Be Careful with This Stuff: Foreword to More People to Love

Just before Christmas our book More People to Love was released. If you didn’t get a chance to pick it up, you can get it for free by subscribing to this blog (see sidebar). And if you want a paper copy, the book is only $7.99 on Amazon.

Below is the foreword to our book by author and syndicated radio host, Brant Hansen.

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A note before you start reading this book: Be careful with this stuff.

If you take Jason and Benjamin seriously, you might wind up doing something dangerous, which is to say, actually follow through on it. You might even pick up and move. Now, for some people, moving into a troubled city is no big deal. But to me, it was an ironic twist of the highest order.

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I used to hate cities. Not moderately dislike; hate. No lie: I learned how to play guitar so I could play John Cougar Mellencamp songs. The first song I learned was—of course—“Small Town.” (For those younger than 40, this is a song about, you know, small towns, and how awesome they are.)

At the University of Illinois most of my friends were from Chicago. I was from a town called “Assumption” (population: 1,000). We argued endlessly about the relative merits of urban versus rural lifestyles.

Growing up in country churches, I’d sing along with songs about heaven. And they all evoked the countryside. “I want a mansion, just over the hilltop . . .” and “Just give me a little cabin, in the corner of Gloryland . . .”

Of course Heaven would be rural. It’s obvious. And Hell? Well, I’m just saying, it’s overcrowded. Probably has a subway. So draw your own conclusions.

I even used to dislike (again, I’m not making this up) Sesame Street because it was too urban. It scared me. Trashcans and brick buildings and apartments and everybody packed in there. Sure, I liked Grover—who doesn’t?—but the city thing was freaky.

 . . . and then it happened; I moved to the city. The ideas in this book, the ideas in the Bible . . . well, they’re dangerous, and they changed things for me. They changed everything.

It’s taken a long time to absorb, but I’ve learned that, apparently, God loves people more than cornstalks. I’ve also learned God wants to conform my heart to his. Sometimes, this means re-thinking, which happens to be what “repentance” means.

So, very long story short, here we are—my family and I living in the inner city. And, to add irony, on our street they could film Sesame Street. I frequently joke about hiding in our trashcan in front of our old brick building and doing some grouchy freelance puppetry.

I still love small towns and yearn for the familiar, but God has changed my heart on this one. As Jason and Benjamin point out in this book, heaven is going to be a city. The old hymns steered me wrong on this one.

Nature is beautiful, but is it possible that, to God, cities have a beauty of an even higher order? I’ve looked over the Rift Valley, and I’ve marveled at Yosemite and, like you, have seen the night sky.

Breathtaking.

But I also remember looking out over San Francisco in the evening and thinking, “You know what? There’s nothing else like this.”

God also created us to create. He loves us. To think we can also make something beautiful because we’re stamped with his image, and put so many people, who are so loved, in one place—there’s something breathtaking about that, too.

My wife and I have a totally different life together now. Our neighborhood is everything I was scared of growing up. We can’t set foot out the door without interacting with someone interesting, whether it’s a friendly old neighbor lady or a not-friendly old neighbor lady; a drunk person at 9 a.m. or the local drug dealer; the wonderful family crammed into an old place across the street with their five sweet little boys or . . . well . . . that young man who attacked my wife with a hammer in broad daylight on a Monday morning. Like I said, there’s always someone interesting just outside our door.

And when that hammer was thrown at my wife, she was just walking the dogs. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt. Still, the guy just came up the street and threw a hammer. Then he ran up to her, put her in a headlock, and eventually threw her on the street. This was everything we’d feared, whether we’d said it aloud or not.

Could we even stay here?

My wife now says in some ways it was a blessing. We’re more connected to our neighbors than ever, and they know who we are. They also got to see my wife’s desire to forgive her attacker, even as we let the justice system do its necessary thing. We pray for the guy.

And we pray for our neighbors. Addicts, wiccans, weirdoes, whatever. Hey, we’re weird too, and we’re not here to change you. We can’t do that. We’re actually for you. Truth is, we don’t totally know what we’re doing. But wow, is this interesting!

There’s a man who sits on our sidewalk every day, all day and drinks beer. He’s old and full of stories. He told us, “You know what? You guys are the best thing to happen to this neighborhood in years.”

Whether that’s true or not, whether it was the beer talking or not, I was glad to hear it. Another neighbor sat on our stoop and asked my wife, “So, I’ve wondered something: Why do you guys love people here so much?”

I don’t tell you this to tell you we’re awesome. I tell you this because we’re not. You can do this, too. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m an introvert and socially awkward and very selfish and I don’t naturally like people at all . . . but my heart is changing.

God loves people—needy, broken people—and now . . . well, here they are, right outside our window.

I’m convinced he not only loves them, he likes them, too. Imagine that.

Me? I’m getting there.

Here’s to getting there together!

Brant Hansen, Syndicated Christian radio host and author of Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better

[Photo by Abigail Keenan / Unsplash]

Riddle My Fiddle – My First Book

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On December 6, the book I co-authored, More People to Love, is being released. Can’t wait to share it with you. The popular Christian radio host, Brant Hansen, wrote the foreword. The book will be for sale at Amazon.com for $7.99.

Last week, I received this recommendation from my former boss and pastor, Greg Lavine:

More People to Love paints a vision – to move us from where we are to a place more situated to live out the gospel. It compels us to leave behind comfort and convenience to love people, all kinds of people, specifically people who look different from us.

– Greg Lavine
Senior Pastor, New Life Bible Fellowship, Tucson, Arizona

This is all pretty exciting to me.

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My First book. Click to Enlarge.

My mother, however, informed me More People to Love won’t be my first book. Then, she texted me a picture of a book I wrote when I was eight years old! You can see the picture below.

The whole book is hilarious. At one point, I wrote that I wanted to be an engineer when I grow up, or maybe an astronomer. One of those turned out to be true, at least for six years.

But my favorite entry in the book is a poem I wrote. It makes (almost) no sense. If you care to, you can read it below.

I do, however, love the phrase “riddle my fiddle” that I used near the end of the poem. In fact, I’ve now been saying “riddle my fiddle” around the house for the last two weeks. By the way, it’s more fun to say it if you slap your knee at the same time. You’re welcome to use this phrase, too. Seriously, no copyright infringement. You have my permission.

When you go down to the wood, you’re sure to find a big surprise,
For Grammy Nelly has forgot her tell, and Nelly the Elephant quit the Circus too.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall watching Leads United [a British soccer team] score a goal, and Humpty was delighted. Riddle my fiddle!
The cat jumped over the moon. And the Cow watched me riddle my fiddle.

I know what you’re thinking. I was a child prodigy. Thanks.

[Picture by Jared Erondu / Unsplash]

More People to Love, Preface

In early December of this year (2016), Jason Abbott (my co-pastor) and I are launching a book. It’s called, More People to Love: How the Bible Starts in a Garden and Ends in a City and What That Means for You. Below is a sneak peak at the preface I wrote.

How Can I Help?  First, we’ll need a dozen or so “beta readers”—people to read and comment on the manuscript before it’s published. Second, we’ll also need people (hopefully quite a few people!) to promote the book on social media. If you want to help with either of these, please send me an email (benjamin@fanandflame.com or click here).

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Jason Abbott and I are teaching pastors at Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Our church is not large, by any means, but we are growing. And the growth is putting a strain on our current building facilities. We’re like a toddler with a onesie that’s getting snug—we can make it a little while in our current outfit, but soon we’re going to need a bigger one. Nevertheless, finding and buying a larger building, as well as selling our old building and moving, is a challenging prospect.

In addition to this, we feel called by God to plant other churches. This probably won’t happen for a few years, but we need to plan for it now. It, too, will be challenging.

Oh, and as if these prospects weren’t enough, our church needs to grow in diversity. Our congregation is not nearly as diverse as our surrounding community. We’ve prayed and talked about this for some time, but now we need to address it in a less passive way. And that’s also going to be hard.

These potential changes (along with a dozen others) while exciting, are also scary. People don’t typically like change, and pastors are people too.

Despite all this, we’re not at the place of despair. Far from it! We’re full of hope. But, in order to see why, it might be helpful to back up. Somewhere in 2012, another pastor sent me an email that said simply:

More people to love.

Thanks,
John

This email changed things for me. When I received it, the church I was serving was growing rapidly. Someone needed to evaluate the current trends and create a plan to accommodate the growth. So I drew from my former career in engineering, opened up Microsoft Excel, and took a hard look at our attendance data. I created pretty graphs and conservative growth projections for the next few years, and I sent them to the staff and elders.

At that time, I was primarily viewing the new people as more of a problem than a blessing. As the pastor who was charged with overseeing the connection of newcomers to the church, I viewed new people as new problems. The line on the graph representing attendance might as well have been labeled “Benjamin’s workload.” For every fifty new people, could I really keep adding five hours to my workweek? At some point, simply trying harder wasn’t going to solve the problem. (Again, there’s that word, “problem.”)

Then, just a few minutes after I sent my concerned email, I received John’s reply: “More people to love.” That’s all it said. I remember staring at my computer screen. The contrast between my approach and John’s was stark. He was ready for adventure, ready to see his story and the story of our church in light of the Big Story of the Bible. I was not.

Following the sting came repentance.

That was four years ago. Now, in the providence of God, I’m at a new church. And the situation is similar: a growing church, a growing workload, and growing fear.

Then I remember John’s email, and I’m encouraged, even excited. It reminds me that the Big Story of God is about the love of God growing and expanding. John’s email reminds me that what started with two in a garden ends with a multitude in a city. And while faithfully living inside this story, God’s Big Story, has always been hard, it’s also always worth it—because God is worth it.

The following seven chapters are about this Big, Always-worth-it Story. These chapters have been adapted from a series of sermons Jason and I preached at our church. But they aren’t simply about our church. Yes, we preached them to prepare our congregants for a potential building change. Yes, we preached them to prepare our local church for the challenges of church planting. And yes, we preached them to prepare our fellowship to grow in its ability to love our surrounding community. But these chapters are about something more fundamental than these objectives. Foundationally, they are not about our church at all. They are about God’s plan, as revealed from Genesis to Revelation, to “make [his] name great among the nations” (Malachi 1:11). In short, this book is about the Big Story of God and seeing our stories in light of his story.

Four years ago, when I received that email, things changed for me: the glory of God in his mission to love more and more people softened my heart and opened my eyes. As you read this book, Jason and I pray that it’ll do the same for you.

* Click here to read the Table of Contents.

[Picture by Jared Erondu / Unsplash]

More People to Love, Table of Contents

Later this fall, Jason Abbott (my co-pastor) and I are launching a book. It’s called, More People to Love: How the Bible Starts in a Garden and Ends in a City and What That Means for You. I’m really excited about it.

View fullsize

More People to Love is a book about The Big Story of the Bible. It’s about God’s plan, as revealed from Genesis to Revelation, to “make [his] name great among the nations” (Malachi 1:11). At times, our lives can be very difficult. But seeing our lives in light of The Big Story—the beautiful story of God’s unfolding plan of redemption—gives us the perspective we need to carry on with purpose and joy.

Brant Hansen wrote the foreword. He’s a nationally syndicated Christian radio host and author of Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better. I just read a draft of his foreword. Here’s a few quotes from it:

Growing up in country churches, I’d sing along with songs about heaven. And they all evoked the countryside. “I want a mansion, just over the hilltop . . .” and “Just give me a little cabin, in the corner of Gloryland . . .”

Of course Heaven would be rural. It’s obvious. And Hell? Well, I’m just saying it’s overcrowded. Probably has a subway. So draw your own conclusions. . . .

I still love small towns, and still yearn for the familiar. But God has changed my heart on this one. Like Jason and Benjamin point out in this book, Heaven is going to be a city. The old hymns steered me wrong on this one.

I can’t wait to share the whole thing with you.

How Can You Help?

Would you like to help us with the project? In a few weeks, I’ll say more about this. For now, I’ll just mention two ways.

First, we’ll need a dozen or so “beta readers”—people to read and comment on the manuscript before it’s published.

Second, we’ll also need people (hopefully quite a few people!) to promote the book on social media.

If you want to help with either of these, please send me an email (benjamin@fanandflame.com or click here).

The book launch won't be until sometime in December, but below is a sneak peak at the table of contents.

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CONTENTS

Foreword, Brant Hansen

Preface, Benjamin Vrbicek

1 | A Man into a Multitude, Jason Abbott, Genesis 1–12

2 | Letter to Exiles, Benjamin Vrbicek, Jeremiah 29:1–14

3 | A Stunning Victory, Jason Abbott, Matthew 4:1–11

4 | The Good Shepherd, Benjamin Vrbicek, John 10:1–16

5 | Not Too Light a Thing, Jason Abbott, Acts 10:1–8

6 | The Death that Killed Hostility, Benjamin Vrbicek, Ephesians 2:11–22

7 | The New Harrisburg, Jason Abbott, Revelation 21:22–27

Epilogue, Benjamin Vrbicek

Notes

[Picture by Anthony Delanoix / Unsplash]