Tag Archives: Deb Brammer

Two Sides (at least) To Everything

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two_sidesWe’ve crept around the year’s corner to 2013 and begin the year all over again. If I make it halfway through the year I will clock in thirty-five years in ministry. The view from 2013 doesn’t exactly match my expectations thirty-five years ago. I’ve learned to appreciate quiet miracles instead of just dramatic ones. I’ve sensed God is working even when I can’t see evidence of it. I’ve noticed that you learn more through failure and things that don’t work than successes and things that do work.

I’m still learning and growing and struggling through many issues, but the ups and downs of ministry on three continents (two islands) have taught me one lesson about life that rings true wherever I go. This lesson won’t give you all the answers, but if you understand this concept it is guaranteed to help your ministry and your personal relationships wherever you are.

Any situation can be seen from more than one perspective.

Sam and Suzy have been best friends with Max and Maxine for many years. Then Sam buys a new water blaster. Max borrows it. Sam waits impatiently for over a month for Max to return it. Finally he asks for it back. Max hasn’t finished using it, but since Sam is being grumpy about it, he returns it. Sam frets over the grungy condition of his nearly new water blaster, then discovers the adjustment knob no longer works. Sam criticizes Max for not taking good care of his equipment. Max accuses Sam of being a nit-picking control freak.

Then the wives get into the mix. Suzy excludes Max and Maxine from her next barbeque. Maxine complains to Sam and Suzy’s friends about their yapping poodle. The relationship goes downhill from there.

When the friendship dies, each person goes away with clear memories about what happened. All four are truthful people with good memory for detail. But all four go away with a different idea about what actually happened. Why?

Facts are facts, right? Max borrowed the water blaster and it wasn’t in as good a condition when he returned it. Those are facts. But Sam remembers all the other things Max has borrowed and some that he has forgotten to return. Sam likes to keep all his tools in mint condition. Max, on the other hand, spent many hours helping Sam paint his garage last summer. Max cares more about relationships than things. He feels Sam is materialistic and values his tools above their friendship. Besides, if Sam bought better quality tools, maybe they wouldn’t break so easily. Sam resents having to ask for his water blaster when Max should have returned it. Max resents Sam’s angry tone when, if Sam wanted it back, he simply had to ask for it. You can just imagine what the women feel about the whole situation.

Each person believes he understands the situation, that he remembers accurately what happened. But the bare facts are only a part of what happened. Proverbs reminds us that there is usually more than one side to a story:

“The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him. . . He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.” (Prov. 18:17, 13)

What did each person say? What did he mean by what he said? What did the other person think he meant by what he said? Before long each person will have processed his or her memories, replaying certain parts over and over again, forgetting other parts. Each person will put his own interpretation on the facts. Each memory will evolve. Likely the friendship will die because, even though all four think they remember and understand what happened, none of them remembers the exact same thing as anyone else.

Maybe someone has hurt you in a nasty incident. You replay the scene over and over in the video player of your mind. You try to make sense of what happened. You interpret what they said and how they said it and you come to conclusions—which may be wrong. We often bring the baggage of the past into current relationships, interpreting present events by other, unrelated events. Differences in personality, background, gender, and culture color our interpretation.

One of the most helpful things you can do in any relationship is to try to see events from the perspective of the other side. Could the other person have meant something different than you thought? Could your intentions have been misconstrued? Maybe the person expressed his complaint in anger and exaggerated his point, but is there a kernel of truth in what he said? Can you learn from what she said? Ask God to help you understand the other person’s viewpoint. What could you have done differently that might have been received in a better way?

I first learned this lesson in a very personal way. I worked on a mission field with five other missionaries. We bought some property together. When we first decided to buy the property we all wrote out the reasons for buying it and what we thought it should be used for. Five years later we did the same. It was amazing to see the variety of slants we had on these issues. But the most remarkable part of the whole process to me was this: In five years I had changed dramatically in what I thought about the whole process, but was totally unaware of the change!

After that I began to see that whenever a number of people view something, they view it slightly differently. Have you ever heard the minutes read from a meeting you attended and realized the secretary had come away with a different view of what happened than you did? I have. In counseling you may hear the wife’s side of a story and think the husband is a jerk. Then you catch a glimpse of the husband’s side and see that he has a valid perspective the wife needs to listen to. In fact I find that one of my main roles in counseling is to help the person see the situation from another perspective.

This is not a new concept. You find it in the saying, “Never criticize a man before you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.” You can see this concept fleshed out in my fiction book Two Sides to Everything. I’ve taken the fictional excerpt above about Sam, Suzy, Max and Maxine from a Bible study book I hope to publish later in 2013.

We know it’s true.

Yet when I see something happen, I come away thinking the other person’s viewpoint is skewed while mine is spot on. Why can’t other people see things as accurately as I do? If they only had my wisdom people wouldn’t be so hard to work with.

In 2013 let us resolve to consider the viewpoint of others when we size up a situation.

Then we’ll be one step closer to responding in the way Christ would.

Serious Fun

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“If I were a candy cane, where would my eyes and mouth be?” Maybe that doesn’t sound like a serious problem to you, but it was for me one recent Saturday. I take outreach seriously and designing  a candy cane puppet is one small part of reaching out.

As Christians, we need to communicate some pretty serious stuff. Every person on earth has an evil heart that makes him want to do wrong. Jesus gave his life in our place to reconcile us to God.  We need to commit our entire lives in service and thankfulness to show God how much we love him. Serious stuff.

When unbelievers don’t see the importance of salvation we want to shake them and say, “Why don’t you get it?” When believers seem content to merely give God what is easy and left over we want to wring their neck and ask, “Where are your priorities?” But this approach doesn’t have a very high success rating.

We need to be serious about our Christianity, but we also need to be attractive. Why are people so resistant to the gospel today? Too many have seen people who called themselves Christians but have compromised their integrity. Other Christians have integrity oozing out their pores, but come across in a negative, unattractive way. Sometimes people use unattractive Christians or church people as an excuse to marginalize Christianity. To communicate Christ effectively, we often need to mix some joy with our passion. Serious fun.

Christmastime in our mission church in New Zealand usually finds us searching for serious fun. We would be quite happy to present the gospel with passion and seriousness to a church packed with unbelievers, but most unbelievers don’t rush to churches to hear the gospel. We need to work to break down the barriers of resistance that they have built over the years. Fun, food and humor can be used as a wrecking ball to break down barriers. So we have a puppet show with a talking angel, gold ball, light bulb, bell, candy cane, and star. That bit of silliness can point to spiritual truth.

We make our practice times fun. We invite parents to see their kids perform fun roles. We share the gospel with a smile. We let our joy shine on the outside while we pray with passion on the inside.

I had a reminder of the seriousness of fun several years ago. A work team from the States partnered with our church to help build an extension to our church. We had ordered windows that didn’t come on time and a number of problems surfaced. The team from the States only had a few weeks with us and I felt desperate to get as much work from them as we could. One day one of the ladies from the States, the wife of a pastor who had helped build many churches, said, “You’ve got to make it fun.” I realized she was right.

When work needs to be done around the church, I generally prefer to just drive over there and work like crazy until it’s done. But sometimes we accomplish more relationally when we plan a work day with lunch or cookies and a time of fellowship. Slowing down to make it fun achieves something that solid work can’t. I have to remind myself to “make it fun.”

What do you use to add joy to your ministry?

By the way, you can download my Christmas Tree Puppet Show for free, complete with directions for making the puppets.  How Lovely Are Your Branches is a longer program which includes the puppets with slight adaptations.

Encouraging Women toward Significant Ministry

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Christy married in her early twenties and began a family right away. Now she has eight children whom she home-schools. She pours her time and energy into nurturing her children and rearing them to serve the Lord. As her nest empties, she plans to put the same time and energy into nurturing her grandchildren. She considers this nurturing process to be her main ministry for the Lord.

Homemaking and nurturing are commendable ministries. Titus 2 tells us to teach young mothers to do this vital ministry. But it is not the only ministry Christian women can and should have.

When I was young, people expected women to stay at home and be “housewives.” Then women’s lib encouraged them to do “more important” things than raising children. They were told to assert their rights and start their own careers. In time, even Christian women were expected to work outside the home, even with young children at home. Now home-schooling has put many mothers back in the home, devoting more time than ever to rearing children.

Getting married, deciding how many children to have, and determining how to educate them are personal decisions which each woman or couple need to make in accordance with God’s will. For some women, nurturing their families may be the main ministry the Lord has for them for most of their adult lives. But most women can have significant ministries outside of their homes.

Some women never marry or marry later in life. Some women have empty nests in their early forties. Even women with children in the home can have significant ministries. My concern is that, in some Christian circles, we are not challenging women into significant ministries.

On a recent furlough I attended a mission’s conference at one of our Bible colleges. Speaking in a workshop to the student body, one church planter said something to this effect. “Don’t worry about discipling women and children. If you disciple men, you’ll get the women and children.”

I understand that this home missionary was emphasizing the importance of reaching men, potential leaders, in the church planting process. But he was speaking to a student body where slightly more than half were young women. Women aren’t allowed to disciple men. So what should they do? Go home? Why should women spend the time and money to go to Bible college if only men are allowed to have significant spiritual ministries?

The Bible clearly teaches that women are not supposed to be in authority over men. They need to work within the framework of authority which God designed. But within that framework, women need to seek out ways to have significant ministries. And we need to encourage them.

Sometimes we send mixed messages to our young women. If a young man steps forward, shows leadership ability, volunteers to teach, asks deep theological questions, plans for Bible college–we are ecstatic. If a young woman does the same thing, she may be greeted with guarded enthusiasm. Yes, there are ways we can use her, but it sure would be nice if she was a man. A certain amount of training to make her a better Sunday school teacher could be a good thing, especially if she finds a husband at Bible college. But she can leave the deep theological thinking and spiritual ministries for the men.

Sometimes we’re most comfortable with women when they stay at home with the kids. Ambitions make us nervous. We’re so concerned about what women can’t do Biblically, that we forget to challenge them towards things they can do. And when we do want to encourage them towards significant ministry, we don’t know where to begin.

Churches need women. In most churches, much of the less visible work is done by women. They teach children and women’s Bible studies; plan activities; cook, clean and decorate; direct programs; prepare music; order Sunday School materials and do countless other activities which flesh out the church program. Each of these activities performs a service, adds sparkle, or provides a spiritual ministry to the church. Beyond that they may start specialized ministries in their church, such as ministries to the deaf or elderly or mentally handicapped.

We need to encourage women to serve in our churches, but we also need to challenge women toward full-time ministry. Missions offers many opportunities for the single or married women to serve. Women can serve the Lord in medical ministries, ESL ministries, literature ministries, assistance in church planting, translation, and literacy classes. Christian publications need writers, artists, musicians, and editors. Christian schools need teachers. Opportunities abound for Christian women to have significant ministries.

Look around your church. Do you have young women or older women who could be challenged to serve the Lord in significant ministries? What are you doing to encourage those women to develop their skills and broaden their horizons? Are you widening their vision or dampening their spirits? Your encouragement might make the difference between working from a sense of duty and serving with enthusiasm.

Women today need to be challenged to ministry. Perhaps the Lord will use you to meet this need. It could be a significant new area of ministry for you!

Keeping Joy in Your Ministry–Getting Others to Help

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In your ministry do you feel pressured into doing things you don’t want to do? Do you ever feel inadequate for the job? You need help, but the guilt trips you are offering at church aren’t producing eager workers. How can you get a little help around here? Here are some things to think about.

Can I get more people involved?

This sounds like an easy answer until you realize that, at the beginning, using more people will just make it more complicated. It’s easier to just do it yourself, your way, instead of having to explain yourself to others and having to give in to ideas you know are not as good as your own.

Training others takes time. Working with others takes patience and requires giving up on some of your best ideas. The initial training time, however, will pay off later when you have multiplied your workers. We all need to learn to give and take, and though it can be easier to do it ourselves, the Lord may want us to learn to work with others.

Am I sure God wants this done?

We’ve had some good years doing Discovery Club in our church in New Zealand. But some years we just didn’t have the workers to carry out the program, so we didn’t do it. At the time of this writing, we’ve had to revamp the whole program to include kids and teens. While the situation is not ideal, God is blessing it.

If you have the same few workers doing everything at your church, and they are struggling to keep up, maybe you need to take something out of your schedule. Don’t wait until your workers are so discouraged that they start sizing up churches which expect less.

Guilt is not a good motivator.

If people serve mainly out of guilt, they will resent it. Serving with resentment is dangerous. If you really need someone to do a task she struggles with, how can you help her? If a Sunday School teacher struggles to find time to prepare, maybe you can find someone to make visuals or cut out flannelgraph figures. If a teacher feels inadequate, maybe you can meet with her each week and talk over the lesson.

Give them a break if you can.

Some teachers struggle to teach every Sunday, year after year, but would teach happily if they simply got regular breaks. You could rotate teachers if you have enough. In our New Zealand work we finally took breaks from Sunday School for about two months in the summer. During each two-week term break we didn’t have Sunday School either. This went against everything Art and I knew and believed in. You have to have Sunday School every week! But in time we learned we didn’t have to. Our teachers needed the break to serve happily.

Listen to their problems.

Is there a way you could change the things that really bother your workers? Church work today is made up of a multitude of details. There is the obvious way of doing things, the way you’ve always done them, the way that makes sense to you. But sometimes a worker could be quite happy in a job if you could just change a few little details. Can you change them? It’s worth considering.

Evaluate and don’t be afraid to change.

New Zealanders are often not comfortable evaluating things. I am told that Aussies are the same. It can be tricky to find out what people really think about church programs. But in some way we need to be able to figure out what is working and what isn’t and make changes.

In our church our kids’ and youth program seems to need continual fine tuning. We tried the AWANA approach to memorizing verses—learning them on their own. That never worked. In Discovery Club we taught the verse each week. That worked a lot better. This year we have different challenges and are rethinking the process again. Just because something worked well in your church one year doesn’t mean it’s the best approach every year.

Train your workers and give them confidence and encouragement.

We often expect people to know how to do things without teaching them. Discovery Club became a good training ground for us. Helpers learned to teach and lead by becoming part of our program. We worked through problems together and modelled different ways of teaching and leading.

Don’t forget to thank your teachers and workers. Sometimes the ones who work most faithfully get little thanks. Each year my husband and I use Christmas cards to express thanks for the specific jobs our church people do.

Make it fun.

Enthusiasm is infectious. We work so hard to make our programs and activities work, that we can forget to make them fun. We especially need to put fun into our ministry so that our workers enjoy the work, not resent it. This may mean not pushing so hard. We need to take time to see our workers as friends. And we need to save some extra energy to make it fun.

About Deb

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My Life

            In fifth grade I wrote an essay about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I decided I wanted to be a preacher’s wife like my mom. I wanted lots of kids and lots of dogs. I wanted my home to be a boisterous place with lots of people enjoying each other. I may not have used the word “boisterous,” but I learned one thing from my essay. I liked to write.

            During junior high and high school I loved my creative writing classes. I dreamed of being a published author, but I had no idea how to get published. I asked the Lord show me what He wanted me to do.

            At Faith Baptist Bible College I took two journalism classes and I found out how to get published. My professor, Mr. Clarence Townsend taught me how to write, how to submit an article for publication, and how to make goals for my writing. During that time I realized that, whatever else the Lord wanted me to do, He wanted me to write for Christian publication.

            During that same year at Faith the Lord led me into a relationship with Art Brammer. Art thought the Lord wanted him to be a missionary to Taiwan. Was I willing to consider that too? I was. The Lord led us together and gave me a desire to serve Him in Taiwan with Art. We both graduated from Faith and were married in 1977. We joined the Baptist Mid Missions [link to BMM (www.bmm.org)] team in 1978. Since then we have served sixteen years in Taiwan and more than ten years in New Zealand.

            Regular Baptist Press rejected the first article I sent them, but they accepted and published my next article in 1978. Since then they have published more than 125 of my articles, some several times. Bob Jones University Press published my first book in 1994 and three others since then. For more information on things I have written look under Order and Freebies on my home page. [links?]

            In recent years the Lord has led me to do more than write and be a missionary. I feel He also wants me to mentor new writers. I have a special desire to help writers who are taking their first steps toward being published by conservative fundamental Christian publishers. When I first considered this I thought, “Who am I to think I can mentor other writers? I’ve never spoken at a writer’s conference. I’m no authority on writing.” But the Lord showed me that I don’t know of anyone else who is mentoring entry level writers in these circles. Someone needs to do it. One of the main reasons I’m starting this website is to help mentor new writers.

            If you are an aspiring writer who longs to be published but doesn’t know where to begin, this website is for you. You will have to work hard to learn your craft. You will face rejection. You will not get rich quick. You may not make minimum wage for all the hours you put in since publication doesn’t pay an hourly wage. But if you will work, learn, and persevere, Lord willing you will become a published author.

 

What’s the big deal about God?

 

            Maybe you’ve come to my website to learn about writing but you don’t understand why I have to bring God into it. Maybe you don’t know God in a personal way. Why does everything I do seem to come back to God?

            I base everything I do and believe on the Bible. It tells me that God is the Creator of all life. Before I was born, God knew the person I would become. He had a plan for my life. His plan is far better for me than my own plans. God knew I would do wrong things. God is perfect. He has never done anything wrong and He can’t do anything wrong. He can’t overlook wrong and pretend it doesn’t matter.

            But God had a plan that would allow Him to accept me even though I do many wrong things. He sent His own Son Jesus to the world as a human baby. Jesus is fully God and fully human. He grew to be a child and then a man. Jesus never did anything wrong, but people killed him. It was all part of God’s plan. Jesus took my punishment for all the wrong things I have done. Three days later He became alive again.

            When I was a little girl I realized that I could never be good enough to please God on my own. I knew Jesus had died in my place. I told God I was sorry for all the wrong things I had done and would do. I asked Him to accept Jesus’ death in place of my punishment. I believe He did that. I still do wrong things but I know God forgives me because Jesus took my punishment.

            My life all comes back to God. He created life in the first place. He planned out my life. He gave the life of His own Son to enable me to know Him as a Friend. He knows what’s best for me and He leads me to do the right thing. He enables me to do everything I do. I owe Him so much! Of course I want to live to please Him.

            If you would like to know more about having a personal relationship with the God of the universe, feel free to contact me. [Contact Deb link]

 

Personal Stuff

 

[pictures of Art and me, Lisa and Luke, Lori and Cory, use the 1961 Allen family photo from the family CD. It has the 5 of us in front of the church. I’m wearing an Easter hat.]

 

            My dad, Ray Allen, pastored Baptist churches, mainly in Colorado from the time I was born until not long before he died in 1990. I thank the Lord for my parents, Ray and Florence Allen. They passed on to me a love for the Lord and a love for ministry. My dad also loved to write. He wrote countless poems and had a few articles published after I began writing for publication.

            I am thankful that all four of my brothers love and serve the Lord. They and their families are scattered all across America. My brother Tim has been extremely helpful by setting up this website.

            Art has been my constant companion and friend since 1977. I love working together with him in the ministry. He critiques my work, serves as my IT man, and believes in my work when it seems no one else does.

            Our oldest daughter, Lisa, married Luke Bolton in 2007. They plan to minister to Chinese people. Lisa won the GARBC national Talents for Christ contest in writing in 1997. This gave her one free year of tuition at Faith Baptist Bible College. She has had many articles published by Regular Baptist Press.

 

            Our second daughter, Lori, married Cory Zorn in 2001. They live and work and serve in their church in Des Moines, Iowa. They are the proud parents of two miniature dachshunds. Lori has had several articles published by Regular Baptist Press.

            In 2006 Art was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. This means he needs a gluten free diet. He can’t eat anything made with wheat, rye, barley, or triticale. In 2007 Lisa was diagnosed with the same disease. Both lead perfectly normal lives as long as they stick to the diet. I know from experience what a learning curve it is to change your entire diet to one that is gluten free. I’ve collected and developed my own gluten free recipes and want to share them with others who need a gluten free diet. You can download my gluten free recipes.