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I want to share a bit about my sabbatical, a first for me and a first for Oak Hills with one of her pastors. Instead of talking about what I did on the sabbatical, I would like to consider what God did during the sabbatical. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). And apart from him we can do nothing (Jn. 15:5). So, let’s look at the last two months through the lens of what God has been doing. God has Been Building His Kingdom Around the World. God continues to raise up leaders for his church at Oak Hills, in Ethiopia, and in Romania. And through the ministries of his churches, people continue to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Consider two examples from Ethiopia. Two young men, whom I had the privilege to teach for five days, have spent the month of August in the Somali region of Ethiopia sharing the gospel with Muslims. God has moved in the lives of Abraham and Tsegaw long before I ever arrived in Ethiopia and is using them for the sake of the Gospel. Then there is Pastor Rata, one of our translators. Rata has been so enthusiastic about the training, he brought ten new students to the class. This means more leaders of the church in Ethiopia are received solid biblical training. In Romania, Andras Visky has been an active evangelist for decades. Now his children and nephew are carrying on the ministry outreaches to university students and the Roma people. Even through the formal process of officer nominations, God builds his church and provides leaders for ministry growth. Jesus promised, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18), and he has been active in fulfilling his promise. ... Keep Reading

In 1979, four years after I recorded a re-enactment of Jonah for school, I was in a stadium listening to John Stott expound on Jonah declaring in his perfect London accent, “Our God is a missionary God.” In fact, both Nancy and I, along with 17,000 other students attending Urbana 79, learned of Jonah the reluctant messenger. That was the first time we were in the same room. It only took me 9 years to meet her. Urbana is a tri-annual mission conference. We can’t think about that conference without hearing John Stott repeat the phrase, “Our God is a missionary God” in a proper British accent. God’s heart for all nations and cultural groups is woven through out all of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It starts with the Abrahamic Covenant and continues on to Revelation 7:9 where John describes heaven, saying there will be “a great multitude, that no one could number; from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” praising God. God wants to use Abraham’s physical and spiritual descendants to bless the cultural groups of the world so that they will know that the Creator is merciful, gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love from generation to generation. Yes, God will use reluctant missionaries like Jonah, you, and me, as we seek to expand the Kingdom of God. The Psalms are not just poetry for Israel, about Israel, but are also an expression of God’s heart for all nations and all cultural groups.... Keep Reading

I first discovered that our God is a missionary God in high school. When I found myself talking into the cassette recorder mic, I was re-enacting seaweed wrapping around Jonah’s head; the salt water washed over me as I descended to the ocean depths. As a 15 year old boy, I was attracted to the gritty detail of Jonah. This was my final project as a high school sophomore in “Bible as Literature” in my public-school class. Growing up by the sea, I knew the smell, taste and texture of seaweed wrapping around my head. God’s heart for all nations and peoples is infused throughout all scriptures and is not limited to just the book of Jonah. God used Jonah, even though he got on the wrong ship heading away from Ninevah, his God-ordained destination. The Ninevites responded to God’s disobedient messenger. I can see Jonah stepping out from the shade God provided him, with his fist raised in anger at God because God spared Jonah’s mortal enemies the, Ninevites. The Ninevites responded favorably to God’s warning. Jonah would have been all too happy to see his political enemies smitten and judged by God. The book of Jonah demonstrates that it is not the messenger that people respond to, but the Holy Spirit in the individual that draws us to God the Father through the sacrifice of his Son.... Keep Reading

Many of us, whether we’ve been following Jesus for four years or forty, have experienced periods in our Christian life of stagnation, weariness, apathy, or even burnout. Sometimes the busyness and burdens of life make it challenging to serve our brothers and sisters in the church as actively or eagerly as we’d like. Sometimes we lack the motivation to spend time in fellowship or even in corporate worship. This may not be the norm, but it is normal. It may not feel good, but it can still bring God glory, especially when it brings us to realize the limitations of our own strength and energy. We’re only human after all. Paul, perhaps the busiest and most active servant of the Lord in the first century church, recognized this. There’s no way he could have accomplished all that he did in his own strength, apart from God’s energizing and sustaining grace. In his words, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:28-29). This paradox provides some insight into how we should be leading the Christian life and serving in our church community. Paul is indeed working hard – the words toil and struggle tell us that he's the one sweating in his gospel-proclaiming, disciple-making ministry – and yet he's not working in his own strength, but with the energy that God works within him. There's no faster way to get burned out on Christianity than by trying to "do enough" in your own strength. So how do we serve in the Lord's strength and not our own? Practically, what does that look like, and how do we discern if we're doing it? I want to suggest two ways to examine ourselves to be sure we're serving in the Lord's strength: faithfulness and fruitfulness.... Keep Reading

In my previous article, I wrote about the necessity for God’s children to actively cultivate an affection for him through scripture meditation and memorization. God gives his children both a command and strong encouragement to ask for his supernatural wisdom (Ja. 1:5) and strength (Is. 41:10) to enable us to both resist sin and delight in him. To accomplish this, God has given us the means of grace to ‘build us up in holiness and comfort’ (as the Westminster Confession puts it) for the glory of Christ. One of these means to which we must apply ourselves is the meditation on and memorization of his word. To this end, let me encourage you, reader, with three practical ways that I have found helpful in making scripture memorization and meditation a part of your lifelong walk with Christ. Decide today to memorize scripture and record your decision. This may seem like it goes without saying, but the act of deciding to do a thing is very different from knowing that one should do something, or even of wanting to do something. There’s something special about deciding to do a thing and writing that decision down. First, pray. Pray for wisdom from the Holy Spirit to enable you to increase your affection and delight for scripture. Then—since we are forgetful creatures—record your decision as a reminder to your future self. Handwrite a note card and tape it on your mirror, or set a weekly reminder on your phone (or both). Write “By God’s strength, I will learn to love memorizing scripture” or “I will trust and obey God by meditating on his holy word” or something similar. By all means, be thoughtful in what you write and expect an answer to your prayer (Ja. 1:6) …but keep it as simple as possible, and work quickly. Start memorizing scripture as soon as possible.... Keep Reading

Some of you may know that I have the privilege of being a financial leader within an employee-owned lawn and landscape company. Two years ago, we acquired a company in Omaha. I remember standing in front of them the first day welcoming them to our “family” and extolling the advantages of being part of an employee-owned company. I could see the apprehension in their faces as they worried about being part of a larger 500-person company. They had to place their faith and trust in a new company and leadership team. Today I had the privilege of providing them with a positive company financial update as well as distributing their first ever employee stock statements. I was able to show them how their hard work, their dedication, and their teamwork will provide a long-term retirement benefit for them and their families. As I shook the hands of each person, I could see that their fears had been replaced with relief and gratitude, reflected in their smiles and postures of pride. In a similar way, I would like to give you a quick update of the Oak Hills financial position. At the beginning of the year we introduced pledge cards as a new way to encourage faithful, generous, and cheerful giving at Oak Hills. Through June our giving is close to $129,000, compared to our budget of $149,000. While short of our goal, we are thankful for the improvement compared to this time last year. Last June, our year-to-date giving was $103,000. This year, if we count an unexpected and generous gift of $10,000 (from, Gerie tells us, a non-member) our year-to-date pace has improved by 25%. Praise God! Even if we don't include this gift, our pace is still ahead by 16%, which is a nice increase compared to this time last year. We are thankful and encouraged by however God chooses to provide for us, yet how good it is to see an increase from our thoughtful, faithful givers. This is very encouraging to the Session and we hope it is to you as well!... Keep Reading

This upcoming Sunday our church will have the wonderful opportunity during the worship service to hear a mission report full of stories from this year’s short-term mission team and our time ministering on the Warm Springs Reservation. It has been a wonderful privilege of mine to have been able to join and serve on these teams every year since joining the Oak Hills family in late 2021. Every year as I come back home, the Lord has both encouraged and challenged me. I wanted to briefly share a few reflections of mine from this year’s trip. I pray that the Lord would use these reflections of mine to both encourage and challenge you. Although you may not have physically been on the mission trip to Warm Springs, your “mission field” is exactly where the Lord has you right now to the people around you. 1. God is Bigger and Greater! Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21) This whole year the Lord has continually been challenging me with just how big and great he is. This has led to a year of praying “big prayers” for our church, our communities, my personal life, and especially for the people of Warm Springs. Throughout this year’s trip I was reminded continually that God’s compassion and mercy for the people of Warm Springs is bigger and greater than my own (and our whole team combined). I saw this in the reality of the gospel at work all around us. I was tangibly reminded of this through the unity of our teams that we shared immediately because of Jesus. I was tangibly reminded of this as we were known by the people of Warm Springs not by our local church names but as the collective “church people” who have been there all summer. I was tangibly reminded of this when most of our work sites were left unfinished yet we were filled with thankfulness for another set of “church people” coming only a week after us would finish what we started. It has been a tremendous week where I was able to witness what God has been doing with small faithful steps of obedience through his people over the years. Relationships and trust deepening, ministry influence expanding, and more conversations about Christ as the hope of the world with others. What God has done and is doing is so much bigger and greater than our team this last week. This is not to lessen the importance of having a short-term team like ours being in Warm Springs. Rather, it is quite the opposite. We often want God to use us in big, drastic, recognizable-by-all type of ways but he often uses our small faithful steps of obedience in mighty ways. Way more than we might have ever thought or asked. So, see what God is able to do with small steps of faithfulness and see how God is able to take our “short-term work” to have eternal, long-term significance. What a comfort and what a marvelous thing to behold. 2. The Harvest is Plentiful! Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38) ... Keep Reading

A month or so back, when the Session was first discussing Dale’s sabbatical and he asked us each to take at least one turn writing for the Touchpoint, I was thinking about Oak Hills’ 25th anniversary. And then the date I’d signed up for just so happened to coincide with my own wedding anniversary, which actually lands on this coming Sunday. Let’s just say, Beck and I “pre-date” Oak Hills by a few years. Our own Oak Hills anniversary is going on 19 years in September. In considering anniversaries, especially ones like Oak Hills’ and our own, which have many years in the rear-view mirror, now, it’s helpful to consider what goes into such a long-term engagement. Marriages and churches aren’t the same thing, but there are a few similarities. Both marriages and churches are formed and maintained with promises of faithfulness and devotion. Both involve men and women, and hopefully, both will reproduce. Both take a lot of time, and require investing heart and soul and sweat, and often tears, and much prayer. Both require physical, mental and emotional presence. There are costs involved, some simple financial ones; other costs are harder to quantify. Certainly, we renounce many things when we take a spouse or join a congregation, but hopefully, we simultaneously embrace many other benefits, like fellowship, companionship in life, security, and a certain sense of shared responsibility and a commitment to a common family life.... Keep Reading

Greetings All, Matt Stagemeyer here, stepping in for Dale with the Touchpoint this week. While I’m certainly not at Dale’s level, hopefully you can find some value here. My topic this week is: Approaching Scripture as a Mirror. Anyone who listens to the word of God, but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:23-24). This has multiple applications, but I’ll focus on only a few. First, how do we see our own behavior reflected, or even modeled, by characters in Scripture? Secondly, what does Scripture reflect to us about ourselves? And finally, why does it matter? How we see our own behavior reflected and modeled by characters from the Bible…... Keep Reading

Hello, Oak Hills! I’m honored to step in this week as a Touchpoint “guest blogger” during Pastor Dale’s well-earned sabbatical. —Michael Buckley Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night (Ps. 1:1-2). Have you ever been discouraged while reading Psalm 1? If I’m being completely honest, I have been, especially about the word “delight.” As I meditated on the first psalm while writing this essay, I wasn’t sure why the word delight should be particularly discouraging to me. After all, not standing in the way of sinners, or not walking in the counsel of the wicked, or not sitting in the seat of scoffers is very, very hard. Avoiding sin is, in fact, impossible but for the grace of God. Yet, the second verse asks something which appears to be even harder; it commands not just obedience in action, but also a right affection, that of delight. Perhaps you’re like me and you don’t usually associate “the law of the Lord” with “delight.” I certainly read scripture and agree that the law of the Lord is good, but who can conjure any affection in one’s heart? Aren’t we told by the world that affections and emotions well up in our hearts naturally, even mysteriously, and that we cannot control when emotions come and go? And surely delight is one of the most impossible-to-fake of all emotions? So, if we are blessed by delighting in the law of the Lord, who then can be blessed? What is more, we read that this seemingly impossible delight in scripture remains even after days and nights of meditation! Though I know and believe that God’s commands are not burdensome (1 John 5:3), my own experience usually falls so short of the psalmist’s delight that I am tempted to be discouraged by this fact.... Keep Reading