What happened to '09? by Lance

In January; Victor, Melody and Regina flew to Texas for the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. Now for the first time in 70 years “Christian film-making is coming of age,” said Doug Phillips, the founder of the festival.

For so long we have been eating the scraps from Hollywood and Madison Ave. Its time we start to create a God honoring culture of films. As Christians we ought to be the most creative people in the world. We serve the Creator of the universe. It is a reproach on the body of Christ that we are a bunch of bored wastrels with no good ideas.

Later that week Dinah and I were blessed to drive out with three Slavic friends. In Beorne we visited some of their friends and went to a Romanian church. Dennis translated for us. It was wonderful to meet family friends of the Chobans, who were homeschooling their children, and another family planning to when their children get older.

Before leaving for Texas, I was honored to preach at the Lordship Church in Ridgecrest, about God's command to raise our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and why education must be in the fear of God.

Another sermon I gave there in May was on Rebuilding Culture, showing how the early church rebuilt culture. When the Romans abandoned their babies under the bridge of the Tiber River for the dogs to get, but godly Christians went down, collected them and passed them out to Christians to raise them in the Lord. They took care of the poor, they started righteous courts so that justice would not be perverted, and even the pagans came to them for justice. And when the Roman Empire fell, Christians rebuilt culture.

We had a great shock in San Francisco (a.k.a. Sodom by the Sea). It was a great opportunity to contend for the faith. In fiendish rage they would tell us, “Theses are our streets, go back into your churches and save souls.”