Telling the Story, Editorial Introduction 

I trust you have already recognized the new format of the printed version of Window. The hope from Logsdon is a new readability comes with this edition.  As well, this issue of Window is available on the Logsdon website (www.logsdonseminary.org)  to download as you have need. The website version is in color but the printed version will still be in black and white.  Efforts are being given to add all the back issues of Window to the website. 

Certainly, if you would prefer to continue to receive a mailed, hard copy version of Window, the Logsdon faculty is delighted to keep that process in place for you.  If you wish to keep up with Logs-don and Window through the website, just let us know.  We will be glad to adjust the mailing as you wish.

Three excellent articles await your reading. The three develop around the theme "Telling the Story."  The Story, of course, is the Gospel, the Master Narrative, for Christians.

The writers for this issue are veteran pastors and preachers.  Their particular contexts and life experience formed the bases for the request of each of them to prepare his respective article.

Telling the Truth of the Ages, For the Ages

By Dr. Larry Baker

Sir, he said, “may I ask what you’re working so intently on?” The question came without notice and in an unpromising place. I did not recognize the voice. An interruption! 

I was between planes, sitting in an airport terminal, dressed in jeans, a blue, pinpoint cotton shirt, and cowboy boots.  Hardly any clue that I was a pastor with Sunday coming! I had some of the tools of my work with me – laptop leaning against my right leg, portfolio with a legal pad inside, an assortment of pens, and a printout of my sermon text. I had Sunday on my mind! Then came the interruption.

How would you respond?  "Sure,” I said, “I'm scribbling some ideas about a sermon.  I'm a pastor and Sunday's coming.  I thought I would make the most of my time between flights."

Preaching the Truth Across Cultures

By Dr. Harry Lucenay

Every Sunday morning I face people from 20 to 30 nations as they gather for worship. Some are in church for the first time in their lives. Others have grown up in church in diverse places. A significant number speak English as a second language. A few don’t speak English much at all. Almost everyone present is seeking to find out about “the God.”

Almost six years ago the pastor search committee from Kowloon International Baptist Church, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong contacted me about serving as their pastor. I knew nothing about the church. I did not know they knew anything about me. After initial talks we visited the city and the church. My own heart was filled with mixed emotions. Two of my children were in universities. One was married. Hong Kong is a LONG way from Texas.

No sense of direction came to me until after I told the church “no” in response to their invitation to come. Then God became very clear in his communication with me. We accepted the call with confidence. We arrived in Hong Kong the day the health authorities discovered the index patient for SARS. We had no idea the scope of the panic we were soon to encounter.

Being the Truth We Preach

By Dr. David Sapp

Most Christians, most ministers, have no trouble believing this. What they have greater difficulty with is this idea Paul expressed in 2 Corinthians: “…you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3). The incarnation did not end with Jesus.  He was certainly the Incarnate One, the only perfect manifestation of God in human flesh, but Paul also taught us that God had also promised to indwell all those who believe. God was still communicating His Word to a lost world, Paul said, by means of a letter written on the “fleshly table of the heart” (KJV).