Articles for tag: Daniel Schantz

May 26, 2013

Christian Standard

The Envelopes, Please

By Daniel Schantz   I have enjoyed a lifelong romance with envelopes. When I was just a boy, my preacher-father supplied me with several boxes of leftover offering envelopes to play with. I have been in love with envelopes ever since. About the size of an index card, these little envelopes gave me much pleasure. We lived in Springfield, Ohio, at the time, the city where I was born. My cousins lived there, too, and on Saturdays we held a secret club meeting in a dusty corncrib, organized by my oldest cousin, Carol. She appointed herself president of the club, but the purpose of the

October 26, 2012

Christian Standard

A Place to Stand

By Daniel Schantz A church pulpit is just your basic wooden box, but sometimes it can turn into Pandora”s box. A good pulpit should provide a desktop for the preacher”s notes, hide his bodily imperfections, and give him something to lean on when his knees give out.   Desk The first thing I do when I step up to the pulpit is to clean house. A pulpit is a magnet for everyone”s junk, from lost-and-found keys and cellphones, to old sheet music, Bibles, and offering baskets. Some days it looks like a table at a rummage sale. A country church

August 30, 2012

Christian Standard

The Language of Loneliness

By Daniel Schantz “Then He came to the disciples and found them asleep, and said to Peter, “˜What! Could you not watch with Me one hour?”” (Matthew 26:40*). Thomas Wolfe described loneliness as “the central and inevitable experience of every man,” but when we are lonely, we think no one else on earth understands. Loneliness is everywhere, but it wears many disguises. To the teenage girl, loneliness is an overwhelming pressure to be just like her girlfriends, at any cost. To the college student, it”s going home for the summer to find that home has changed. To the housewife, loneliness

August 29, 2012

Christian Standard

Refreshments Are Served

By Daniel Schantz “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19, New King James Version). A little girl was sitting with her mother in church, swinging her legs out and back in time with the music, and singing, “Some glad morning, when this life is o”er, I”ll fly away. . . .” Then the music slowed, and the tune changed to “Beneath the Cross of Jesus.” Suddenly several men got up out of the audience, gathered at the back of the

August 25, 2012

Christian Standard

The Half-Inch Solution

By Daniel Schantz One of my Bible college students came flying out of chapel, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Are you OK?” I asked. She shook her head. “It”s the music””it”s so loud it gives me headaches.” I can”t tell you how many times I have heard church members say, “Sometimes I just hate going to church because the music is so loud.” It”s not the type of music they are objecting to so much as the volume. Solve the volume problem and I strongly suspect the worship wars would soon die down. Music ministers seem to think that

August 24, 2012

Christian Standard

Something Stronger than Hate

By Daniel Schantz “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34, New King James Version). In William Wyler”s 1959 award-winning movie Ben-Hur, Charlton Heston plays the wealthy prince of Jerusalem who is arrested by the Roman occupiers and thrown into the dark belly of a Roman ship, where he must row his enemies wherever they wish to go. With every pull of the oar, Ben-Hur”s hate of the Romans deepens, especially for Messala, the tribune who made him a galley slave. At last, Ben-Hur escapes his nautical prison, and by a quirk of fate he

August 17, 2012

Christian Standard

Blessed Thirst

By Daniel Schantz “O God, you are my God; Early will I seek You; My soul thirsts for You . . . in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1, New King James Version).   August. Dog days, the dry month. The front yard is like a worn-out carpet from lack of rain. Shrubs and trees are motionless, their leaves layered with dust. You carry a bottle of water wherever you go; it seems to be growing to your hand. You park your car in the shade. You walk slowly, trying not to sweat. Every

July 29, 2012

Christian Standard

The Wisdom in Meat Loaf

By Daniel Schantz Hunger is a great teacher. The lessons I learned as a lad in Sunday school were immediately reinforced by the potluck dinner that followed services. It was at the potluck dinner that I learned just how hard it is to master the virtues of patience, self-control, and acceptance.   Patience Church dinners always started late, and the bowl of corn flakes I had at sunrise would not sustain me till noon. During the morning sermon, the fragrance of coffee and hot rolls would drift up from the church basement, and my stomach would begin to ache. I

June 17, 2012

Christian Standard

First Voice

By Daniel Schantz I paused by the open door of a Bible college preaching class. A nervous young man was delivering his first sermon. The video camera glared at him like an electric dragon, and the students were busy filling out evaluation forms on his performance. Thanks to accreditation, Bible college is now all about evaluation””meticulous, relentless evaluation. It may be a boon to bureaucrats, but it can be brutal to a tender young spirit. As I watched the boy, my mind drifted back to my own first sermon, when I was just a 15-year-old preacher”s son, attending the Sabina

March 2, 2012

Christian Standard

Sitting Pretty

By Daniel Schantz The wooden pew is a kind of symbol of the church in the past century. For a preacher”s son who grew up in the 1950s, the church pew provided me with stability, discipline, and plenty of fuel for a child”s imagination. Stability Almost everything in those old churches was made of wood. Wood was warm, smooth, pretty, and as stable as an anvil. Children sat with their parents during worship in those days before graded worship, a practice that many churches are reviving today. The first thing a child learned in church is that God is forgiving. The second

February 11, 2012

Christian Standard

His Church & Her Church

By Daniel Schantz When my wife and I attend church together, we do not have the same experience at all. When we get back home and start comparing notes, I sometimes wonder if we were even in the same building.   The Arrival She: We arrive at the church 30 minutes early. Any later would be unthinkable to my wife, Sharon, who is magnetically drawn to people and needs time to visit with them. Like a hummingbird foraging flowers, she moves from friend to friend, gathering newsy nectar and sharing the supernatural achievements of her grandchildren. At the same time,

January 31, 2012

Christian Standard

Seven Heavens

By Daniel Schantz Heaven is probably not the word my mother would use to describe the seven parsonages I lived in, growing up in the 1950s. But, being a child, I was utterly unaware of the things that drove my mother to the brink of breakdown: carpets the color of dried blood, a 10-by-10 kitchen with no windows, and one bathroom for eight people. I was much too busy having fun to notice details like that. Anywhere was Heaven to me, as long as we were all together. Thousands of stories have been written about parsonages because they are different

October 10, 2011

Christian Standard

Lesson for Oct. 16, 2011: Growing Old with Wisdom (Ecclesiastes 11:7″“12:14)

This week”s treatment of the International Sunday School Lesson (for October 16) is written by Daniel Schantz, professor emeritus at Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, Missouri. ____________ Growing Old with Wisdom (Ecclesiastes 11:7″“12:14) By Daniel Schantz Poets present October as the melancholy season, marking the death of summer. Yet, to many of us, October is the best season of all””spangled with color, rich in harvests, invigorating in weather. Old age is like October. It does indeed signal the end of life, but it is also filled with a harvest of good things: grandchildren, retirement, honors. A number

September 16, 2011

Christian Standard

A Stormy and Sweet Romance

By Daniel Schantz It was one of the best funeral sermons I had ever heard, and afterward I asked the preacher how he put it together. He explained, “I take the Bible that belonged to the deceased and I look through it, noting the things that were underlined and the comments written in the margins, then I build the sermon around those.” Back home, I said to my wife, “Under no circumstances are you to give my Bible to this preacher when I die.” I love the Scriptures, but I have a tendency to interact with what I read. It”s

August 27, 2011

Christian Standard

The T-shirt Aristocracy

By Daniel Schantz I was speaking at a small Missouri church, and I couldn”t help noticing I was the only male wearing a necktie. Services were over, and I was shaking hands with the last person to leave. “Hmmm, seems like I”m the only male wearing a tie today,” I noted. The lady laughed. “Oh, don”t worry about that! Our preacher doesn”t wear a tie, and he urges us to dress down too, so that we don”t offend any seekers who might be poor and unable to afford dress clothes.” I said nothing. I have heard this line many times

May 20, 2011

Christian Standard

Fifty-One Miles to Faith

Going to church in this era of loud, rude bands and electronic light shows is often more of a trial to my faith than a boost to it. To get away from it all, my wife, Sharon, and I climb into my blue Crown Victoria and roll north to the little town of Leonard, Missouri, 51 miles from our home in Moberly. The sign says, “Leonard, population 200.” The church is a pretty vanilla building, resting on a pea gravel parking lot, and wrapped in a grove of towering oak trees. The inside of the building is immaculate, tastefully done

November 25, 2010

Christian Standard

A Date with God

By Daniel Schantz “For I have espoused you to one husband” (2 Corinthians 11:2, King James Version). Paul describes our relationship with Christ as a kind of marriage, and marriage goes through certain phases. YOUNG marriage starts out with celestial expectations. You see no reason the honeymoon can”t last forever. Every day is a “date.” She makes breakfast for you, then you go jogging together before heading off to work. You buy each other expensive gifts to prove your love. Passion is strong, and nights are interesting. You talk a lot, but some of those talks turn into quarrels, and

November 14, 2010

Christian Standard

Self-Examination, Not Self-Recrimination

By Daniel Schantz “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread . . . “ (Acts 20:7, King James Version). Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Catholic Jesuits, started life as a fiery, Spanish romantic””womanizer, gambler, warrior. When he was wounded in a battle against the French at Pampeluna, he was carried off to a castle hospital. While recovering, he was given a copy of The Imitations of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, and he was so moved by it that he resolved to give up his wild living and become a saint.

July 11, 2010

Christian Standard

Seven Days of Praise

By Daniel Schantz MONDAY“”My favorite seed catalog arrived today and I am astounded at the offerings. Things like cucumbers with big spikes on them, red noodle beans as long as my arm, speckled trout lettuce, watermelons with stars on them, and Asian snake melons 4 feet long. There are coal-black tomatoes, mother-of-pearl poppies, and a plant called Job”s tears that produces beads, which you can string into a necklace. I can almost hear God laughing out loud as he made these wacky plants. And I want to stand up and cheer. “Way to go, God! Cool cucumbers!” “O Lord, how

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