August 1, 2021August 1, 2021 Peter Witkowski Discipleship

3 Podcast Worth The Listen

The Briefing: Albert Mohler

In the span of 25-30 minutes, Dr. Mohler provides his listeners with a Christian perspective on news and events. He tackles topics related to politics, economics, pop culture, and science discussing a wide range of stories. To his credit, he does not dive into every headline with breakneck speed. He often collects articles over the span of a few days or weeks before diving into some cultural debates. He also picks out little talked about subjects that have profound implications for God’s people such as the Anglican Church’s recent revision to their church manual. In other words, Dr. Mohler’s podcast functions as an informal, evangelical editorial page. Over the years, I have found his selection of stories to be informative and his analysis of events to be thought provoking. If you wish to know more about your world and how to bring the gospel to bear on topics that will pop up on your lunch break and that fill up your social media feed, I encourage you to add “The Briefing” to your podcast favorites.

Bonus:

If you like “The Briefing,” I think you will also like “The World and Everything in It.” It is a podcast, put together by the team at “World Magazine” to provide Christians with daily news updates.

What’s News: The Wal Street Journal

While most news agencies have abandoned reporting for opinion pieces, “The What’s News” podcast seeks to present the news without the fiery analysis of the cable networks. Though no podcast can be bias free, this one comes as close to that goal as is humanly possible. The host, Mark Stuart and various WSJ reporters provide their listeners with brief 12 to 17 minute overviews of the day’s most important stories. Monday through Friday, the Journal releases an AM and PM briefing. If you want to know what is happening in American politics, the economy, the environment, and in international affairs without drama, this is the podcast for you. I encourage you to give it a listen.

Bonus:

If you like “What’s News,” I encourage you to sample the other WSJ podcasts which cover money, tech, health, business, and political news in more detail.

Pastors Talk: Mark Dever & Jonathan Leeman.

Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman team up once a week to both challenge and encourage pastors. In the span of 25 to 35 minutes, they bring up everything from pastoral pay, to reading biographies, to confronting the prosperity gospel. Even if you are not a pastor, I encourage you to listen to this podcast as the things discussed by Dever and Leeman shape more than pastoral ministry. The hosts fill their discussions with scripture references, helpful counsel, and good resources that will strengthen your understanding of how to foster a healthy church with healthy leaders. Though the topics are serious, these brothers never take themselves too seriously as one can hear when Dever begins to use his glorious sound effects board. If you love your local assembly of believers, you will love this podcast.

Bonus:

If you like “Pastors Talk”, I encourage you to check out the “Association of Certified Biblical Counselors” weekly podcast which provides its listeners with biblical solutions to the problems that they face in everyday Christian life.

July 27, 2021October 12, 2021 Peter Witkowski Memos

A Tribute to Daryl Summey: An Extraordinary Friend

When Daryl Summey died last week, the world became a little bit darker. Though Daryl is now ‘the late Daryl Summey” in the most profound sense of that sad phrase, his legacy of love, compassion, and faithfulness lives on in the grand mosaic of our memories. He was a friend to the friendless, a leader to the lost, and a father to the fatherless. Below is my small contribution to the grand story of Daryl Summey, a narrative that extends across five decades, multiple continents, and thousands of hearts.

Reflections Daryl Summey

Daryl Summey possessed a special knack for making the ordinary the extraordinary. He turned the collection of a few Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes into a multi-thousand box enterprise that trafficked in massive loads of t-shirts, crayons, toothbrushes, toy trucks, balloons, and balls. He took normal disciple now weekends and transformed them into Encounter Weekends that were full of shaving cream, massive decorations, and passionate sermons that resonated with thousands. He appropriated ordinary mission trips and led students to the edges of the persecuted church, exposing many souls to the glories and the cost of missions. And perhaps most remarkably of all, he and Leigh Anne took their ordinary home and made it into extraordinary place of love, laughter, and faith where family, teenagers, college students, missionaries, and the weary could find rest.

Daryl’s extraordinariness flowed from his commitment to his Savior. When the downtrodden showed up at First Baptist Church Eastman, Daryl shelved his already crazy schedule to care for the stranger within our gates. Many a morning, I saw Daryl walking broken souls over to the Station in hopes of forming a new relationship that would end in friendship and salvation. If widows needed decks built, Daryl called his guys, ordered supplies, and got the deck built. When the uncool kids slunk into the Station on Wednesday nights for Youth Group, Daryl immediately walked over to those on the fringe of the building, introduced himself, and began making them feel as if they were a part of his family. And when three orphans needed a home, Daryl sacrificed his schedule, his budget, and some of his sanity to send Leigh Anne to rescue their three youngest children from abandonment. Like the great physician, Daryl Summey was a friend to the friendless.

He also cared deeply for the body of Christ. Daryl’s ministry extended well beyond the bounds of the Station. His prayers encouraged many a weary soul worn down by family tragedy or sorry hospital beds. Though the sign on the door said “Youth,” Daryl’s office also served as FBCE’s counseling center. Inside Daryl’s cluttered mess of books and papers, countless souls heard how the glories of Jesus could transform everything from addiction to broken marriages. Even when he took the roll on Sunday nights, he would stop to talk to the souls manning the Children’s Ministry Center Desk. If students or pastors who knew far less about ministry and life attempted to instruct Daryl about theology, philosophy, or ministry, he took their comments in stride, transforming his antagonists into his friends. To know Daryl Summey was to experience the love of Jesus.

It was also this love that made him an amazing Dad who hid easters eggs that no one could find. It was this love that enabled him to push most every youth trip to the limits with calm assurances that the trail really would come to an end around the next bend…ok well the next one, well actually…and…you get it. It was this love that could make a room explode with quiet laughter as he guided professional conversations to craziest of conclusions through his calm suggestions. It was this love that somehow made all those odd pictures of Clay Layfield as a bodybuilder plastered across the church ok. And it is this love that April and I and thousands of others will miss.

Daryl Summery was a good husband, father, son, brother, and pastor. He was a good man.

Postscript

When Daryl first learned he had cancer, we talked of hope of healing and of the need never to surrender to the gloom that can sometimes ooze out of the oncology world. April and I then watched with aching hearts as that determination met setback after setback. When Daryl and I last talked a few weeks back, we spoke of future visits. Though I knew his end was near, we exchanged no final goodbyes that day. And we needed not do so then or ever for one day soon, we will see each other again in the land of eternity a place where there, “no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.” Until then….my friend. Until then…

July 18, 2021July 17, 2021 Peter Witkowski Memos

Memo: April’s Summer Update – July 2021

April has improved over the last few weeks! She no longer counts nausea and pain pills as her close friends. For the first time since late April, she has been able to care for our three kiddos on her own. She and I praise God for the latest round of victories over her stage four breast cancer and for our friends and family that have rallied around us during these dark days.

What’s Going On?

But her journey to this point has proved difficult. The climb is not yet done. Like the mountain paths hidden in the depths of the Blue Ridge Mountains that fill the horizon outside our home, April’s chemotherapy path has been steep, narrow, and full of rocks and roots. As some of you know, she stumbled off the chemo path just days after beginning her new phase of treatment. The chemotherapy drug ambraxane depleted her white blood cell count, dooming her to a six-day hospital stay. Once recovered from her infection and being neutropenic, she began to climb again. She still felt the daily pains of nausea and exhaustion. But with each passing week, the intensity of those pains has lessened. The liver pain went from being an ever-present companion to being an occasional twinge that came and went with each chemo dose. Over the last two weeks, she has been able to catch glimpses of health’s glorious vistas.

Notwithstanding the good results, the climb still contains dangerous three week stretches associated with chemotherapy. After each dose, April experiences noticeable fatigue, loss of appetite, and some nausea for at least two to three days. After three doses of chemo, she takes a week off from her treatment bringing her monthly cycle to an end.

But even during this break, she can encounter rough terrain. A few weeks back while at Lake Michigan, April’s legs blistered after minimal sun exposure, revealing that she has developed photosensitivity, a complication of her medications. Now, she must avoid direct sunlight as she walks towards health.

Despite these challenges, April’s Doctors believe her treatment plan has been successful. Her blood work has revealed that her liver and bones contain fewer and fewer cancer cells. She will undergo a new set of scans in mid-August. The climb continues.

The climb’s challenges go beyond nausea and fatigue. As she attains health, April has endured the thunderstorms of hair loss, canceled plans, and changing family dynamics. These summer winds have snuck up on her soul and flooded it with the heavy rains of sorrow on multiple occasions. But through it all she has remained resilient ever committed to caring for me, her kiddos, and her church family.

How are We Doing?

Her doctors think April will be walking on the chemotherapy trail throughout 2021. What comes next, no one exactly knows. She and I will cross that bridge and decided upon the next treatment plan when we come to it.

After wrestling with Jesus’s words in his famed Sermon on the Mount, April and I have sought to focus t our gaze mostly upon the present. Matthew 6:34 states, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Though we like to think our plans and emotions can determine the future, we have come to the simple and yet profound realization that they do not. Our fears about death do not keep us alive. Our worries about trials do not make us more beautiful. And our what if scenarios with all their hypothetical contingencies don’t shape God’s plans for us. As Jesus notes, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” When we live in the world of imaginary futures, we do harm to our souls.

When we live in the world of imaginary futures, we do harm to our souls.
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This is not to say that we should not plan. April and I have delayed this blog in part for planning purposes. We wanted to determine our children’s destination for the 2021-2022 schoolyear (we decided to enroll them in Fresta Valley Christian School) before sitting down to the keyboard. Moreover, I think having health insurance is a good thing. But worrying about what happens if this treatment fails in five months is completely unprofitable. We could be hit by an asteroid tomorrow and never see five months from now. Though we tend to assume that the future is more tangible than the present, Jesus asserts the opposite. Today is our greatest reality. We will deal with tomorrow….well, tomorrow.

But we are not putting our heads in the sand. Rather by faith we trust in the goodness of God. He is the same today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow exactly who he is today. In other words, the God that has seen April through her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days will see her through tomorrow. He will be ever present with her and us regardless of whether she reaches new pinnacles of health or stumbles into another steep decline. He will see us through all our tomorrows and will be a present help even if tears rain down our faces. Since God will be there tomorrow, we allow him to deal with all those future worries. We cast our cares upon him for he cares for us!

Admittedly, we are not great at holding our thoughts captive. Sometimes when life heats up, the thought vault in our heart cracks allowing thoughts to ooze past the door of wisdom and pool up in the valleys of despair, casting unnecessary shadows over otherwise good days. To be like Jesus, we must daily crucify our instinctive impulse to speculate about tomorrow, remembering that the God who clothes grass in glory also cares deeply about April and our family. We don’t always live in today; but when we do, joy and comfort abound. To be more like Jesus.

How to Pray

We ask you to pray for our hearts. Pray that we will focus upon today, keeping our thoughts away from unprofitable thoughts about tomorrow. Pray that God will give April the strength she needs to love others well when she has good days full of strength and bad days full of fatigue. Pray that God will extend April’s life. Lastly, please pray that God will save our three children.