Scott Freeman

Bringing a discussion from my comments to the main board:

How would applying the teachings of Jesus manifest themselves in 21st Century America?  What do we make of His sayings?  How do we apply that?  How do we live it?

What does this newfound awareness I have of the person of the Christ mean?  How does it manifest itself?

I have added to my prayer to love people more that I will not be afraid of the touch.  It goes something like this now: “Lord, help me to love people more and not be afraid to be touched by them.”

How do we live like Jesus?

Or, The Most Important Part of This Story

Two confessions:

1. I’m not very good at prayer.
2. I’m not a people person.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the power of prayer. I believe that there is great benefit and power in prayer. I’m just not very good at it.

I bristle with the rote, legalistic attitude with which we often approach prayer. (I.E. you have to pray before every meal, you have to ask forgiveness in each prayer, you have to have the proper opening and closing, etc.) But, that’s another blog post.

The more important part of my confession, for this story, is the fact that I am NOT a people person.

I love people. I even like a whole lot of them. But I’m not the most outgoing, gregarious fellow you will encounter.

I don’t like large groups. I don’t feed off of big get-togethers or things like that. I hate the phone and will beg Tracy to make even the most basic calls.
I’m content to be home with my family or at my desk studying. I don’t have the gift of hospitality.
I’m not much on visitation. I was raised to never go somewhere uninvited, and that has stuck with me.

I am introverted, much more likely to escape into my thoughts than I am to strike up a conversation.

I do well one-on-one. I’m fairly adept at counseling people with marital problems and other issues. I even, typically, enjoy that.

But, my ministerial strengths are preaching and teaching. That is where I am gifted.

As a result, one of the criticisms of me through the years has been on the pastoral side of my job. (Note: one thing that the Church of Christ has to get over is it’s nit-picking attitude toward the use of the word “pastor.” Name me one “minister” in our churches who is not expected to pastor.)

I’ve been called, repeatedly, unapproachable. In Michigan, the elders continually encouraged me to engage more. It was obviously a source of frustration for them that I did not fit squarely into their ideas of what a preacher should be.

When I accepted the call to move to Waco I realized that I needed to try harder to correct that. So, tying those two “weaknesses” together I decided that I would pray about it.

I began to pray that God would place within me the capacity to love people more.

I began to pray that I would be more caring and compassionate.

Over and over, I repeated the simple line, “Help me to love people more.”

I began that prayer under the hopes that it would improve my inter-congregational skills.

What I did not know, at the beginning, was that God would have something else in mind.

The prayer worked, but not in the way I expected.  All of those seemingly random events that I have been describing in this series began to make a whole lot more sense.
I did begin to love people more. All people.

I began to care about the poor. I began to be concerned about the plight of people across the world who are suffering.

Words like Rwanda and Darfur appeared on my radar screen. AIDS ceased being a bullet I dodged when I got married, but a crisis of biblical proportions.

Homosexuals stopped being “fags” and “dykes” and started to become precious souls in need of love. A proposition I would have voted for became one I voted against.

Muslims ceased being the source of all my scorn and hatred and became men, women, and children to me.

A lifetime of racial jokes against people of different colors and backgrounds became a source of tremendous shame.

War became a travesty. The killing of innocent lives was impossible to justify, even for the sake of “freedom.”

The way we treat the earth became a concern. The disadvantaged and the downtrodden bear the brunt of our environmental excesses.

God gave me the capacity to love, but it became a love without borders, without doctrine, without skin color, without denominational loyalty.

It became the love of Christ.

I began to love the convict and the criminal. The poor and the forgotten. I began to love the homosexual and the Baptist. I began to love Democrats and Libertarians. I began to love the HIV-infected and the USA-affected.
I began to tremble with the weight of compassion that such a prayer had. My preaching changed.

My politics changed.

My worldview changed.

My sense of right and wrong changed. No longer did I look first at how things affected this country but I looked at how they affected the Kingdom.

Poverty became my problem. Racism became my problem.

The environment became my problem. Embracing the immigrant became my problem.

Oh, God answered that prayer.  I love my congregation more.  But I also love the rest of God’s creation so much more.

I’m still an introvert and I probably always will be.  I’m learning that many of us out there are the same way.  It does not mean that we don’t love.  It does not mean that we don’t care.

It just means that God uses us in a different way.  And I’m ok with that.

Pray that same prayer and God will change you.  I’m not doing praying it:

“Help me to love people more.”

And you will love.  Ultimately what got me to where I am today was through the power of God to take this reserved, often cynical, individual and place within him the capacity to love.

To care.  To weep for those we tend to discard.

Pray this with me.  May we each stive to be guilty of loving too much rather than judging too much.

Tomorrow: The beginning of my story and the end of this series.

Or, Insurance

Health insurance had never been a problem for me personally.  I had been covered throughout my adult life either through self-employment or by the church I worked for.

Now, granted, I did not have any grandiose notions about the benevolence or the ethics of health insurance companies.  For three years BCBS tried to stick us with the bill for Chloe’s birth, despite the fact that Tracy had been covered throughout her pregnancy and delivery. It took years of attorneys, threats of litigation, and stress to get them to pay what they rightfully owed.
When I moved to Michigan and began pastoring a congregation of less than 100 people, the luxury of provided insurance was no longer viable.  I now had to secure coverage for me and my family.

Tracy and Chloe were no problem.  I got them insured soon after we arrived in Port Huron, although at astronomical rates.

Yet, no one would cover me.  I was 34 years old and without insurance. With one child and another one soon to be on the way there was no safety net if something happened to me. I was deemed too much of a medical uncertainty for ANY insurance company to take a risk on me.

Sure, I was overweight with elevated cholesterol.  I was on synthroid for hypothyroidism.  During the final days of my disastrous youth ministry in Texas, I had taken some anti-depressants.  But come on, Zoloft is like candy in our prescription happy society.

But, I was healthy.  I had no serious problems.  I had never been sick a day in my life.  There was no alarming family history of medical problems.

Yet, no one would cover me. 

And in the state of Michigan, no one had to.  That’s capitalism, friends.  Competition is good, right?

3 miles away, across Lake Huron, however, my Canadian neighbors had insurance. They had quality coverage, cheap prescription benefits and access to expert care.  Everyone was covered.
Yet, on the streets of America, I was one of 44 million uninsured people.  The richest, most powerful country in the world offered little to no protection to its citizens in the event of a medical catastrophe.

The game was driven by HMOs caring more for profit and competition than for patients and care. These organizations proscribe choice and hamstring doctors from providing complete and total treatment.

Fortunately, I found one doctor who made it easier for me to navigate this period.  She continually waived large portions of the office visit fee and kept me stocked with samples so that I did not have prescription costs, which would have been sizeable without coverage.  To me, she was the epitome of what American health care should be.

Eventually the prospect of what could happen forced my wife to return to work.  She works, to this day, for the sole purpose of providing health insurance.  Her paycheck usually amounts to less than we pay for child-care.  (But that’s another issue, entirely.)
My experience was a wake-up call to see the health care crisis that we face in this country. My first-hand encounter with the heartless pursuit of capitalistic competition was enough to give me pause.

We can spend billions of dollars a minute on a war, we can send rebates and “economic stimulus” checks but we can’t provide better coverage for hard-working Americans?

I became a proponent of health-care reform.

Next-OIL and Lee Camp

For further reading, I suggest Critical Condition : How Health Care in America Became Big Business–and Bad Medicine.

Or, Compassionate Conservatism

In retrospect, I would like to say that the thoughts and sentiments of Rich Mullins (see previous post) stuck with me, but they did not.

A “savior” emerged that offered the restoration of the greatness of America, the reclamation of all that made America good and right and pure, i.e. Reagan Redux.

George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of Compassionate Conservatism, the idea that you could hold conservative ideas yet still help those in need.

This idea of compassionate conservatism was a soothing balm for me. It enabled me to straddle the chasm between my growing understanding of the words of Jesus and the reality of American life. I could vacillate between both worlds with no compunction.
However, the idea looked far better on paper than it did in practice. Compassion and love in its truest form is not conservative but radical, it breaks free of the constraints of the status quo and seeks to effect change in the lives of the forgotten and the least of these.

By this time, however, I had arrived. I was youth minister for a 1000+ member, affluent church in a northern Dallas suburb. I was at the pinnacle of my profession.
We had built an enormous multi-million dollar building with the ideas that it would be the flagship church in our community. People would flock to us because of our gleaming edifice fronting the highway.

They would knock down our doors because they would see our cross dominating the skyline.

It did not matter that we had incurred enormous debt in order to do so. God had blessed us with the financial means and the population to make a huge splash. He had “expanded our territory.”
We were positioned to be “the” church in town.

(Note: my observations about my time at this location are just that, my observations of my own feelings.  Wonderful and godly people are members of that church who have done and continue to do great things for the glory of God.  Any indictment in my words are directed at me and not them.)

Life was great. Tracy was pregnant. We were making money hand over fist. Everything was as it should be.

But I was miserable.

There had to be something more.

Every week we had a staff meeting of all the ministers where we would discuss the ministry objectives of our church. Part of that process was long-range planning.

During one particular meeting, a small committee of “business-minded” men were asked to join us as we began to plot our future.

We were asked to envision where we saw the church 5 years down the road. As we went around the room, I was struck how all the answers dealt with the cosmetics of church–bigger auditorium, gymnasium, greater reputation and visibility, etc.

Is this what it was all about?  Was my ministry so easily reduced to the three B’s: Budgets, buildings, and baptisms?  Was I to be known for what I was doing to improve our appearance, or for what God was doing through me?

Around that same time I had a meeting with parents where I was taken to task for the number of spiritual activities that I was having.  I was told that there were too many Bible Studies and not enough “fun” events.

I left those meetings with the impression that spiritual growth was not the focus.  For our church, the focus was size and reputation.

For our teens, the focus was not producing spiritually mature young adults, but to keep them from participating in activities that their school friends were involved in.  It was less important for our teens to be holy than it was for them to not appear unholy.  (I realize that this paragraph is somewhat hyperbolic, but it was how I felt.)
In both instances, I felt that I was invested in an immature faith.  Being at the biggest church, with the highest youth budget, with the salary in the upper-echelon of the “brotherhood” were my signs of success.

I had become a cosmetic Christian.  I wasn’t holy as much as I was not unholy. I didn’t drink, cuss or watch too many R-rated movies. I was on the “right” of all the important moral issues of the day.
Yet, I didn’t care about the line that crossed through town marking the racial and economic divides between my ministerial world and the world where Jesus lived.

I needed to change. I was conservative, but I sure wasn’t compassionate.

Does any of this make sense?

Next: A baby, a terrorist attack, and a move to Michigan

I want to begin to chronicle, for posterity, the seismic shift that has been taking place in my heart and life over the last couple of years.  All of this is a work in progress.  I do not know where all of this is going or how it will all work out, but I am not the same person that I once was.

If any of my statements in this series seems incomplete to you, understand this: I am incomplete.  God is still refining me into His image.

If any of this runs counter to your beliefs, I ask you one favor: see this through with me to the end.  Give me your feedback and comments but understand that this is a work in progress.

Back in the early 90′s I was chairman of the Wilson Country (TN) Young Republicans.  I remember in the aftermath of the Clinton election receiving phone calls from members of the GOP in the area, asking if I had considered running for any local office.

I had subscriptions to National Review, The Conservative Chronicle, The American Spectator and The Limbaugh Letter.

I had Rush Limbaugh’s TV show programmed on my VCR and the EIB tuned in each afternoon.

I had my bumper sticker that read “I did not vote for the dope from Hope.”

I had an understanding of who our enemies were: those who might try to restore communism, Middle-Eastern Nations, Democrats, Tree-Huggers, Feminazis and Ivy-league educated liberal snobs.

I had an intense desire to protect our “rights” as Christians lest we find our faith outlawed.

I had stringent views on immigration and affirmative action to ward against middle-class white men becoming the true minority in this country.

I had condescension toward “tree-hugger’s” and “environmentalist wacko’s” who valued the earth too much.

I had a healthy dose of indignation toward homosexuals, criminals, and other members of the detritus of life.

I had moral outrage in the capacity of this nation to elect a morally-bankrupt president.

I had an understanding that America was God’s means of achieving His purposes in a lost and dying world.  Our military dominance was imperative to maintaining the cause of Christ.

Yes, I had all of this.

I had it all figured out.

But I had not love.

Little did I fully realize how central love was to becoming like Christ.

(Coming up: How a White House Sex Scandal provoked an unexpected response)

God’s green earth: Local pastor takes environmental focus

Here’s another article about me.  Since most people won’t click the link, here is the text.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

By Katy Moore

Tribune-Herald staff writer

When pastor Scott Freeman prayed last year for God to help him be more loving toward other people, the Hewitt resident thought perhaps God would direct him to be a bit more extroverted with his congregation at Northside Church of Christ in Bellmead.

Freeman describes himself as something of an introvert, which may seem contradictory for someone who speaks from a pulpit every Sunday morning. But he notes that preaching is a private, one-dimensional thing. It’s easy to go back and forth between his study and the pulpit without interacting much with his parishioners, he said.

So Freeman did not expect that he would become a part of an evangelical movement to encourage environmental awareness. Nor did he anticipate the attention he’s recently received from the Dallas Morning News and the British Broadcasting Corporation. On Sunday a crew from the BBC was present during the church’s morning service and interviewed Freeman for a documentary on evangelicals and the environment. In September, Freeman joined nearly 100 other church leaders nationwide in signing the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation, a call for environmental awareness from religious conservatives.

“Because we worship and honor the Creator, we seek to cherish and care for the creation,” the declaration states. “Because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation. Therefore we repent of the way we have polluted, distorted, or destroyed so much of the Creator’s work.”

Before he began researching green-friendly issues, Freeman thought of concern for the environment as a bunch of “liberal politics.” But his view has changed, and he now considers caring for creation part of a larger call — to care for the poor.

“When I began to pray the prayer, I thought God would move me toward loving people in my own congregation more, but I think he had bigger plans for me in that I began to love everyone more,” he said. “It began to help me rethink some of my long-held convictions and misconceptions about people. I began to question my political views, my sociological views, everything.”

Freeman said those questions brought up more questions — about how he might be understanding Jesus’ call to be a steward of creation. He said he began to contemplate what it meant to have “dominion” over creation. Many Christians believe God gives humans dominion, or authority, over the earth, which Freeman said he thinks many people could take to mean dominance rather than stewardship.

“I’m not chaining myself to any trees or anything like that, I’m just trying to take more personal responsibility,” he said, explaining how his family is getting more deliberate about recycling and the efficient use of energy.

“That’s one of the things I loved about this initiative,” he said. “It wasn’t in support of any specific legislation or in conjunction with any political party. It was a group of conservative Christians saying we acknowledge that this is true, and it’s time for us to be a voice.”

It was the subject of Darfur that prompted me to revoke my policy of not discussing political matters on this blog. June 2nd of last year, I wrote:

Yesterday, after a 6 month silence on the issue, President Bush acknowledged that there is genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan.
400,000 people are dead.
2.5 million people are without homes.
Now we must make sure that we stand up. That our government is not once again silent to genocide in a nation that has no money to give us, no precious resources that we covet.
We must make sure that this time we value human life not just what human life can give us.
This is not a Republican issue.
This is not a Democrat issue.
The blame does not go solely to Bill Clinton for our un-involvement in Rwanda.
The blame will not go solely to George W. Bush for our un-involvement in Darfur.
We must stand up and make our voices heard.
For this is a Christian issue.
It smacks at the heart of who we are called to be.
To be hope for the hopeless.
Provide homes for the homeless.
Salvation for the lost and downtrodden.
And a voice for those whose voices have been muted by the cacophony of war.

Read the rest of the post here.

Almost a year later, the atrocities persist in this region. Read this from Sojourners:

Sojourners is teaming up with our good friends at the Save Darfur Coalition and nearly 100 organizations to gather 1 million signatures on postcards. These postcards and their messages will be sent to President Bush, urging him to take action. After you’re done signing, you will have the opportunity to spread the word to your friends. Gathering 1 million signatures is as simple as you passing the alert to 10 people, who each send to 10 people, and so on.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Darfur, an estimated 400,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million people have been displaced. The world has watched silently. Paul Rusesabagina, whose life and experience with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda, put it this way: “A detachment of well-equipped peacekeepers, made up of less than one-twentieth of the American troops now stationed in Iraq, could have easily stopped the killings without risk” (emphasis added). In short, we are asking President Bush to give real meaning to the words, “Never Again.”

Will you consider signing a postcard, just as I have done? It is high time that the Christian community develop a consistent ethic of human life–even for those who are unable to help us. Every death, every misplaced individual represents a precious child of God–how can we be silent?

Sign the postcard here.

My 15 minutes has ended abruptly. The BBC is snowed in in Anchorage and will not be able to be at our worship services tomorrow. They will not be able to get out of Alaska before Monday. It looks like they will drop my segment of the documentary.

I’ll let you know if anything changes.

I’m being asked frequently why I signed the statement along with 85 other religious leaders in America. I thought a lot about this leading up to offering my signature and in the two months since then.

To me, the answer is simple: I believe it is what Jesus would have me do. I know there are some who believe that there is absolutely no danger of global warming. I believe that those people are living in somewhat of a state of denial.

However, I did not sign the initiative out of some deeply held scientific conviction. I signed it because global warming, pollution and mistreatment of the environment has its most dire impact upon the poor.

Our insistence upon treating the earth as an inexhaustible resource, our dependence upon gas-guzzling SUVs, and our ever-expanding garbage footprint is wreaking untold havoc upon those who have no voice and have little to no opportunity to rise above their station in life.

Hurricane Katrina should have been a wake-up call for all of us that climate change has its greatest impact upon the poor. Individuals in impoverished regions worldwide will feel the brunt of our lack of environmental responsibility. They will weather the toughest droughts crippling their already flagging agricultural output.

If by being environmentally responsible, I can aid the least of these, isn’t it worth it?

If by switching to renewable electricity, I give a child a better hope for tomorrow, isn’t it worth it?

If by weatherizing my home and selecting gas efficient vehicles I reduce unnecessary emissions and pollution that poisons others, isn’t it worth it?

Regardless of your scientific views, the moral responsibility is clear.

In just a few minutes I leave to be interviewed for our local news station. Tomorrow, I will interview with our local paper about the initiative. This Sunday the British Broadcasting Company will be filming me for a documentary they are doing on global warming.

My aim in all of this is simple: if the decisions I make environmentally have their greatest consequences upon the least of these, then I must be responsible.

If God has given me this opportunity to speak up for the least of these, then I cannot be silent. To me, this is not an environmental issue. It is a faith issue.

So I will speak. Not for an enviromental agenda, but for the precious souls who will continue to languish in an irresponsible world.

In reading Taylor Branch’s masterful account of the early civil-rights years, Parting the Waters, one story has stuck with me.  Vernon Johns, the controversial predecessor to Martin Luther King at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, was invited to speak at a bi-racial gathering of preachers.

When Johns got up to speak, nerves were already heightened.  Preachers of both races had never met together before.  And now, they were meeting to talk about unity.  Dismissing the opportunity to be a uniter, Johns upbraided his white brethren for caring only about Jesus after his death:

“The thing that disappoints me about the Southern white church is that it spends all of its time dealing with Jesus after the cross, instead of dealing with Jesus before the cross. The church has not formally denounced the Sermon on the Mount. It has merely let it slide. I want to deal with Jesus before the cross.”

That hits close to home.  For, I feel that is exactly what I have done. I have misunderstood Paul when he said “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2).”  That “and” is important.  What Jesus said should hold for us added weight.

But often in our preaching to lead others to accept Christ we have encouraged others to except Christ.  “Believe in His death, burial and resurrection, but feel free to qualify His harder sayings.”

Instead of timeless truths, we produce a watered down version of the gospel.  We have Jesus excepted rather than Jesus accepted:

• Blessed are the meek, except for those of us in need of a healthy dose of pride and self-esteem.
• Blessed are the merciful, except for those who don’t deserve mercy.
• Blessed are the peacemakers, except for when we need to protect our own, defend our borders, or make the world safer.
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, unless their view of righteousness disagrees with our political position.
• Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, except for your enemies and terrorists.
• Love your enemies except for your enemies.
• Give to the needy except those who don’t need it or take advantage of it.
• Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, except a big house, huge car and all the accoutrements your heart desires.
• Do not be anxious about your life, except for when you are really worried about something.
• Judge not, except for those whose sins we especially despise.
• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, except for when pre-emptive measures call for violence.

This is harsh, I know.  But how often have we done just that?  How often have we qualified the words of Jesus applying our conditions to what He said?  How often have we thought we had a better handle on it than Jesus Himself did?
“Yes, Jesus said that, but…”  If Jesus said it, there should be no buts.

And if we applied what He said to our lives.  If we truly lived His teachings, what would happen?  What would the world look like?  If only we knew whether or not that would work.

Wait, we do:   Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35

I am commiting to live my life more in acceptance of Jesus and what He said rather than excepting what He said.

I think I will be better off.  And more will see Him in me.