Montana Reflections

William Johnson, Montana Church Planter and Northwest US OMN Field Rep reports on his season ...

As a hunter, even though we say that we just like to get out, it is always nice to fill a tag and take a picture of a successful hunt. I have to say this season, I did not have a lot of pictures to brag about. A small whitetail doe was meat in the freezer and that was it until two days before season closed when I took my first cow elk. I had spent most of my year chasing a moose, a once in a lifetime tag. I walked a lot of miles, saw a lot of beautiful country, and even saw 13 moose. That was incredible in itself. However, that bull tag remains in my dresser drawer.

So without something to brag of, how could this have been my best season? For the first time, my wife decided that she wanted to try hunting. So, with the purchase of some camo that fit her, a couple of trips to the shooting range, and the arrangement of babysitters, we were set. Season started out with a September moose hunt. We hiked all day in territory we had never been in and hunting something we had no idea how to hunt. Teresa enjoyed the beauty but quickly realized that hunting could be very tiring.

Opening day of waterfowl season was rather uneventful. With bluebird skies and no wind, the birds were just not decoying very well. The first shot of the season saw a single goose plummet from the air almost hitting Teresa in the head. After a large thud in front of her and a near miss of her head, there was no napping to take place in the blind that morning. A single duck fell later in the morning and the only other shots were at a group of geese that came by. We both emptied our guns to no avail, but as my hunting buddy tells me, there is no prayer unless there is steel in the air. Hopefully we can do that again when we have better weather.

Our next adventure was antelope hunting. I wanted her to get an antelope so bad. After searching and walking for hours, we finally found the antelope. Upon taking a guess of where a small group was heading, we quickly made our way to a fence line and moved quickly to get in place. Almost in position, a head appeared on the horizon. Getting close to the ground and being very still, 15 other heads came into view moving quickly in our direction. Soon, 16 antelope were standing 250 yards away just across the fence. For an eternity, or at least 30 minutes, we waiting motionless as they grazed along. Then a doe crossed the fence followed by the remainder of the group. In the middle was a really nice buck.

In order to get a closer shot, we watched the antelope graze another hour until all were out of sight or so we thought. Once again, we started our crawling to get over the hill and start our next stalk. After almost two intense hours, a wary doe made us and the hunt was quickly putting distance between us. The intensity, crawling, and motionlessness made Teresa realize just how tough an antelope hunt could be. What a great hunt, but it may be a while before Teresa decides to pursue the speed goat again.

I assured her that the tough hunts were over. Our next hunt was to be for deer. On our friends’ ranch just west of us, there are lots of whitetails. We had the ranch to ourselves the first two days of gun season. I assured Teresa that the only reason she would not leave with a deer that opening day is because she missed.

We sat patiently behind our natural bush blind for a while seeing deer at a distance only. Finally, a doe appeared. Being her first deer, a healthy doe would be a trophy. Thinking the doe was crossing near me, I had her to take a few steps to her right when the doe had her head down. Upon getting closer, she changed her direction and started right to the side Teresa would have been sitting. In order to get a shot, Teresa was going to have to move again. As the doe passed behind a bush, I told her to move back. Kneeling beside her, I turned to my right, and she turned to her left. Watching for the deer, she accidentally stepped on the gun sling, tripping herself up and starting to fall. Being the nearest thing to her, she reached to stabilize herself on me not a good idea. I toppled over, the gun barrel got stuck in the mud and Teresa stepped on it, and then fell on me. The deer of course bounced out in the field confused as could be. It stopped and Teresa said, "Can I shoot it?" Frantically trying to unplug the gun barrel with a stick, I resolved that it was useless. I had to unload the gun and blow the mud down the barrel. By this time the deer was long gone.

Looking back, this was very amusing. At the time, Teresa had already come to this conclusion as she sat with her head buried in her coat, trying to hide her laughter. I assured her that no deer would come while the bushes around were laughing.

After settling back in, more time passed without deer. Then straight ahead, just as if planned, I saw a deer come over the rise it was a buck - a good buck! Teresa got ready as the deer fed out in the field. I told her to be patient that he would come closer. A short time passed and the buck closed the distance to the fence line just 20 yards away. The sun was setting making this beautiful animal glow in the light. Stopping at the fence, I whispered for her to shoot. Silence filled the air. What is she waiting on? I thought to myself. It turned and moved to the left, still standing broadside. I was whispering, "Shoot-shoot-shoot."

I can't see him, she said. . I could not understand. The buck turned and walked down the fence line, coming closer to us. At that time I realized she could not see the wide open deer because her gun was shaking so bad…BUCK FEVER! I reached under her arm and took hold of the forearm on the gun.

He turned and moved back to the trail that comes under the fence. His head went down and then back up. I told her to wait. Down again and this time under the fence…this buck was going to walk right by us at less than 10 yards! I told her to wait until he stopped. Finally he stopped. "SHOOT!" I whispered at the top of my lungs. There was silence and then, BOOM! The 7mm-08 rang out and the buck loped over the fence and into the brush. Teresa was shaking so bad. I was sorry she missed it but what an exciting hunt.

After settling down, Teresa admitted that she had no idea that buck fever actually existed. Experience quickly made a believer. I assured her that this was only the first day of a five week season and we would try again.

We returned to the blind to see numerous other deer. A forkhorn popped out of the brush with three does. There's a buck, I said. In amazement, I watched the four deer trot by just yards away. It was at that moment that I knew she had been bit. Its not the big one - I want the big buck, Teresa said. It was like a drag car going from zero to 300 in a quarter of a mile. Teresa went from not knowing if she like hunting to horn hunting in one evening.

Disappointed but excited, we returned home with anticipation of the next day. Upon arriving at the ranch, we were greeted with 75+ deer in the hay fields. We borrowed our friend's truck and drove to the top of the field. There beside the hay bin was another doe. Teresa stalked it and got a shot but missed. She was getting frustrated. I told her it was okay, that was a hard shot offhand.

Then the tide turned. On our way to our stand, we had to drive across a dike near the river. To the left was a river bottom where whitetails loved to hang out. Seeing what I thought was a head in the bushes, I told Teresa to get ready. I circled the brush and surprised two deer. Through the brush and across the creek they shot. Watching Teresa, it seemed an eternity. Then I saw the smoke and heard the boom. I made my way to her and she exclaimed that she thought she hit one. After describing how it acted, I knew the carefulness she took to aim had paid off. After following the direction she told me it took for just a short ways, we found the pronounced blood trail and shortly after found the deer. What a shot! Her first deer!

As season progressed, so did the look for the buck. The last day Teresa would be able to hunt, we saw a nice buck and we know he will be better next year. But once again, Teresa showed her marksmanship when she filled her last tag with a big fat whitetail doe. That deer did not know what hit it. A pass through shot, text book in position through both lungs, that doe flopped a few times and that was it…Teresa's second deer in her first year. I hunted several years before I killed two deer in one season so you can imagine how proud I am of her.

Now I told a detailed story of my hunting season, or at least part of it. Why was it the best? I got to do one thing that I have such a passion for with the one person I have such a passion for. My wife is a great hunter and a great partner. She has experienced the ups and downs, the joys and the frustrations of that great hobby that her husband is addicted to. I passed up some beautiful bucks to try to let her get a shot at one and I do not regret one missed opportunity. I had so much fun watching her have fun and experience something that she has never experienced. However, I think I have created a monster. Only extended season is now open and she is asking for more tags. Buck fever is still alive and she has it bad. I am looking forward to next year already. I know she is going to connect with “the one that got away” and after that, I know I will be home watching the kids while she is out chasing those horns. This has truly been my best season.

An Unmoveable Feast

The other day I had a conversation that punched me in the gut some. I say it's an "unmoveable feast" because Hemmingway's book, A Moveable Feast, was basically about a time of life when things were as they should be, life was what it was meant to be. Now, things are different. For all of us.

This blog is basically about watching me go through life as we launch a new ministry in a full-time fashion. So, it's important to me to be very blunt and transparent with you on things I deal with. And I hope I've done that.

Back to my conversation. Basically, I "heard it through the grapevine" that this guy had said that Outdoor Ministry Network was "all about the money" - and that we were "unwilling to help him out."

Now that's surprising. For many reasons.

First, the guy in question asked me if our ministry could help out his cause. I told him that our demographic for what we do for churches probably wouldn't be able to help him in what he was attempting to do in a specific ministry niche. However, there were two specific ways I did think we could help him out.

One was to produce a video for him, which, by the way, he said he'd been thinking about.
Two was to give leadership coaching for his leaders, which he said he wanted.

Now comes the kicker ... I can't do it for free. And I think that is where the rub came. I am sure the guy didn't expect us to do it for free, but that's the feeling I had ... that we should donate.

Let me tell you something about the words "Free" and "Donation"

* Free is a myth. Somebody had to pay for it.
* Donations will kill you. You cannot stay alive if you always give out and never take in. Should you donate, yes, but you cannot stay alive if you donated every time someone asks you to.

Why do we charge for our ministry resources?

Well now ... it ain't rocket science is it?

If you can tell me how we can operate a ministry on the national level we do, and pay full-time staff, as well as feed my family ... without money ... then brotha', I'm all ears!!!

I'd love that ministry model ... but I can tell you right now it never has nor ever will exist.

(FYI: churches can't even do that)

I cannot for the life of me figure out why there are some people that cannot understand this. There is nothing wrong with making money when:

1 - your motives are pure
2 - the money you make goes to further the cause

See, OMN is a "for profit" venture.

Reason being ... we cannot qualify as a Non-Profit because we actually sell things: like dvds, hunting packages/retreats, turkey calls, caps, books, conferences, etc.

And if we tried to get a 501 status, we'd be highly suspect in the IRS' eyes.

So I guess I'm just frustrated. Frustrated because every now and then I hear this hint of "righteous" judgement coming from a few folks who somehow expect me to be Superman.

They are not bad people. Just short sighted.

Today's Generation vs. Men Like Dat and Little Joe

I’m in Boston’s Logan Airport, listening to our President give a speech about Veterans. As I sit in Johnny Rocket’s, a place to get an awesome retro burger off the grill, I realize that this is the first Veteran’s Day without my grandfather, Josh Cruise, a.k.a, “Dat.” I gave him the handle “Dat-Dat” as a lady boy back in the 70’s. I guess I could not say Granddad. I don’t know, but it stuck.

Dat fought in WW2. He was an amazing man. He did not talk of the war much, but for some reason, he’d always tell me things when I’d ask. I guess a young boy doesn’t understand that many vets would just rather move on. Yet those stories fascinated me. Fighting in France. Walking on the sand of Normandy Beach. Staying in bombed out houses. Trading famous actress Marlene Dietrich his German Luger for a fifth of whiskey. Hearing him talk about guys named Little Joe, who carried his pillow in his backpack through the war. Staying in the cold snows of the German forest.

I have to wonder … does my generation have the guts those guys did? Honestly, I don’t think so. Overall, I don’t think my generation has the commitment to America that they did. I really don’t. I believe we’ve far too long listened to Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Bill Maher, and Bill Clinton instead of listening to Teddy Roosevelt, Oliver North, Ronald Regan, or Norman Schwartzkof. Why Oliver North? Wasn’t he the guy who lied to Congress? Yes. But he was literally taking the hit for the team. He let himself be the scapegoat … think about it … if what he did was so wrong, why did he receive so little punishment? (Because the government let him go lightly if he’d be the face to take the fall for Iran Contra.) What he did was honorable by taking the fall, not in lying, but in being loyal to go down with the ship.

The way I see it, most of America is like Sheryl Crow, who said, “I believe the best way to avoid war is to not have enemies.” Well Sheryl that’s great – sounds good. Feels good. If this were a college class on being politically correct … great gravy you’d get a 100 A+ with a smiley face. What happens, though, Sheryl, when people decide that whether or not you like it, they are just going to hate you and fly planes into your buildings, bomb your ships called the USS Kohl, and bomb your embassy buildings.

How do you negotiate with a group of people who say that the first point of the negotiating process is that you must die?!!

How do you treat that democratically? Sheryl’s a great singer, and a seemingly fine person, but God save us from this cancerous liberal mentality.

Honestly, I believe that most liberals today will stand by why our nation is just taken from us one piece at a time. Just standing there saying, “Please don’t be so mean. Let’s talk about this.” I wonder how successful Sean Penn’s movie career would be if he were to move to Iran and seek movie contracts there? He could, it’s a free country and he’s free to leave it. I wonder how well her songwriting and performing career would be if Natalie Maines and her other Dixie Chicks tried being country artists in Afghanistan?
I’m not speaking hate. I’m just asking some questions. I’m saying that the way we get to be free is through being the strongest people on earth who can preserve it. You keep your freedom through the threat of war.

Free nations do not attack free nations. That’s a historical truth. There has never been, in the history of the world, a democratically free country who has attacked another free country. Look it up and see for yourself. Yet to keep that freedom, we have to return to being men like my Dat and his fellas with him like Little Joe.

It’s those great men who gave us this freedom, and we’d better find more like them for our future because when we leave Iraq, there will be other 9/11 days in our future, and it’s then that we’ll have to look deep within to see if we have what it takes to preserve this country we call home.

Please Come To Boston ...

I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just feeling a wee bit pessimistic (not my usual caliber fo’ sho’), yet I’ve had something on my heart for a while and tonight it seemed only to deepen.

I’m sitting in a Radisson in the greater Boston area. I’m here for a conference where a lot of pastors/church leaders gather annually. And tonight I heard Henry Blackaby speak. Now a lot of you probably don’t know who he is, but he’s an older fella who, around the late 80’s, was really used by God to ignite churches across the US with a study he did called “Experiencing God.”

More on Blackaby in a minute.

The thing I’ve had on my mind … I believe the church is just losing the war. Now this is no shocker, and it’s not as if we’ve all be “unaware” of it until now! I’ll bet you’re going, “Wow, Cruise, you’re some gifted prophet – to recognize the decline of the church, as if there were no evidence prior to today!”

We’ve all known this, but I believe God has been dealing with me some on a few of the reasons where all of this stuff got started. Not that I’m a historian, nor do I want to be, but there’s something bothering me which I believe has something to do with the state of the church today and how we got here.

If I were to bottom line it, I’d say that we’ve been far down the road of playing “religion” – and it’s a “learned habit.” And we’ve been taught how to do it by our elders; not necessarily senior citizens, but in general many who have come before us who led our churches over the past 40 years.

I’m not blaming all of them because I for one don’t like placing “blame” nor do I like to use sweeping generalizations. Yet the truth of the matter is that in every church I’ve ever served the many of the people who were the “oldest” in the faith were the least spiritually mature. Now please don’t get me wrong. I’ve had many of older people, many in the WW2 generation, who’ve been great mentors to me. Shared much wisdom, and some great attitudes they possessed. Even still, I kid you not when I say that every single pastor I know has a difficult time getting his older crowd to embrace anything that doesn’t look, feel, taste, smell, and remind them of 1955. Every single pastor I know or have ever known does not enjoy dealing with his older crowd. Yet they won’t say it publicly. Because they fear the backlash.

I had one fella, who is 67 years old, tell me that our older folks have been the lifeblood of the church financially, and through holding much of the power in mainline churches, the direction of the church in general has been steered by them. Therefore, they never passed the torch to the younger crowd. Thus, we now have generations of people who have no real leadership maturity in the body. Wanting to preserve a way of life they once held dear, they did what church growth gurus often call, “Circle The Wagon.” That is, when threatened by the enemy (pop culture or a changing culture), you circle the wagon (the church) and keep the enemy out until they either quit bothering you (ain’t gonna happen) or until they come around to your way of thinking (really ain’t gonna happen because they are lost!).

Tonight Henry Blackaby said that the reason we can’t see a movement of God in our churches is because God’s people won’t repent, and they have “settled for being religious.” To the point that “we can’t even recognize when God is moving anymore.”

I want to make something clear: I realize that some folks will see me as picking on “old people.” If they do, that’s there right to be wrong! I’m not doing that in any way. I’m simply saying that at some point, we’ve got to recognize that the church can no longer try to sell nostalgia as genuine worship.

America isn’t coming back to God. Read the last book, it’s pretty clear!

What I’m dealing with is the fact that I believe the state of the American church today is basically like that of the children of Israel in Numbers 11-13. The older generations had to die out before any of the new could experience the promise. And at some point those of us in the “next generation” are going to have to say, “enough already … we are not afraid of the giants in that land. We want the best of what God has promised.”

Reggie McNeal in his book “The Present Future” prophetically said that today’s church has basically become a spiritual club where the club members (Christians) pay membership dues (tithes) and expect member services (ministries that serve ourselves).

If you treat yourself honestly, you’ll agree that the vast majority of what we do in the church today is self-serving. I had that revelation at the last church I pastored. I looked hard at where our budget money was going … and it was, for the most part, going to feed ministries that served those already saved. We may give money to missions, but our daily ministry life is, for the most part, serving our own needs. Not that we don’t want the outsiders to come in, but we’re expecting them to value what we value, like what we like, sing what we sing, and think what we think. Then, they can be in the club, too.

So here I am at the Radisson solving all the church’s problems. I know. Yet still I’m bothered by the fact that we’ve so easily admitted that culture has left us, when the hard reality is that we left it. So we cry out to God to do something about it. While we sit, stand, sing, listen, give, and pray. Then go home as if He’s just not ready to move yet. So we move on with our Sundays. Right over to lunch after church, only to face another week, and then do it all again.

At some point, today’s young leaders are going to have to choose to live life differently. Perhaps best said last night by Henry Blackaby that we must choose “to have a qualitatively different relationship with Christ Jesus.”

John Denver Was Right

I've always loved John Denver. Never forget that day the news was showing his downed plane in the Pacific. One of my favorite songs was "Back Home Again."


"Hey it's good to be back home again. Sometimes this old farm feels like a long lost friend."

My travel life is not too bad, but it comes in spurts, and this fall is one of the big spurts. It's tough to be away. And it makes me sit in awe at how some men can be totally uninterested in being a dad when their kids are dying for face time. I just don't get that. You have to pull a major plug to disconnect from your kids. I just can't imagine it.

My dad was great at investing in me. I guess you often parent the way you were parented, and he was, thank God, a super example in that area.

My son just came up and said, "lap." He wants up here. He just got through eating "toast." His life is consumed in one word sentences. "Milk" ... "Eat" ... "Boon" (balloon) ... "Shide" (outside). It's a genuis concept, really. I think I should employ it more. Say one word, and people give you exactly what you want. Makes you think about our society's obsession with communication and marketing doesn't it? We say too much and achieve so little. Like ads on the radio ... every single one of them drive me nuts. They are unbelievably painful to the mind and ears.

One word sentences ... get what you want. Yep, that's where I'm headed. Ah, who am I kidding. I can't even think in one word sentences. Maybe Cole can learn that if you can't be bright, be brief!

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