Mic Thurber – Rocky Mountain Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

27 Feb

OH, WE DON’T THINK MUCH ABOUT THAT HERE

I was wholly unprepared for that statement! It came from a class assignment I had given to the students of my sophomore Bible class when I was teaching. The assignment was for the student to pick out a church, other than an Adventist one, from the yellow pages (some of you might not even know what yellow pages are, but I digress …), call up their pastor, and ask them what their view and understanding of the Second Coming was.

Having grown up in a faithful Seventh-day Adventist home, this was a real shock to one student. I still remember the look of almost confused disbelief she had on her face as she was telling me about it. Surely it was unthinkable to not think about the Second Coming!

My Seventh-day Adventist faith tradition is steeped in thinking about it. After all, it’s part of our very name. How could anyone not think about it?

I guess I was more sheltered myself than I thought I was. Surely everyone thought about it, at least once in a while. I mean, the entire Bible builds toward the Second Coming as the climax of history bringing in its wake the redemption of God’s beloved.

For me, the knowledge that all of history, all of the things that happen, all the machinations of powers seen and unseen, were working toward this ultimate reality has shaped so much of my life and my life’s focus.

And it runs from the childish to the very serious. Here’s what I mean:

Who among us did not pray at some point when we were younger, “Lord, please come quickly. But could you at least wait until I have a chance to get married first?” Maybe I’m the only one who prayed such a prayer, but I have a hunch I’m not alone. Paradoxically, I also told people who asked me when I was an eighth grader what I was going to do with my life when I grew up: “that it doesn’t matter what I want to be. Jesus will be here before I have grown up.”

In some ways, knowing what we know to be the future can inhibit our doing what we should do now. For example, if fire is going to burn this place up at some point, what’s the point in being careful with our environment? And if Jesus is coming soon, why plan for retirement? If His return is just around the corner, why bother getting involved in my community since most of the people in our community don’t seem to care about such things and wouldn’t pay attention anyway? Why bother starting a family or going to school?

I hope we don’t ever lose the Second Coming as a central focus of our life and our church’s life and intentionality in spite of all the ways that it can make us less connected and maybe even less concerned about the world around us.

The preciousness of the knowledge of the Second Coming really comes in knowing that the life we have here is not all there is. It helps remind us that there is an explanation for the truly terrible things that happen to us in this life. They aren’t just some cosmic whim acting out against us, but rather there’s a real, explainable cause for the sin and garbage in this life, and that the Second Coming is the end of all that nastiness. There is an end in sight. A glorious, inescapable, all-consuming end. Evil will not reign supreme forever. All that’s bad will not be allowed to be a ball and chain always holding us captive.

Because every day is a gift until the Day comes, I have freedoms that I didn’t have before. For example, now I’m free to care about my environment, not because I have to worry that if I don’t do my part, it will all collapse. I can do it because I love the beauty of God’s creation, and, by doing what I can to keep it clean and lovely, I get to have a constant reminder of God’s creative genius and relish in the wonderful things He provided for me to enjoy.

I have a way of understanding evil and its intent. I can see that all creation groans under its weight, but I don’t become consumed by it because I know evil’s time is short.

I don’t have to worry about who gets elected president or what party is in power because their power pales in comparison to the weight of glory that will soon be revealed.

So, I am free to invest myself for the betterment of those around me. If God opens a chance to share the Good News, that’s wonderful. Even if not, I can make a friend and make their and my life a little better. While I have time, I have opportunities the live a more abundant life, the very kind Jesus said He came to make possible.

So, our central tenet of the Second Coming can mark us and free us in all kinds of significant ways. Let’s just not use it as an excuse to withdraw or isolate ourselves. As someone has once famously said about church folk: “they are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly good.” May that never be truthfully said of us!

Is there more that forms my Adventist worldview? Of course. But the Second Coming is one core part of my very being that has such a profound impact on me and my place in this world. And maybe I should be asking this question more often: “So, what do you think about the Second Coming?” While I realize that different ones of us might answer that question differently. I just hope and pray that, however, that no one in our conference will ever say, “oh, we don’t think much about that here.”

Mic Thurber is president of the Rocky Mountain Conference. Email him at: [email protected]

24 Jul

TEN ADVENTISTS AND TEN ANSWERS

Being in Adventist ministry my entire work life means that I’ve moved a bunch. Some Adventist workers have had to move a lot, but I’ve only had to move a bunch (which is less than a lot). The eight times we’ve moved each had its own unique challenges, especially when it comes to finding a suitable place to live.

The first two times we moved we were assigned housing both at Adventist boarding schools. But from then on, it was up to us. Move number three was a bit unique in that the conference I was moving to did not invite me to bring Jana along to look over the call and find housing, so I bought a small three bedroom condo in San Diego without Jana being present to look it over. Fortunately, Jana was very gracious about it. It did help that we could pick carpet and tile color after the purchase, but I learned then that it’s never wise to make that sort of decision on your own if you are married!

As we continued in the work and moved more times, I learned that when we looked for houses together, and then later still when we began to take our children into consideration, it became very obvious that each of us valued something different in a house. One feature or another would catch one of our fancies, and they, only rarely, turned out to be the same features that were special for all of us. So we had the same end goal in mind, but the things we each found most appealing about a given housing opportunity always varied. But, in the end, we found a way to make whatever our choice ultimately was work out just fine.

If you were to ask any 10 faithful Adventist Christians what authentic Adventism was to them, my hunch is that you’d get maybe 10 different answers. That may be because there are different parts of being an Adventist that really hooks into a person’s soul that may not resonate the same way for another person. Oh, we’re all on the same track—we have the same goal in mind. But different things might bring different joys to different people.

For example, some of us find Adventism precious because we truly can give ourselves a break once every week to lay aside all our stresses and struggles and rest. I imagine that of all the commandments given in the desert to the soon-to-be-wandering Israelites were greatly surprised they could actually have a day when they did not have to work—they of former slave status that had no concept of resting on a Sabbath.

For others, it might be the comfort of knowing that those they love whom they have lost are asleep. Still others will be grateful that God does not punish with eternal hellfire.

I imagine that one of our dearest and most cherished hopes is our belief that Jesus is coming soon. Some of us are tired of this world and want to go home!

Some of us are desperately in love with Jesus, and want to do all we can to live for Him.

So we can all be one as Adventists and yet still love different things that bring us joy, all the while appreciating and loving all the other wonderful things it means to be an Adventist.

What I am most uncomfortable with is when one of us tries to enforce our view of what it means to be a true, faithful Adventist on our brothers and sisters. Some even point to specific periods of time and observe who we were back then and say, “this is what we should be today.” But a careful study of our history will show that there was much development of our church and its structure and doctrines over many years. It’s true that we still have disagreements about what some of those “old days” meant in terms of authentic Adventism, so maybe pointing to different eras of the church may not be so helpful.

May I posit one suggestion? It’s not meant to settle the question: what does “Authentic Adventism” mean? Rather, it’s a starting point and perhaps even an ending point. If we don’t start and end with at least this, then all of the stuff in between can be used in unhealthy ways.

Just three short sentences from Jesus—who is the head of our church: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples (John 13.34-35, NLT).

I want to be that authentic.

Mic Thurber is the RMC president. Email him at: [email protected]

20 Apr

EDITORIAL: YOU WANT TO IMPACT YOUR CULTURE? GOOD.

We have big dreams, we Adventists. With a prophetic mandate woven into our DNA, we want to impact our world for Jesus and His kingdom. And as we watch what impacts our culture today, we see that it takes big stuff to get the world’s attention.

Well, we have some big stuff, too. God has richly blessed us with a highly visible and fully professional hospital system. We have major media outreach ministries, both church-sponsored and independent. We have a nationally known medical school along with several colleges and universities, some of which show up high on the list of the U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges.

We’re proud of these entities and ministries, and we stand behind them. And not just as a statement of support. Often what we do is stand behind them in terms of expecting them to be the big stuff that captures the world’s attention. So, we stand back and let them be our big splash. After all, it takes big stuff to impact our world.

And, of course, that feels safer. Standing behind something big makes us feel less vulnerable. Plus, we are always anxious about being too close to the world, because, well, we worry about what the world might do to us if we stand too close. After all, if you take a clean, white glove and grab some wet mud with it, you don’t end up with glovey mud, you end up with a muddy glove. So, we keep our distance from the mud and depend on other things, bigger things, to interface and impact the culture. Bigger things are more immune to culture’s potential contamination.

When I was senior pastor of the Keene Adventist Church on the campus of Southwestern Adventist University, our church and the university partnered to present a full-on depiction of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as other campuses have done around the North American Division. It took about 450 volunteers to make it work, and we used various settings all over the campus and in the church to depict important scenes in the life and death of Jesus. Some 5,500 people saw the presentations annually, with most of the viewers being either non-churched folks or people who were members of other denominations. Every year we would get busloads of members of other churches bringing many of their members to walk through our two-and-a-half-hour program, many walking on an Adventist campus and in an Adventist church for the first time in their lives.

In addition to the major goal of telling the gospel story to as many people as we could, one of our goals in this large event was to be an entrée, if you will, to the Adventist name and to let them know that we believe in Jesus and His sacrifice as our only means for salvation. It was big stuff. But we did it because we wanted to make it easier for our local Adventist churches to reach their own neighbors since the big stuff of our program introduced Adventists easily in a positive, Jesus-connected way.

So, it wasn’t the big stuff, in the end, that would be the touchpoint for connecting with people. For that, we depended on the willingness of the members of our local churches to take good advantage of the seeds we’d planted. In the end, it still takes individual men and women, young and old, to reach out on a very personal level and make the contacts that can lead to changed lives and connection with the Savior.

Do we need the big stuff? Absolutely. But those things alone are not enough. The real impact on our culture comes one person at a time, when we, when YOU, become the hands and feet of Jesus. You want to impact your culture? Good. So do I. But it happens best one person at a time, reaching out for one person at a time. You might think that one person at a time hardly impacts the culture. But in the end, it may be the only thing powerful enough to actually do it.

Mic Thurber is the RMC president. Email him at: [email protected]

31 Jan

EDITORIAL: WHAT IS THE BASIS OF YOUR FAITH, IF NOT JESUS?

There’s an old story about a parishioner who met their pastor at the door of the church after a particularly strong sermon he had just preached on grace. The parishioner’s comment was telling: “So when are you going to preach the other side?”

The story doesn’t tell how the pastor reacted to that question, but it might be that his reaction was similar to mine when an elder of my church met me at the door during a series of sermons I’d been preaching directly out of the Gospels about Jesus, His life, His ministry, and His love for us. The elder asked: “Can’t you preach about something other than Jesus for a while?”

I was still pretty young in ministry at the time, and I had no idea that a member, an elder in our church, a faithful one who genuinely loved the church and its members, could ever ask me something like that. Made me wonder, “then what is the basis of your faith, if not Jesus? If it is truly Him, wouldn’t you want to hear everything about Him that can be learned?”

The Pharisee and rabbinic orders of New Testament times were experts in the practice of religion. Jesus noted that many times in the Gospels, and not a single time was it meant as a compliment. It’s a curious fact that the only group that received stern warnings and words from Jesus were from this class—the professionally religious of His day. They had the “form of godliness, but not its power.” And how could that be?

That can only come from one thing: when the things and trappings of religion become more important than the person, life, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When they do, inevitably the person who is consumed by the trappings begins to judge both themselves and others by what is most important to them. It becomes their life’s passion to master the trappings. The snare here is that most of the trappings are good things. Sometimes even important things. But they are still trappings. They are not the center.

All other religions are based on the human journey toward God. Only Christianity is about God’s search for us. That started in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden when He came looking for Adam and Eve only to find them hiding. Sin caused such irreparable separation that we’d never know how to reach God were it not for Jesus. He found us so that we may find Him. He chose us so that we may choose Him.

The trappings of religion are a mere substitute for a personal relationship with Jesus. Humans can easily fall into the trap of thinking that once we’ve mastered the trappings, we think we’ve mastered religion and therefore, salvation. To simply believe seems just too simple.

I leave you with a test to see where your focus is. I quoted these sentences from Steps to Christ during my worship at our constituency session last August. Perhaps you can use them as your own gauge to see if you are focused on a Person or something else:

“Who has the heart? With whom are our thoughts? Of whom do we love to converse? Who has our warmest affections and our best energies? If we are Christ’s, our thoughts are with Him, and our sweetest thoughts are of Him. All we have and are is consecrated to Him. We long to bear His image, breathe His spirit, do His will, and please Him in all things.” (p. 58).

Mic Thurber is the RMC president. Email him at: [email protected]

14 Apr

RMC PRESIDENT’S EASTER MESSAGE

The satirical site The Onion ran a humorous (note: fictional) article with a biting truth. The article was titled “World Death Rate Holding Steady at 100 Percent.”

The article reported: “World Health Organization officials expressed disappointment Monday at the group’s finding that, despite the enormous efforts of doctors, rescue workers, and other medical professionals worldwide, the global death rate remains constant at 100 percent.

Death, a metabolic affliction, causing total shutdown of all life functions, has long been considered humanity’s number one health concern. Responsible for 100 percent of all recorded fatalities worldwide, the condition has no cure.”

No cure. Really?

Too bad they never heard the great news that Jesus broke death!

Pilate allowed for the guards to be posted at Jesus’ tomb because the worried priests were afraid some of His disciples would come and steal His body and then claim He had arisen. It never occurred to them that Jesus might actually live again. Their defense was not against a truly resurrected Christ, but of an earthly plot to make them look bad.

What a tragic loss for them to not see the resurrected Christ! For in that resurrection is the power to save, to heal, to let us know that our death is not final and that in the end, He will eternally triumph over all death, disease, and sin.

The Christian’s joy is that Jesus turned the world of cause and effect on its head. Death caused life, and all efforts to repress this great truth only serve to spread it farther and wider.

The next time someone says the global death rate remains constant at 100 percent, remind them of another 100 percent reality: Jesus is alive, and so one day shall all those be who have died in Him and given their hearts to Him.

Jesus Christ is risen – He is risen indeed!

–Mic Thurber is RMC president; photo supplied

28 Mar

IT’S OK TO DISAGREE

By Mic Thurber … What I will speak about today was much easier to present five or six years ago. Since then, our public discourse has become strained and coarse. Whether the genesis of the argument is politics, the pandemic, or theology, differences of opinion are now seen as cause to consider someone as our enemy. Many have seen that atmosphere invade church life and discourse.

I enter this plea: can we please tone it down? Can we find a way to ratchet down the atmosphere when we speak of our differences? And can we somehow find room in our hearts to love, worship with, pray for, and journey toward the Kingdom alongside those who differ from our personal viewpoint?

This does not mean, however, that we cannot have spirited discourse and even debate. Our early church founders—whether in New Testament times or in the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s—were disposed to sometimes heated disagreements.

I remember my first real exposure to how closely held a personal point of view can be and how helpful a challenge to that view can also be. It came from an experience my father had when we were in the process of moving from Glendale, California, to Keene, Texas. My dad had just decided to leave the King’s Heralds Quartet and move our family to Texas where he would begin his work as conference youth director, a position that would soon become youth evangelist.

While on one of his trips to Texas, prior to our actual move, he had gone to the lot where the foundation of our new house had just been poured. As he was walking around inspecting it and visualizing how all the rooms would be laid out on the slab, a man approached him with a question asked in such a tone of voice as to give away his own feelings on the matter. His question? “I understand you are the new youth director for the Texas Conference, and I want to know what your stand is on guitars?”

This question was asked in the summer of 1967, so my father’s reply was timely: “Well, with all the Beatles and bugs crawling all around the world dragging their guitars behind them, guitars are really a problem.” The man seemed well satisfied with the answer–-at least until my dad punctuated his answer with a few more words.

“But I worry about something even more than guitars,” my dad went on to say. “What’s that?” asked the man. “The piano,” my dad said. “Every bar in the country has a piano in it yet we allow it in our churches.”

My first introduction to a moment of strong disagreement. This story taught me some valuable lessons. First, we will not all agree. Second, we can be spirited in our disagreement and still be decent to one another. Third, we should give broad latitude to each other to disagree and not disparage one another when the subject of our disagreement is not a centrally held, doctrinal position. Fourth, allow and expect that context matters, and that judgment about many things can change over time. Within a few months of this story, my dad brought home my very first guitar, which became my early life’s passion. I dedicated it to the Lord’s service and ended up playing guitar for many years in hundreds of church settings and youth gatherings.

It’s easy to see our church as a church in which everything is settled and there is no more room for discussion. As the world becomes ever more complex and the enemy becomes more sophisticated in his traps and attacks, it seems to me that if ever there was a time to keep studying, keep learning, keep dialoguing, it is now.

So, let us not be afraid to disagree. But can we do it with grace, kindness, and openness? And can we please do it with the goal of helping each other across the finish line? If that is our commitment, I believe God will use our time of mutual engagement to help us grow ever closer to His image and to the Kingdom yet to come.

–Mic Thurber is the RMC president. Email him at: [email protected]

10 Jan

WHAT IS TRUTH FOR?

By Mic Thurber — One of the most often quoted questions from Scripture came from pagan lips: “What is truth?” Pilate really wanted to know, but when confronted with the truth as embodied in Jesus as He stood before him, he wasn’t willing to let truth change him.

As Seventh-day Adventists, we highly value truth. We even speak of those who join our fellowship as those “who come into the truth.” And if someone asks a long-time church member how long they’ve belonged, they might say some- thing like: “I’ve been in the truth for 45 years…”

We esteem truth because, well, we want to be right—right about important things. But I wonder sometimes if our emphasis on “the truth” makes us forget what Jesus said about Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

After all, we don’t believe in righteousness by information— we believe in righteousness through faith in Jesus and His marvelous grace.

Truth’s best advantage comes in helping us understand our great God and His plan for our lives. It is not a tool for us to wield on someone who has less truth than we might have. It’s not to be used to show superiority, or draw battle lines, but to draw us ever closer to the heart of a great God that invites us to get to know Him.

I’ve been thinking about a way to describe how careful we need to be in handling truth, both within our fellowship and when we interface with people not of our belief system.

In western North Carolina near where I went to academy is a mountain after which our school was named. Mt Pisgah could be seen from various spots on campus. It could also be seen for miles around in virtually every direction in that part of the state.

The thing that struck me is this: though the mountain was always the same, its shape and profile varied—sometimes quite a bit—depending on the vantage point of the viewer.

So, if you tried to explain what it looked like to someone from a given spot, the description would only match the mountain if the two of you were standing at the same spot. It would not match the view of another person just a few miles down the road. Same mountain. Different views. It depends on the ground upon which the viewer stands.

Over my life and ministry, I’ve noticed that while truth never changed, my perspective on it would often change and grow according to where I was at the time. Some things that I was once very sure about would take on different shades of meaning once I reached other places in my life or spiritual journey. Sort of like driving on a road for miles with Mt. Pisgah in view. Same truth. Different views. It depended on where I was standing at the time.

That’s one very important reason why we need to be more respectful of truth than we sometimes are.

Truth is much bigger than we are. And we should be loath to pronounce that we have, hold, and know the full truth. We need to be willing to admit that we have more to learn. And we should allow for the reality that each of us are in different places in our spiritual journey. So, things could well look different to each of us depending on where we are at any given moment.

Perhaps it’s less important to “win” in an argument over truth than it is to encourage one another on our journey toward the Kingdom. This allows the truth we do see at any given moment to spur us on toward Jesus. That might help us answer a question Pilate didn’t ask but perhaps should have: “What is truth for?”

–Mic Thurber is the RMC president. Email him at: [email protected]

23 Dec

SEASON’S MESSAGE FROM RMC PRESIDENT

We didn’t know what to make of the sudden unnerving sounds of police and emergency sirens piercing the normal quiet of our neighborhood. But we could tell there were several vehicles there by the sounds of many sirens and lots of blue and red flashing lights. They had passed by our front door too fast for us to get there to see what was going on, but when we saw the lights flashing beyond the houses on the street behind us, we thought that maybe there was some medical emergency or criminal disturbance nearby. When the lights didn’t go out, and the sirens continued to blaze, we noticed they were moving back toward our street. This time I made it to the front door just in time to see a parade of police and emergency vehicles going by with a Santa Claus riding atop an ambulance waving and shouting Christmas cheer to everyone. Whew!

No doubt the shepherds were relieved on a hillside just outside Bethlehem two millennia ago when the lights and sounds were the herald of good news and joy! The voices from the sky led them to the manger where, in quiet awe, they gazed at their King and Savior.

I don’t know what kind of noise or chaos, or anxiety or trouble is in your life right now. This season is your chance to look to the Light, listen for the Voices, and gaze once again at your King and Savior. I believe that you will find the peace, joy, and grace that is just what you need for this moment in your life if you will really pause to gaze anew into His face.

On behalf of the entire Rocky Mountain team of pastors, teachers, office, and support staff, we send our love, best wishes, and joy to you and your family during this season and through the coming year.

–Mic Thurber, RMC president