NCS New Canaan

Founding Chapter

Shame on Me (and How To Get Free) (Hal Rosser – 7/10/20 – NCS CT Chapters)

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With great courage, humility and transparency, Harold (“Hal”) Rosser shares the amazing journey of his life, including the fears, struggles, failures and challenges, as well as the joys, victories, miracles and lessons learned.

Hal takes us along the road that brought a kid with a 1.86 GPA in college who drank heavily to being a senior credit officer at one of the most respected financial institutions in the world and then to being the co-founder of a successful private equity firm and finally to founding his own private equity firm. He vulnerably tells about his fears and how he was always trying to prove he was good enough. Hal also talks about how he came to know Jesus and the profound impact it has had on his life, both personally and professionally, including an immediate healing through prayer that has led to 25 years without alcohol.

Looking back on his life, Hal ends by sharing and explaining eight lessons learned along the way:

  • Keep asking “Am I actually fully committed to Jesus?”
  • Living for yourself leads to an empty life.
  • Being in a community with other followers of Jesus is essential and life-fulfilling.
  • Many people are hurting and living superficial lives because they lack purpose and hope.
  • We are all created uniquely and need each other.
  • We need to release the expectations we have for others (particularly our closest loved ones) and learn to delight in them as God created them to be.
  • Looking back at even our most difficult times, Jesus is with us every step of the way.
  • Shame is a barrier to loving others and feeling loved, but we can get free of Shame by experiencing the unconditional love of Jesus.

This is a story of healing for anyone who has ever felt the shame of failures or being “not enough” or who is struggling with an addiction. It is a story of hope for anyone who wonders if Jesus is real or if God really has a purpose for their life. But mostly, it is a story of God’s unceasing love for and delight in one of his children–a love and delight he feels for each of us–and the miraculous power of accepting the open invitation to meet Jesus.

Whose Side Are You On?: A “Third Way” To Reconciliation (Roland Warren – 6/26/20 – NCS New Canaan & NCS Bergen County)

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With tremendous honesty, passion and wisdom, Roland Warren presents a “third way” approach to racial reconciliation and healing. Warren shares vulnerably about his first experience of racism and the impact it has had on his life. He also explains how God began to reveal insights about the current cultural climate by pointing him back to lessons learned in his early days at Goldman Sachs.

Starting with Joshua 5:13-14 (see text below) and then looking at the model of Jesus, Warren urges us to put aside the “tribal” sides that divide us over issues and concepts like “systemic racism”, “white privilege” and “black lives matter vs. all lives matter” and consider what it would look like to be “on God’s side” in addressing issues of racism and racial division. Warren reminds us that we are in a spiritual battle, and that the “two sides” are really the divisive side of Satan and the reconciling side of God–that is the real choice we have to make.

Warren shows that God’s way, as modeled by Jesus, is to pursue reconciliation by changing individual hearts–that systemic racial problems will only heal when people’s hearts have been changed to embrace both justice and mercy–whites and blacks committed to fighting injustice and forgiving. Warren boldly asserts that reconciliation will never happen between a guilty person and an angry person, which is why many current narratives and efforts just bring greater division.

During his 22 minute talk and an extended 45 minutes of Q&A, Roland addresses topics such as:

  • Why messages of reconciliation are not being heard because the media needs “volatility” for news.
  • How systemic injustice toward blacks today can be compared to systemic injustice toward Jews at the time of Jesus, and how Jesus addressed the systemic by changing individual hearts.
  • The lessons we can learn from how Jesus perceived and treated victims and victimizers.
  • Drawing on his experience as President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, the need to help build strong black families.
  • Drawing on his experience as current CEO of Care-Net, the tragic reasoning that he believes leads to a disproportionate number of black abortions.
  • That truly “caring” about black lives means caring comprehensively, from “womb to tomb”.
  • How whites and blacks can (and must) move toward reconciliation by getting past positions of anger and guilt.
  • The importance of personal responsibility and forgiveness in pursuing reconciliation.
  • Practical ways whites can come alongside blacks in the pursuit of reconciliation without supporting organizations they believe have a different agenda.
  • How “God’s side” of reconciliation can be expressed in secular terms as the universal desire for “peace”.

Warren’s message and perspective is one most people have probably not heard, but it is one that needs to be heard.

Here is a link to the 2016 article Warren mentions in his talk. https://assets.newcanaansociety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2020/06/26120849/washingtontimes.com-Black-Lives-Matters-real-agenda.pdf

Joshua 5:13-14 13 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” 14 And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped[a] and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?”

I’m Not Racist, But Am I Ignorant, Uninvolved? (Dr. Mark Gordon Fee – 6/12/20 – NCS New Canaan & NCS Albany)

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In a talk he has never delivered before, Dr. Mark Gordon Fee shares how God has been directing his attention and wrenching his heart in the light of the protests that have followed the death of George Floyd. Fee shares transparently from his own life experiences of fear, pain and anger that have been helping him recognize his ignorance about racism and, at the same time, become less ignorant. He also vulnerably admits that he has yet to understand what “involvement” should look like for him.

At the end of Fee’s talk, NCS brudder PJ Johns shares some impromptu reflections on growing up black in Westchester County, NY and raising his children in Fairfield County, CT. PJ concludes the only color that really matters is red–the color of the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for every human.

These are not messages about blame or victims or movements or politics or protests or riots. They are messages from two committed followers of Jesus sharing their hearts and their pains. They are messages about how we might “see” each other with more compassion and begin to honestly explore how to love each other as God first loved us–as just “brothers” with no chromatic descriptors.

“Dad” Cares (Even in a Pandemic) (Rev. Richard Berry – 5/29/20 – NCS New Canaan)

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Rev. Richard Berry may call himself “just a dumb hick from Skowhegan, Maine”, but he is a country pastor filled with much wisdom, a huge heart for humanity, enormous (yet simple) faith and an endless supply of stories about how “Dad” (what Richard calls God) has shown up in a homeless shelter in central Maine.

We first heard from Richard in 2016 before his first book was released. Since then, he has published three and a fourth is on the way. He comes back to share more stories of hope, human dignity, miracles, joy and self-reflection from the Covid pandemic.  Why should you listen?  For the same reasons you might want to read his books:  If you want to smile, if you need to laugh, if you are willing to cry, if you are lacking hope, if joy seems to be hiding, or especially if you are questioning your belief in God, Jesus or the role of his Church in our world today.

Those interested in learning more (or helping) about Richard’s homeless shelter can visit https://sheltersbyjesus.com or read Richard’s first book “Sheltered by Jesus”, available at this link https://amzn.to/3cdYIL4

The Problem of Pleasure (Ravi Zacharias – 10/8/10 – NCS New Canaan)

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The world-renowned evangelist and apologist Ravi Zacharias went home to be with Jesus at the age of 74 after a battle with cancer.

DO YOU REMEMBER?

It was 2010 and we received an e-mail from an NCS brudder asking if we would be interested in having Ravi Zacharias speak to our Chapter.   Ravi was going to be in the area, had heard about NCS and was willing to speak to us.  Why is that amazing?  At that time, Zacharias spoke 300+ days/year and still turned down 99% of the speaking requests he received. He was used to speaking to thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands.  We didn’t ask, but he offered to come to our little restaurant in Darien.  It was one of the two largest crowds we ever packed into Ten Twenty Post Restaurant over 11 years (the other was Paul Young shortly after The Shack became a best-seller).

What do we take from this story?  Our loving Father wanted us to hear Ravi’s message in 2010.   We think He may want us to hear it again.  Ravi talked about “displaced priorities”–he shared vulnerably about his own regrets–what he missed as a Dad from a life on the road.  The Covid Crisis has been a reset for many–some families eating dinner together for the first time in years.  Old priorities have been disrupted and re-ordered.  When things “re-open”, we will have a choice–rush back to “displaced priorities” that feel familiar (that is where the world will draw us) or pause to consider “re-ordered” priorities.  

So here it is again–to honor the life of a man who gave to others and who incredibly offered to give very tangibly to our little community almost 10 years ago.

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