Scott's Thoughts

Click title to jump to a section and ^ TOP ^ to return. Or just scroll like a normal person. And apologies for links that make getting back here annoying. We’re annoyed, too, but it’s an app limitation. And yes, Scott once had hair that could be combed.

Every single time I start a Scott’s Thoughts, by item 3, I’ve thought of easily another 3-4 items.

“Prayparing” for Guests with Invite Cards
I feel like we’ve gotten away from emphasizing Invite Cards as well as we used to, and they were once part of a regular reminder that we do not exist for ourselves but for the lost. So I’m here to remind us, (and likely annoy some Staff and Guest Team members who already feel like they’ve got too much to think about without me), that if you don’t have one handy—in your wallet or purse—please grab an Invite Card on your way out and pray for opportunities to invite someone to join us for Hebrews next Sunday. If just 25% of us took one a week and walked out of the church service praying for an opportunity to use it, I bet our eyes would be opened to one, and we’d see significantly more people finding and follow Jesus! ;o)

Retreats at Longview Ranch: Men, ✔️; Students, ✔️; Next… Women, Fri-Sun, Mar 28-30!
We recently had our Men’s Retreat, with almost 70 in attendance, (55 of whom were FCCers!) Our 180 Students just had their Winter Retreat this past weekend, with 85 of our students and adults in attendance! So, ladies, don’t miss the upcoming Women’s Retreat at the end of March! We already have about 10 FCCers registered, and btw, with every $150 registration, 13-18 yr-old daughters/granddaughters are only $25 each! More info is on the app (fccgreene.org/app).

Thank You for Giving (Bc Staff/Vol Leadership Dev Can Continue and It’s Important)
Just wanted to show you, in another small way, how your giving to the local church matters. Thanks to your generosity, I recently spent a few days at a Charles Simeon Trust Preaching Workshop in Greenville, SC. I also am able to purchase books and commentaries for preaching, teaching, and study. For example, a few books I’m currently reading: 4 Hebrews commentaries (Doug Moo, Tom Schreiner, Dennis Johnson, and Richard Brooks); a biblical theology of Hebrews called Perfect Priest for Weary Pilgrims, by Dennis Johnson; Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age, by Rosaria Butterfield; Covenant Lord and Cultic Boundary: A Dialectic Inquiry Concerning Meredith Kline and the Reformed Two-Kingdom Project, by Michael Beck and Charles Lee Irons; Bloody, Brutal and Barbaric?: Wrestling with Troubling War Texts, by William J Webb and Gordon K Oeste; and The Widening of God’s Mercy, by Christopher B Hays and J Richard Hays (so you don’t have to. It is tendentious and simplistic argumentation founded on modern political ideology more than normal Christian hermeneutics.) Such ongoing leadership development and continuing education among our staff and leaders is so important. This past Jan, we just sent 4 of our Next Gen staff to “YLT Nashville,” a Youth Leadership Training associated with the, frankly, pretty daggone high quality youth conferences (compared to most) that we started taking our high schoolers to last summer. This week, we are taking 10 of our staff, residents, seminary students, and budding young theologians to “CovCon” to learn about “The Law of God”. This September, we will be taking at least 5 of our people to a Charles Simeon Trust Preaching Workshop in Johnson City. We are also slowly developing our own versions of such things, as with last November’s “In Awe of Your Words” workshop for helping teach our own people how to better study and understand the Bible. So, even though it’s a relatively small part of the entire budget, it’s an important and very helpful part of FCC’s ministry from which we all benefit and we church leaders are grateful that your giving helps make that happen!

Get (the Catalyst App and) On the Group Txt Msg List
For those unaware, we launched Catalyst Coffee Company 11 years ago, in early 2014. (See fccgreene.org/catalyst, catalystcoffeecompany.com, and fccgreene.org/catalystapp for more info.) In basic terms, though we have continuously given away small amounts of help to many organizations, we have barely made enough money to give away. During 2023-2024, we gave away $350 per month. I share that background because 2025 is the first official year that Catalyst will receive no financial help from the FCC budget. For the last 7-8 years, we have been weaning Catalyst off the FCC budget, from $12k/yr to $0 now. (And don’t get me wrong, we’re on the right track, we are currently turning a profit, and Nathan Dickerson, our General Manager, is doing a good job leading Catalyst.) Nonetheless, because we’d like to keep making more money to give away—which has become harder since we have tried to keep prices lower than the inflation of the last few years and we nonetheless barely break even—I’d like to ask you to download the app, use the app, get onto our news list, become Catalyst Advocates/Partners, buy all your fresh, locally-roasted-by-our-own-FCC-volunteers beans from us, and tell all your friends! We need to leverage more FCC synergy to help get us to the place of consistently giving away money in our local community. You can download the new Catalyst Coffee app at fccgreene.org/catalystapp. And if you’re willing to receive occasional Catalyst texts re news, promos, specials, etc., text JOIN to 833-236-1954. And come visit us in-store—there are usually at least a few friendly church faces there!

First Kids Min Family Experience Was Great! Next One: (Tenatively) Sat, Apr 26, at Factory Adventure
Family eXPerience is a new every-couple-to-few-months event where we can come alongside our kids and parents to create more Christ-centered family experiences, and the first one went quite well! Travis Chapman, Next Gen/Students Director, spoke on content adapted from “Shepherding A Child’s Heart,” by Tedd Tripp, (which will soon be available at-cost in The Hub.) Plans are still being ironed out, but at this point it looks like a trip to Factory Adventure on Sat, Apr 26 with the goal of kids, families, parents, and grandparents connecting with each other. Be on the lookout for more info.

Hope Center Banquet
Special thanks to the many FCCers who came to hear about the wonderful work our local pregnancy resource center is doing. On Tue, Feb 11, we had 4-5 tables full of our folks who were there to (especially financially) support their cause. It was also super cool to see that, according to my count, a good 5 of our folks’ small businesses helped underwrite the costs of the evening, helping to ensure that all donations at the banquet went straight to Hope Center. If you wanna come along next time, there’s another one toward the end of the year that I’ll try to remember to mention so you can attend. (This past one was a redo from end of last year that had to be postponed because of the flooding.) Anyway, it’s always a super encouraging evening to hear about how Hope Center is fighting for life and supporting babies, mothers, (and fathers) in Greene County!

We’ve recently had a couple teams from FCC and Longview Ranch continue to work with our new friends in Colombia as they establish a new church. Here are some updates from Bob Radank, South Greene Campus Pastor, who helps lead us in the area of Missions, regarding how things are going there.

Bogotá

• The beginning of February, the church planting team in Colombia, which consisted of 8 people, met for the first time in the home of Diego and Angelica Camargo (pictured below).
• Diego is leading this group and shared their first Bible lesson together.
• On February 22, the group grew and added 6 more folks!
• They have been slowly working on developing their own Confession of Faith by using our FCC Confession of Faith—that was given to them by the FCC team in January—as a template.
• They are looking for a permanent place to meet—and they’re hoping for a place big enough to start a coffee shop (Catalyst Colombia?!)

Soacha (Southwest Bogotá)

• As of Mar 5, Diego is going to start theological training sessions with Oscar, meeting every Friday, either through a personal meeting or via video chat. They will be going through Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology (in Spanish) that our FCC crew gave them back in November.
• Oscar and Ivonne desire to establish their church in Soacha soon, so the Bogota church planting team will be assisting them in developing their Confession of Faith, using the same template that the FCC team gave them in January.
• Ongoing regular Bible studies with women and children until the church is officially established.
• Raising funds for Madeline (who fed both the November 2024 FCC team and the January 2025 FCC team with the most delicious food ever!) to help her start a food cart business, enabling her to use her talents of making wonderful food to provide a means of income.

La Guajira (Northern Colombia, 635 mi from Bogotá)

• They need help with training for the church communities.
• As of early March, we are helping one of the pastors buy a new car.

Medical Work?
Starting in February 2025, Camilia, who is from Colombia, works part of the year at Longview Ranch, and is a doctor has been in contact with a couple FCC doctors who attend the South Greene Campus about the possibility of sending teams of medical professionals into impoverished areas to give the Gospel and medical care. They will need continued logistical and financial support to help make these ideas reality.

Miles 4 Missions

• Miles 4 Missions is a 5K race where folks from the community can enter to run or walk. It is an annual event organized by the Harris Memorial Freewill Baptist Church that raises support for a specific mission project.
• This year, Miles 4 Missions is partnering with FCC to raise funds to help support the mission trip that our 180 students and young adults will be taking at the end of May, along with raising funds for future projects in Colombia.
• It’s at Camp Creek Ruritan Memorial Park, 2999 Camp Creek Rd., Greeneville, on Sat, Apr 12, at 5:30p.
• Entry fees to run/walk in the race can be purchased ahead of time by going here!

Every year since we’ve done the 7 Habits Survey at the beginning of the year, the #1 thing our people report wanting to grow in is increased study of the Word. So in that vein—a few things related to our still-relatively-new series in Hebrews. And even though we’re already in week 4 (of 35), there’s plenty of time to catch up.

1st, I wanna encourage you to read all of Hebrews, or at least the larger section we’re focusing on, once a week. I’m already assuming you are doing some sorta Daily Reading Plan, one of which is on the app if you don’t have one. So do that if you’re not, but in addition to that, I wanna encourage you to either read through all of Hebrews, which is fewer than 2 chapters per day, or at least the larger section we’re studying once a week. For this first section of Hebrews, it’s Hebrews 1:1-4:13 (see below). Also, it’ll be on the Sermon Guide each week. So read through all of Hebrews or the larger section we’re studying together once a week. That’ll keep your head in the Hebrews game.

Hebrews Outline:

1. The Exalted Son and a Rest for the People of God (Hebrews 1:1–4:13) – Wks 1-10
2. Our Great High Priest and His Ministry (Hebrews 4:14–10:31) – Wks 11-25
3. Follow and Serve the Pioneer of Our Faith through Endurance and Faith (Hebrews 10:32-13:25) – Wks 26-35

2nd, we have copies of some really cool ESV Illuminated Scripture Journals for Hebrews that are available in The Hub for $6, I think. They have the text of Hebrews in 12 pt font on one side and faint lines on the other side for writing, taking notes, and journaling on the other. They’re a really cool way to keep your Hebrews notes all in one place, so check that out in The Hub.

And 3rd, we are going back to passage-specific Life Group Discussion Questions that are more directly related to each week’s sermon. We have been doing generic Inductive Bible Study, which is fine, but according to what we see in many Life Groups, prepared questions are more helpful. So you may have noticed that in the last couple week’s Worship Guides. This is a change that is related to our long-term overall curricular unification project. We’ve been working hard to align our teaching so that our kids, students, young adults, and adults are all learning from the same Bible passage from week to week. At fccgreene.org/studyguides, you’ll find the sermon-based curriculum and Discussion Questions for all those groups posted each week—kids, students, and adults.

I hesitate to share this because if there’s anything I don’t want to do, it’s propose another good idea or expectation I can fail to execute well enough! But in the vein of a personal preaching principle—that I can’t preach something I’m unwilling to do myself—as I was preparing my sermon for our recent Men’s Retreat, I determined to finally begin, again, for the 5th or 6th time, some sort of daily spiritual nugget or activity for my kids/family. So I started “Dad’s Daily(ish) Devos” and wanted to offer it as an idea for you dads out there—to send something like it to your kids/family. If you wanna do something like it, or even outright steal ‘em, totally fine with me! You can find them at fccgreene.org/ddd. Here are a few examples.

Jeremiah 5:2, 12-14, 18 – 2 Though they say, “As the LORD lives,” yet they swear falsely. 12 “They have spoken falsely of the LORD and have said, ‘He will do nothing; no disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine. 13 The prophets will become wind; the word is not in them. Thus shall it be done to them!’” 14 Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of hosts: “Because you have spoken this word, behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire, and this people wood, and the fire shall consume them. 18 “But even in those days, declares the LORD, I will not make a full end of you. // We are not as unlike rebellious Israel as we think. We often make empty promises (v 2), casually invoking God’s name while continuing in sin, only to further rationalize our disobedience by minimizing His warnings (vv 12-14) and convincing ourselves they don’t really apply to us. ‘God doesn’t really punish my sin!’ And then when the inevitable consequences for sin hit us hard, we’re shocked and feel abandoned, as if we’re unaware that God’s judgment always aligns perfectly with His Word. But take heart! For even in our deserved correction, v 18 is always near because it’s always true. Our repentance always finds God’s forgiveness waiting because His ultimate purpose is not destruction but restoration (Ezekiel 18:23). Throughout Scripture, we see this same pattern repeated over and over: Those who harden their hearts against God’s Word face the consuming fire of judgment (Hebrews 12:29), while those who respond with repentance experience the same Word as life-giving water (John 15:3; 17:17; Ephesians 5:26).

Matthew 13:51-52 – 51 “Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” 52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” // Having just taught His disciples about the value of the kingdom of God, Jesus makes clear that their learning is for teaching. Just as much is required of those to whom much has been given (Matthew 13:11-12; Luke 12:48), the faithful disciple is the one who shares the valuable treasure of God’s Kingdom so others can clearly see Jesus.

Psalm 116:1 – “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.” // For the Christian, gratitude for grace is the only true motivation.

The Body of Christ as an Instrument of Grace That is In-Your-Face Yet Largely Untried
Been simmering on this thought for a good long while. As a Pastor in one place over a long time, I get a lot of long-term anecdotal data about human behavior and I’ve noticed some post-Covid. I hear and watch churchgoing Christian after churchgoing Christian work hard at their side hustles or whatever-they’re-sure-is-God’s-plan-for-their-lives, all the while functionally ignoring the body of Christ to whom practically the entire New Testament is explicitly written.

The Original 12 Were Practically Kids as Justification for Why We Should Train and Support Young Christian Leaders
Yes, weird Puritanical length title. But I’ve been thinking some lately about, Lord willing, my last couple decades at FCC, and how that involves one of my personal long-term ministry jags—supporting and training young church leaders. So, in that vein, a brief cumulative case —via “Bullet Point Principles,” (which is how I think about formulating such arguments)—for why “the original 12” were practically kids and we should not hesitate to support and train young church leaders.

• In Matthew 4:21-22, John and James were still part of their father’s fishing business and hadn’t yet left their home. Jewish oral tradition said that young men were fit for pursuing an occupation at the age of 20 (Mishnah, Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 5:21).
• In Matthew 17:24-27, in speaking of the temple tax, Jesus paid for only himself and Peter because, according to Exodus 30:11-16, only Jewish men 20 and older paid the temple tax. I.e., this implies the rest were younger than 20. (Note that Matthew is careful to make clear in v 27 that Jesus was only paying for Peter and Himself: “Take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.”)
• Jewish oral tradition stated that young men were for marriage at the age of 18 (Mishnah, Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 5:21).
• Peter is the only disciple who we know was married. Matthew 8:14 refers to his mother-in-law.
• Aside from Peter, no wives nor children are mentioned nor implied anywhere in the entire New Testament. (And no, 1 Corinthians 9:5 doesn’t necessarily imply this, and if any of the marriages implied there occurred among the original 12, because 1 Corinthians was written 25 years after Jesus, they occurred after and my ‘young disciples’ theory remains intact.)
• Though it’s technically plausible that Matthew, who was a chief tax collector, could’ve been a teenager, it’s unlikely. Plus he had a house. As far as we know, Peter and Matthew were likely the only two among the original 12 who had a house, (though Andrew is mentioned along with his brother Peter in Mark 1:29-30.)
• At age 30, rabbis commonly took on disciples who were between 13-15 years old.
• Of the 4 types of words Jesus used for His original 12, after “disciples” (25 times), “children” is second most common—3 times using 3 different words (John 13:33; 21:5; and Luke 12:32. Then it’s “servants” 2 times (John 13:16; 15:15 (and v 20, but it’s the same occasion), and “friends” (John 15:15) and “brothers” (Matthew 28:10 and John 20:17) once each.
• John dying 60-65 years after Jesus (c. 96-98 AD) means he was likely quite young, (especially since Peter was likely in his 60s when he wrote 2 Peter 1:13-15.)
• Typically, John is typically considered the youngest and Peter, the oldest. This may explain (some of) why it sounds like John is poking fun at Peter’s slowness in John 20:3-4, 6, and 8.

(Some) Less-Than-Affectionate Kids & Birthdays
I had a big, long blurb with too much detail that I have since deleted because I think Pastors’ kids already get too much undue attention and unfair external pressure, often from peers more than adults. So, without all the detail—and yes, I’m obviously talking about one of mine who is less than openly affectionate—I’ll just put this out there: I’ve decided that some kids who maybe don’t yet have the maturity to express emotions well or who are not naturally affectionate—and especially kids who are adopted or have special needs—will express familial intimacy and care for others by being obsessive in their excitement about their own stuff, especially birthdays, holidays, and moments to celebrate. They will remind you daily—over and over and over—fixated on what they want in a way that makes you wonder if they think about anything else at all. The second I close the garage door downstairs, I hear a voice from upstairs, “Dad! We need to sit down and look at my birthday list! Have you bought anything for my birthday yet?! Because you know it’s in only 47 days, right?! Hmm?! Have you?! Because I want this bloobity-blobbity thingamajig that hippity-hoppities…” and so on with an incessant verbal flow about makeup, sporty clothing that vibes, cute hair accessories, and of all things, an ice machine!? (Which is weird, I know, but kids these days apparently like pellet ice in their Stanleys?!) It is… Non. Stop. And while it’s tempting to feel like I’m just an intrusion on her nonstop mental flow of material needs, I’ve decided that, for her, a moment like a birthday is a chance to celebrate being loved as part of a family.

Online is Not Real Life
Believe me, I am a big fan of the amazing things the internet provides. And yes, it can communicate real information. Yes, it can achieve some communication between persons. I’m well aware the internet is real and does real things. But we are now all drowning in information (see my previous blurb re “infowhelm”) that is anxiety-producing and damages interpersonal relationship. While the immediacy of online discourse in any form—with its realistic audio and visual feedback—may snooker us into feeling that it can reliably communicate, it isn’t reliable for interpersonal relationship. The internet is not actually personal and we shouldn’t treat it as such. In fact, I wholeheartedly believe we shouldn’t hardly believe a thing we see or hear without doing more than a little homework. I’m increasingly convinced it cannot communicate in a fully trustworthy manner between persons. It lacks the necessary emotional nuance required for real relationships. As much as I can, I am trying to only operate, respond to, and interact with actual people, in the flesh, and to not give credence to the online world as if it is real life.