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HEARING/DOING

What would happen if the church practiced what it preaches? During a series on the Ten Commandments, Derek Rust offered church members an opportunity to obey the eighth commandment, "Thou Shall not Steal" and make things right by placing "amnesty bins" in the aisles of the church.

Over the next week, members of the congregation filled the bins with stolen booty. They did not come during worship services, but preferred to come in secret during the week to return stolen items.

Returned items included men's shirts, a soldering iron, CDs, a broom, a power drill, Bubble gum, and even towels taken from motels. One woman gave Pastor Rust $30 as payment for several years' worth of snacks she had taken from the convenience store where she worked.

Pastor Rust also took time to return a package of weed blocking fabric that he had borrowed from a friend and never returned.

Though he was not present to hear the sermon, local police chief Steve Strachan said, "it's a great idea."

He said churches can fight crime by getting to the root cause—the motivation of the violator.

He added, "If you look at the big picture, you have to ask: "Why don't you commit crime all the time?'"

Pastor Rust got the idea from British evangelist J. John. When John put out bins in Coventry England, local police reported that the crime rate in the city actually dropped.

Rust said, "Police had to rent a warehouse for everything they recovered. One lady had stolen jewelry from people in a hospice for 25 years."

Rust believes the impact in his city goes beyond the bins. He said, "The Ten Commandments should be lived. That's what sermons should be about, applying truth to our lives."

—http://www.charismanews.com, Pastor's Sermon on Stealing Generates Surprising Returns. August 3, 2004. Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell.

James 1:23-24 (NASB) "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; [24] for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was."
 

HEARING/LISTENING

As soon as the Federal trade Commission made a website and phone lines available for consumers to add their name and phone numbers to a national "do not call" list, to stop unwanted calls from telemarketers, the public rushed to include their numbers.

The FTC website ( www.donotcall.gov) was swamped the first day. At noon the Web site was being visited 1,000 times every second, and the agency scrambled to add more computer equipment to handle the load. The first day alone, over 735,000 phone numbers were added to the list. Within a few days, the total number of phone numbers on the "do not call" registry was over 10 million and still rising. The FTC expect 60 millions numbers to be added the first year.

FTC spokeswoman Cathy MacFarlane says, "We expected a huge response and we've gotten it." She said the lines will stay open and consumers can continue to add their names to the national list. The FTC says people who sign up this summer should see a decrease of telemarketing calls after enforcement begins on October 1st. They expect the service will block about 80% of the unwanted sales calls.

Helen McKenna, a retired writer from San Diego echoed the feelings of man when she said, "They're a real pain in the neck. They don't mind if they interrupt your supper. Sometimes they call when I'm asleep." At a ceremony inaugurating the registry, President Bush sympathized with people annoyed by unwanted calls. He said, "When Americans are sitting down to dinner or a parent is reading to his or her child, the last thing that they need is a call from a stranger with a sales pitch."

—Associated Press, June 27, 2003, 'Do Not Call' Lines and Web Site Swamped After Launch. Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell.

We do have to be careful to choose what we should listen to. At times, we have to screen out the unwanted noise.

John 10:27 NIV "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me."

In his book, Managing for Development Barrie Hopson write, “Some theory can help learning (we can read books or watch videos on how to drive a car or play golf, and so on), but most learning comes from doing rather than hearing, and in most cases learning involves both theory and practice.” —Jim L. Wilson

Managing for Development, 70.

Matthew 7:24-27 (NKJV) "Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: (25) and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. (26) But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: (27) and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall."