We are in the middle of a very important campaign, our first since pre-pandemic days, to raise $20,000 for the Catch Ministry. To help us focus, we have chosen the GO LIVE theme anchored in the story of Ben Beamering from the novel Saint Ben. Join us, as often as you can, for a live reading of the novel on Zoom with discussion following, every day at 12 noon PDT. Each reading is tied to the day’s Catch. GO LIVE with us! Click here at 12 for our Noon Zoom!

“God’s got us in a big tube where He makes all the rules. Like one of those Christmas globes; you turn it upside down and make it snow on the little Christmas tree inside. Well, God can turn our world upside down and make it snow whenever He wants to, and we don’t have anything to say about it. Yeah, I believe in God, but I don’t see what difference it makes. Whether you believe in Him or not, He’s still going to do what He’s going to do anyway.” – Ben Beamering p. 133

Ben Beamering, our unorthodox instrument of God from the novel, Saint Ben, makes this observation about God while he is playing with the new chemistry set he got for Christmas. In it, he traces, what is for many, one of the greatest barriers to faith in God that people face. It’s bound to come up in some form with unbelievers and believers alike. Why does God allow pain and suffering? Why doesn’t He step in and do something? What about the devastation in Florida going on right now? How can you look at a pile of rubble where your home once was and say God is love? How can you believe in God in the middle of that? If God is going to do what He’s going do regardless, what point is there in trusting Him? 

These are all legitimate questions, and there are no easy answers. The only thing that makes belief in God credible is the fact that these questions appear in the Bible where we discover that faith can and must run alongside them. If questions like this are in the Bible, that means that God is not surprised or threatened by them. 

We can always ask why — and we should — but that doesn’t mean we will get an acceptable answer, at least acceptable to us. What Ben is going to have to get to, and all of us along with him, is a place of deep humility, where God indeed has the right to do whatever He wants to do, and Ben doesn’t have the right to know why. 

The clearest example of this is in the book of Job. I once counted 78 questions in this book asked by Job and his self-appointed “counselors.” And when God finally speaks at the end of the book, does He answer those questions? No. He asks 240 more questions, none of which Job can answer, leaving him completely helpless and humbled to the core of his being. So much so that he repents from even thinking that he could somehow figure God out.

So Ben is going to have to ultimately come to the conclusion that, yes, God can do anything He wants without justifying Himself to us, and we need to humbly accept that simply because He is God and we are not. However, I do believe there is profound wisdom in the truth found in a simple gospel song, “And we’ll understand it better by and by.”

By the end of the book, Ben gets it. We have to get it, along the way, by faith.

The Catch is like a cool breeze on a triple-digit day. Wayne B

Our Campaign is actually an Anniversary

Recognizing that congregations all over the world were going to outgrow current facilities, on September 14, 2012, the Catch Ministry founders “purchased” acreage in cyberspace for its cyber church to GO LIVE together to glorify Him.

GO LIVE with us as we celebrate 10 years of putting thousands of real boots on the ground in 143 countries to introduce the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to everyone, everywhere.

Celebrate our influence worldwide by contributing to our Annual Campaign and its $20,000 goal — the first campaign since before the pandemic.

GO LIVE by making a contribution today!

Click on the signal to contribute

A refreshing and unifying voice in the midst of a world that is all too quick to judge and divide. Heather H

“I don’t like pretending.” – Ben Beamering p. 117

Ben Beamering is a realist. He isn’t much into make-believe. We especially find this out when it comes to faith. At least we know that if Ben ever believes, it won’t be because he’s pretending.

I have spent a lot of time in Christian colleges where I noticed many students who had grown up in Christian homes ended up losing their faith. At least that’s what some said, but I don’t believe they lost their faith as much as they never really had one. They just found out, when they got away from the environment in which they were raised, that they were mostly pretending. Sometimes you don’t know how much you need God until later in life.

There is so much Christianity today; it’s hard to know true Christians from pretenders. However, I do know that when identifying with Christians creates some kind of gain, it makes it harder to tell. Those who are Christians because of political or social causes and winning culture wars may find themselves on the wrong side of the fence when the power shifts. Jesus said that “false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). There will be a time of reckoning coming that will thin the ranks. No one can pretend very long with a gun to their head.

The main source of real faith is coming to the end of oneself. It’s not just what you believe. It’s what you’ve experienced and experience every day in your continual realization that you desperately need a savior. It’s all about grace, and only those on the bottom rung know what grace is.

Ben wants to believe, but he will not pretend. Stick with the story, because grace will insure that he won’t have to.

The Catch is a space where anyone can walk in the door. Paul S.

GO LIVE with us as we celebrate 10 years of putting thousands of real Boots on the Ground in 143 countries to introduce the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to everyone, everywhere.

Were it not for you, I am not sure how I might have fared through my tough times. Sandy C.

Celebrate our influence worldwide by contributing to our Annual Campaign and it’s $20,000 goal — the first campaign since pre-pandemic days.

The Catch is yearning to unite God’s people at this time in history — to shine the love of Christ in meaningful ways. Lin A.

GO LIVE By making a contribution today!

Ready. Set. Go!

Click on the green light to contribute!

And don’t forget to join us when we Go Live at noon today (PDT) for the next reading of Saint Ben. Be a part of this live audiobook with discussion to follow.

(Click on the picture of Ben to link to our zoom room.)

“What do you mean, ‘it’s only a car?’” Ben interrupted with a look of angry desperation. “It’s only my life! What do you think about that?” P. 112

We are in the middle of a very important campaign, our first since pre-pandemic days, to raise $20,000 for the Catch Ministry. To help us focus, we have chosen the GO LIVE! theme anchored in the story of Ben Beamering from the novel Saint Ben. Join us, as often as you can, for a live reading of the novel on Zoom with discussion following, every day at 12 noon PDT. Each reading is tied to the day’s Catch. GO LIVE! with us!

This is a major turning point in the novel, Saint Ben, that we are going through as part of our GO LIVE! Campaign. (That’s because Ben is always GOING LIVE!)

Ben’s strange love-hate relationship with the 1958 Edsel car begins to come into focus at this point in the story. The boys in the story have been dancing around this strange car since the beginning of the book, and now, finally, the cat is out of the bag. In this very tender moment, tucked into their favorite hiding place under the juniper bushes with a light rain falling, they both say too much. When Ben gets emotionally wrapped up in his disappointment over the new 1959 Edsel, and Jonathan blurts out that it’s only a car, Ben loses it and connects his own future to the fate of the Edsel. Now we know why this car is so important. The fate of the Edsel is the fate of Ben, and it doesn’t look good for either of them.

It’s as if the boys had wandered into forbidden territory, and even though they step lightly out of it, and never speak of this again, still, they know. The secret is out and the secret is not good.

Can you think of an instance in which you know a secret that carries ominous portent for someone you love? I can. It’s not a pleasant thought. It’s called death and judgment, and it awaits anyone who does not know Jesus Christ. There is a heaviness of heart that we bear at all times, knowing the fate of the human race that sin brought into the world. We feel it for ourselves and we feel it for everyone else. 

It’s why Jesus was called a “man of sorrows acquainted with grief.” Even though He knew He was headed to the cross where He would make everything new, He still bore the emotional weight of all that sin and sadness in the world. He could not escape it. And neither can we. Though we know the grace of God that is greater than all our sin, we also still carry the weight of that sin and the knowledge that not everyone is going to accept God’s generous offer of salvation. We know that death is coming and judgment will follow. This should create a deep sense of compassion in us. Jesus wept with that compassion. He came unto His own but His own did not receive Him, and He bore the weight of that rejection, not for His sake, but for theirs. Scripture says that Jesus wished He could gather the whole city of Jerusalem under his wing as a mother chicken does with her chicks, but they would not come.

Death is constantly on our tail. We can’t escape it, nor should we. But it should create an intensity in us that will cause us all to GO LIVE! with the gospel of welcome — grace turned outward — to everyone, everywhere.

The Catch is a space where anyone can walk in the door. Paul S.

GO LIVE! With us as we celebrate 10 years of putting thousands and thousands of real Boots on the Ground in 143 countries to introduce the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to everyone, everywhere.

Were it not for you, I am not sure how I might have fared through my tough times. Sandy C.

Celebrate our influence worldwide by contributing to our Annual Campaign and it’s $20,000 goal — the first campaign since pre-pandemic days.

The Catch is yearning to unite God’s people at this time in history — to shine the love of Christ in meaningful ways. Lin A.

GO LIVE! By making a contribution today!

Ready. Set. Go!

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:

“Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:9-14

Ben has truly landed quite accidentally on the verse of his life here in Ephesians 5. He likes the “Awake thou that sleepest (KJV)” part because he plans on waking up the church with an alarm clock, but in the process he has uncovered the verses that put his whole life in perspective. He probably never knew this, but he lived it intuitively.

Continue reading →

Ben has a problem with Sunday school songs. No wonder. If you start to think about some of them, you would too. 

Deep and wide; deep and wide

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide

Deep and wide; deep and wide

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide

What? Where? What is this? That’s the whole song. There’s a pretty big fountain at the local shopping mall. Maybe that’s it. There are probably fountains all over the world that flow deep and wide. What’s so special about this one? I sang this all the time growing up, but no-one ever told me what the fountain was. Now some adults might be thinking about the fountain filled with blood that was drawn from Christ’s veins so that sinners can plunge beneath that flood and lose all their guilty stains. But a nine-year-old is not going to get that. Even Ben.

Continue reading →

Hi, I’m Ben Beamering and I am a fictitious character out of the mind of John Fischer who created me for his novel, Saint Ben. What he may not tell you is that I am him, though realistically, I am the part of him that not too many people know about. That’s why it took a novel to pull me out. My friend in the story, Jonathan, is much more like the John Fischer that you probably know, but not any more. Not since my coming out in this story.

You see, what John discovered about himself is what you will discover if you let this story get into you. You will discover that you are like me, too. You will discover that you, too, are tired of the status quo — that you are bored with life as we know it, and you will want to make some real changes in your life and in the lives of the people around you. 

You will discover that you are tired of not saying what you mean or meaning what you say. You don’t want to say the words if you don’t mean them. Better to not to say anything at all. 

And you will discover that too many things are being hidden. Too many people are trying to look like they are doing well when you know darn well they are not. And if you could figure out a way to blow everyone’s cover, you would. No one’s telling the truth about who they really are and how they are really doing.

And you will discover that if things are not as they should be, then we had best come right out and say that, even if we don’t know how to make it right.

And you will discover that it’s best to wake everyone up, because most of us have fallen asleep. 

I once said, “I’m not going to say anything I don’t mean, especially with God standing around listening.” Well, God is standing around listening all the time, and He’s watching everything we say and do. Don’t you think if we really knew that all the time, it would make a difference in how we live?

We’re Going Live!

So now that we know a little bit about each other and what we have in common, you’re going to want to be a part of the reading of my story starting today, Monday, September 26, 2022 at noon PDT. Meet with John and me as often as you can every day at the same time. Because for the next three weeks, John will be reading my story on Zoom and we want you to join us and help us make a most unusual audiobook, live, with your reactions and a discussion following each reading. 

That’s right: we’re Going Live! every day at noon. For the Zoom link, click on the signal below. We can’t wait to see you!

Ben Beamering