight had to be stopped half way through the third round. We have victory over death because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God will allow us to overcome according to His will. The Scripture does not guarantee our success in the ring or in our own personal aspirations. We must be certain that we do not project worldly success onto our lives as Christ followers.

Folks, I am not writing this to kick the guy while he is down. I am not even questioning his faith or walk with Christ. Wait...yes I am questioning that, but that is not my motivation. The point is this. If we want to know Christ intimately we can. If we want to know the Scripture we can. We are capable of understanding the Scripture and interpreting it correctly if we have the desire to dig deep. The bottom line is that you don't have to be on The Contender to have your faith exposed. The reality of our life will be known everyday. I fear that many of us get in the ring everyday, in the fight of our life, and if there was a referee he would stop the fight because we are beaten, bloodied, and bruised. The knees of our faith get wobbly. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can be a contender. You are called to be a contender.
Jude 1:3 (New International Version)
“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”
We are called to contend for the faith. We can do it. The gospel has been entrusted to us. We must fight for it. I leave you with the words of encouragement that Paul wrote to Timothy.
1 Timothy 6:11-12
“But you, Timothy, belong to God; so run from all these evil things, and follow what is right and good. Pursue a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. [12] Fight the good fight for what we believe.”

Craig

Masters Week

I am a huge golf fan. This is Masters Week. The Masters Golf Tournament is my favorite event to watch. I will be rooting for Tiger, Fred Couples, Phil Mickelson, or another American to win. There is one foreign born player that I can root for. It is Bernhard Langer of Germany. He is a wonderful Christian man. You can read about the role the Masters played in his coming to know Christ by checking out this article.
http://www.golfweb.com/tournaments/masters/story/8359248
Enjoy.

Craig

My Struggle

This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. Easter Week 2005 is off to a very good start and I am enjoying it so far. Amy, Richie, and I just returned from a couple of days in San Diego. Paul will return with Josh and Jenny today. We played golf. We ate. We survived our respective families.

And I came to this conclusion. The devil has it in for me this week. I know that the devil fights extremely hard during this week. He knows that people’s hearts are soft concerning the gospel. He knows that people are prone to attend a service on this particular weekend. He knows that there is the possibility that people’s lives will be changed and their souls will be snatched from his grasp and an eternity in hell. He hates that. He knows that the lake of fire is his destiny. He wants to take others there with him. The devil knows that I am God’s child. He knows that he can’t get my soul, yet he still attacks with unwavering determination.

He attacks me with Easter stuff. Now, you guys know me. I don’t get hung up on Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and all that stuff. My problem is not philosophical. My problem is Whopper Eggs! I can resist anything except malted milk balls that are shaped and painted like Easter Eggs. I can resist chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs and hard-boiled eggs don’t tempt me much at all. But the devil knows that I cannot handle Whopper Eggs! The first thing that I see when I walk into my mother-in-law's house is a gallon sized Ziploc bag of Whopper Eggs.

I just wanted to share my struggle for this week. The rest of the week I can handle. The devil will get his. Lives will be changed and Jesus Christ will prevail just as He did on that first Easter morning. My waistline may expand, but God is still good.

According To His Purposes and For Other Whopper Lovers,
Craig

Passion Week

This coming Sunday we embark on one of the most important weeks of the year. Passion Week begins on Palm Sunday and continues through Easter Sunday. It is a wondeful time to share teh love of Christ with your friend or loved one. It is also a fantastic time to invite someone to attend a service with you and hear the Good News.
This Sunday I am going to talk about what Jesus Prayed For Us. Then we have a Good Friday Service (3/25 @ 7:00 PM) and two Easter Sunday Services at our regular times. There are invitations available at the information center.
The day after Easter Brad Jensen and his crew will begin construction on the new handicap accessible restroom in the education building. This will be the first strike in our building project with the major construction beginning right around June 1.
The Vision Team and the Event Team are busy planning a picnic for our entire church family. It will be Saturday May 14th at Kenneth Hahn Park. Mark the date on your calendar. More details will be forthcoming.

Have a wonderful week.
Craig

Nine Years Ago

A new year had dawned. It was the winter of 1996. We sat by the phone. We waited with anticipation for the mail to arrive each day. The phone never rang. The calls never came. The letters never arrived.

Back in the spring of 1995 Amy and I believed that God was calling us to leave our home church in National City, California. God was calling us to leave our quiet, middle-class neighborhood with the perfect little elementary school. God was calling us, like Abraham, to a place that we had never seen and knew nothing about. "I will show you the land," God was saying. We believed that the call was clear, however we went through a process (which I will show you on Sunday) to verify that what we were understanding was coming from God. So I stood before that congregation in suburban San Diego and I told those good people that God was calling us to move after almost nine years of ministry there.

In the fall of 1995 I sent my resume to over 400 churches across America that were looking for a pastor with no regard for geography, because we did not know anything about the land that God was calling us to. By the dawn of 1996 we had not received one call, one response by mail, not even one sniff from those 400 resumes.

Then one evening a guy named Bob Tripp called our house. He began to tell me about working at Dreyer's Ice Cream and about a buddy there who was a believer. Bob happened to ask his buddy one day, "Do you think your pastor knows anybody who is looking for a church to pastor?" His friend said, "I'll ask." He asked his pastor, Mike Kalapp of Calvary Baptist Church in Bellflower. Mike said, "I know a guy down in San Diego named Craig Henson who is looking." Bob said, "Mike Kalapp suggested I call to see if you would entertain the thought of coming to Venice Baptist Church." I thought, "Where in the world is Venice?" I knew about Venice. I should say I knew about the Boardwalk at Venice Beach. I was thrilled for the opportunity. It had been a long time since God had informed us that He had something new for us. The courtship began. I put on my best face. Venice Church put on her best face. We drove up to look around. The search team came down and heard me preach. There was an interview and more visits and then the good people of Venice invited us to come and we said, "Yes. We will come."

That was nine years ago this month. In some ways it seems like just yesterday. In other ways it seems like an eternity ago. The land (LA LA Land) that God showed us has been a land that has been rich and flowing with many blessings for us. Our family has changed dramatically. Richie and Paul have grown from frightened little boys, who were not sure about the land that God had called us to, into young men who love God and His church and L.A. Amy loves L.A. and is the most wonderful wife and help in ministry that any man could imagine. We have seen many lives changed and our church made over. I know that there are many more blessings to come. I know that God has big plans for our church. I know that God wants to redeem our neighborhood and He wants to use you and me to do it. The only thing that I can think of that will be better than living in L.A. and serving Christ with you is when He appears in the air to call His children to a land that we have never seen, but that we know is fairer than day. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. In the mean time I am thankful for our church and the awesome responsibility that God has given me here. I look forward to every day with Jesus and you.

My New Blog

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have ventured into the 21st century and started a blog.
I don't know if this will ever replace my Touching Base Email, however it just might.
It is just two days until we get to be together.
I am looking forward to it immensely.

Blessings,
Craig