A World that I'm Partly Made of

It's not about a baby. It's about a King.

2011-12-25T08:17:00.002-05:00

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Lk 2:14

The Nativity story isn't so much about a baby's birthday as it is the covert beginnings of a King moving his pieces into place to begin to take back his territory. With the birth of Jesus, the manger became the first piece of land where the Kingdom of God was established. The good news is that the Kingdom is still expanding today.

The soldiers of this great war aren't the king's guard or great warriors but the smelly, disheveled shepherds and anyone else who is willing to hear the good news and go worship the King.

The tools used to fight this war aren't weapons of death, but a message of peace.

This year join the work of the Kingdom. Lay down your weapons of war so you can the King in sharing this message of Peace.

The idol of acceptance and popularity

2011-08-12T17:03:00.000-04:00

Way too many Christians put popularity ahead of their obedience to Christ. This is absolutely evident in the number of youth who walk away from their faith when they no longer fit in a youth group. It is equally evident in the fact that youth groups are often, maybe even in my church, a place that youth feel more popular. I know this is often the goal of church leaders and parents. They hope that youth group is a place where the young Christians can find acceptance with their peers.

That doesn't seem too wrong. We want our children to be accepted by Christian peers rather than be lost in the wrong crowd. The problem is that when that is the goal of youth group, the real purpose of the church is lost. The only valid purpose of the church is to hold one another up as we glorify God and spread his light to the world.

Glorifying God is not popular.

I have a challenge that hit me this week. Name one person in the Bible that God told to become popular and through politics of the day quietly bit by bit, with great sensitivity to the will of others develop a popular and comfortable community that glorifies God.

I can't think of one. The closest I can come up with is Esther. Her challenge from Mordecia was to gain political power to save the people of Israel. While this could be seen as a move to become political for a godly goal, the fact is that Esther didn't do what was popular. She stuck her neck out in great risk of becoming unpopular with the king. The fact that it worked was a blessing from God because of her obedience.

Of course in 1 Kings 12, the elders of Israel advised Rehoboam to lighten the tax load on the people after Solomon's expensive reign. One might interpret this as a step to make him more popular, but you'll see as that text progresses that the issue of seeking popularity is the downfall of Rehoboam. He was seeking to be popular among his peers. The elder's goal was less about popularity and more about wisdom of the moment.

As a follower of Christ and leader in a church, my goal cannot be about popularity. My goal is about obedience. Both my personal obedience to Christ and teaching others to be obedient. Church growth should be a natural outcome as more people obey Christ, but I cannot confuse the idol of acceptance with obedience in faith.

Leadership and Marketing: Are they the same?

2011-08-10T10:23:00.004-04:00

Interact with me on this thought…

Marketers give people what they want. Leaders give people what they need.

I wonder if marketing is often confused for leading in a consumer-driven, populous society.In a couple days, I'll be attending the Willow Creek leadership Summit. I don't like this event but I go because my leadership team supports it and because I want to help them to interact with the different concepts that are shared their. I don't like it, because, in the end, I don't feel that the Summit trains leaders but marketers.

One speaker at this summit is a marketer named Seth Godin. I'm enjoy reading Seth Godin's books and his blog. I feel that Seth has a lot of excellent thoughts that should be considered by church leaders. However, recently, I haven't been so enthralled about what he has to say. My concern is that I have been drawn into the church leader as church marketer mentality. Godin constantly talks about getting people what they want.

What people want is often not what's good for them. I want a Rita's water ice right now. One was custard in it. But I don't need it. In fact it would be bad for me in the sense that I'm already overweight and I don't need the extra calories.

In many ways, the contemporary church is overweight. It's over program and most of these programs focus on giving people what they want, not good discipleship. Granted, the church, as a fully volunteer organization, must rely on people wanting to be a part of the organization. But maybe that's the problem right there; too many people are attracted to an organization before they are attracted to faith in Jesus Christ.

So am I right on this one? Is the job of a leader to give people what they want? Where is the job of the leader to give people what they need? Maybe it's a combination of both? What they want leads into what they need. But then I wonder, how do leaders know how to make turn from what they want to what they need so that the people are willing to move away from just the thing that they want. Is there any value in giving me a Rita's water ice but telling me what I really need is a well-balanced diet?

Gloves, opera and why dads are so important

2011-06-19T10:14:00.001-04:00

I've thought a lot about being a dad this June more than past. As Moriah graduates and prepares to move on, I've had opportunity to reflect on my own fathering and also on the relationship I have with my father. Fortunately, for me, I've enjoyed both.

As I've reflected, I've come across a trend. I believe that moms are the most important person for teaching us to live and to love, but this trend has reinforced in me the crucial role that fathers play in the lives of there children. It comes from the world of music.

While listening to the live version of U2's Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, I learned that Bono wrote this song to his father.

I also Bono's song took me back a few year to Dan Fogelberg and his song, Leader of the Band. Both artist connect their music to what their fathers taught them. Bono acknowledges his father singing "your the reason why the opera is in me." Fogelberg calls himself the "living legacy to the the leader of the band."

Peter Gabriel wrote a song to his dad called Father-Son. Gabriel sings, "I first found my courage knowing daddy could save." While not about his music specifically, Gabriel acknowledge his father for his strength. That strength certainly led to a long successful musical career.

There is something else in common with these father songs and some other songs about fathers, (i.e., Paul Simon's Father and Daughter and John Mayer's Daughters). It is that they all tend to be full of tention. Bono notes "we fight, all the time." Dan Fogelberg's dad has a "thundering velvet hand." John Mayer sees a poor father resulting in the next generation having to "clean up the mess he made." Gabriel's tention of learning to trust his father comes through fear of water and learning to swim.

These songs all lead me to a last song that I've been thinking about. Rich Mullins wrote a great song called Growing Young. It's is about a father, but not necessarily Mullins' father. It's a story about the prodigal son. The story that Jesus tells is a great story of the love of a father filled with great tentions.

I saw a story on ABC News this week that talked about a study that showed that a father's roughhousing is important to development of children. With roughhousing fathers demonstrate to their children appropriate measure of winning and losing. From rough play with dad, children learn to test their limits; they learn to discover their identity.

I learned something through this musical reflection. I learned that while it is from our mothers that we learn how to love, it is from our fathers that people gain their identity. More importantly, it is from God the Father that we gain the fullness of our identity as he allows us the right measures of winning and losing in this life.

We need fathers. We need strong, Christian fathers who are involved with their children, and let their children win; and let their children lose. We need fathers that discipline and teach our children the things like swimming that require trust. We need fathers who treat their daughters with grace and give their children a love for culture.

I've had a father that gave me this example. I hope that I'm that example to my children, especially now as Moriah will be moving to the next step of her life. As Paul Simon says, "as much as one and one is two, there can never be a father who loves his daughter as much as you."

What Mr. Geiger taught me

2011-05-11T11:03:00.000-04:00

As Moriah comes into her last weeks of high school, I'm reminded of my senior year and Mr. Geiger. Mr. Geiger was my geology teacher. Think Mr. Feeny with a cowboy hat and much less refined. I liked his class because I like rocks. It even eventually helped me to discover my major in college, hydrology. It turns out that geology of water a closely related.

In the course of a year with Mr. Geiger, I can remember 3 words of wisdom that he freely offered even as they extended beyond the study of geology.

1) Mr. Geiger said, "When you have children someday, never respond to their questions with 'I don't know.' Instead, say, 'Let's find out.' And then do the research together to find the answer."

I've used this bit of wisdom often in my raising of Moriah and Elie. Google made it easier than Mr. Geiger could have ever imagined.

2) On a field trip when Mr. Geiger said, "If you're man enough to chew, you're man enough to swallow." He actually gave this advice as we road a bus to his garage. It was part of an invitation to chew tobacco if we wanted, but he didn't want us to spit on his flour. That was a different day, and probably still not kosher with the school administration, but I have never been man enough to chew by his standard. No one else was on that day either.

3) There is a mineral called halite. It is salt, just like the salt on your table. And it turns out that being salt, it tastes like table salt. In the mineral identification unit, Mr. Geiger offered this wisdom. "If you're in the woods and find something that might be halite, pick it up and taste it. If it tastes salty it might be halite...or some hippie and his dog was there before you."

I'll let you deduce the life lesson for the last one.

Teachers wanted

2011-03-22T12:40:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, about the time I was in seminary, the general movement in preparing church leaders was to focus on the skills and gifts of organizational leadership. That trend is reversing in many circles as churches are more and more looking for pastors to be shepherds of the flock. A shepherd in the field has one goal: to help his flock thrive. This goal is met through two clear objectives: leading the sheep to fresh, healthy grass, and protecting them from danger along the way.

While thinking this over this morning I came to a realization about the first objective. That is, the shepherd doesn't regularly feed the sheep. He helps sheep to feed themselves. As such, leaders of the church need to be helping people to thrive through leading them to the place they aught to be. In modern language, leaders need to be about the business of teaching, not educating.

Defined by Merriam-Webster's:

teach: to cause to know something.
educate: to provide schooling for .

We often think of these terms interchangeably. They aren't. Teaching is freeing. It is about helping one to discover or uncover knowledge. Educating is about a system; it's about making sure that the person gets through all the important hoops so that they come out "qualified." Teachers think about expanding the student's mind. Educators think about expanding the students' portfolios. Teachers address the needs of the individual. Educators address the mechanism where many are processed as they are certified for something beyond.

The church needs more teachers to open the minds of the next generation. We don't need systems to process people. We need people who lovingly challenge others to seek out knowledge and use the knowledge so they can thrive.

College students aren't learning and why many people are happy about that

2011-02-01T13:04:00.001-05:00

Have you seen the study reported by New York University sociologist Richard Arum in the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses? I haven't read the book because it isn't available yet and will cost more than $60, but I've read the summaries, and I think this is a very important issue for Christians to contemplate with respect to spiritual formation.

Yesterday, I had a discussion where I was informed that Bible colleges don't believe that learning to think about what one believes is the goal of their level of education. Their job apparently is to "teach the truth" to students. They anticipate that those students will go onto seminary where they will learn to think the why they believed what they believe. If true, that, in my opinion, is a tragedy of arrogance. A tragedy because I believe 3rd graders should be taught to think critically about their faith or they will grow up only borrowing someone else's faith. It is arrogant because it assumes that the schools and teachers can know truth completely. And knowing what my local bible colleges deems matters of knowable truth, it makes me concerned for the students who should be taught first that God is too complex for any human to know fully (Romans 11:34). If Bible colleges believe their job is to indoctrinate their students into a system, then I'm sure that many other colleges do as well.

Why do I think people are happy about this? Because, it is easy. It is easy to sit someone down and pound facts into their heads. It is easy to know which facts to pound into their heads. It is easy to measure when a student is "learning" and acting right. It is easier to become successful at the consumeristic level that makes us the most comfortable. It is easy when students don't ask hard questions that make us think or challenge authority. It is just plain easier for those in control, whether parent, or teacher, or political leaders, to create a system that doesn't encourage thought.

It is easy. But it isn't right and it isn't good.

God is a God of grace. Grace demands knowing truth but understanding that application of truth is difficult and varies. Grace teaches about the reality of judgement in real, tangible ways, but grace using good judgement in the exercise of judgement. Grace teaches that the best life isn't often the easy life. Rather the best life is the one that exercises grace through the practices of justice, mercy and love.

I'm glad that Grace Point has welcomed the teaching of Grace-Based Parenting (which continues Wednesday evening). This parenting course will challenge parents to work with their children in such a way that their children will more likely come to know their faith personally, to take ownership and to think critically about what they believe, because those critical thinking skills are the bases for godly grace.

Belonging is commitment

2011-01-07T11:20:00.004-05:00

I recently read Search to Belong by Joseph Myers. Myers makes some strong points but ultimately he falls short on the purpose of the church. Myers seems to think that because people have limitation, the church should not encourage deeper relationships. I guess he presumes that most people are already at or near capacity. I don't think that is true. In fact, I think most people are looking for more personal and more intimate relationship, but struggling to find them. That is they struggle to find the godly form of those relationships and thus relationships often are a burden not a joy.

While Myers has some good point, particularly the need for the church to cultivate relational environments rather than to create artificial relationships through programs, I think the table below demonstrates the difference between my point of view and his. He sites the work of Bullard and seem to think that the "Community" is the goal of the church. (I'd actually argue that it is the goal of current culture.) I think that Family is the relational goal of the church. I added to Myer's summary of Bullard in thoughts in the last column and the last three.

Relational perspectives from 4 different church models*

	Committees	Teams	Communities	Family Communities
Formation	Elected or appointed according to rules	Recruited or drafted to work on specific project	Voluntarily connected in search of genuine and meaningful experiences	Voluntary commitment, often unspoken, based on common experiences and a need for one another
Focus	Making decision or setting policies	Maturing to performing tasks more effectively	Add qualitative relationship, meaning, and experiences to the organization, organisms or movement	Move to meet the best of all—individually and as a unit
Membership	Fixed term	Serve for life of project	No bounded membership and members come and go as interest dictates	Members are received with both family and individual accept adoption; Membership loss is mourned
Outside Assistance	High quality training and consultants	Partner with respected practitioners or coaches	Align with advocates who come alongside	Relate to outsiders as extended family
Recruitment	People of respect	People of expertise	People of passion	People of mutual love
Benefits	Build loyalty to mission	Create effect action	Provide enthusiasm	Create an environment of unconditional love
Style of Work	Making lasting decisions and manage resources	Debate strengths and weaknesses to develop the best product	Dialog to arrive at the best solution	Seek wisdom with reliance on patri/matriarchs to ensure the most loving decision for all
Sharing	Share mission but seldom power			Share love both inwardly and outwardly
Reproduction	Look to created purpose for subcommittees or department	No real reason unless a new project comes long	Based on an individual or segment of the membership discovering an following a new passion together	When younger members mature an begin a family of their own
The Lost	At worst: a thread to the organization At best: another project for another committee	At worst: Something that slows productivity At best: A hill to conquer together	At worst: A distraction for the communities goals At best: The passion	At worst: A threat to the family At best: Objects for expanding the circle of love

* Adapted and expanded from George Bullard’s “Abandon Committees, Skip Teams and Embrace Communities” as summarized in The Search to Belong by Joseph R. Myers, pg. 14-15. (The shaded area represents Bullard’s work.)

The child's advantage

2010-12-16T09:44:00.000-05:00

The child's advantage over the adult is evident in Matthew 19. Here Jesus turns conventional wisdom on its head as he rebukes the disciples for restricting the children's access to him because "the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." This short story is sandwiched between Pharisees who complicate the Law with the subject of divorce and a rich man who wants to know the minimum amount of the Law that he must follow.

We should not teach children to be experts in the Law. Experts want to know loopholes and limits.

Rather it is our responsibility to introduce children to Jesus, allow their natural faith to flourish, and help them to be obedient to Christ.

Why the church and I must change, always

2010-10-13T14:07:00.000-04:00

It is this reason that I know that I should welcome change in my life. Steadiness is comfortable, but reconciliation is change. Of course, not all change is good. Some change is reverting to a deeper sinfulness, but I know that staying the same will never help me to progress.

In the same way, I don't think the church can be the same. Christ left the church, his bride, as his representative on earth but that doesn't imply that the church is perfect like he is. The Church is guided by the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean that it has perfect love. If that were true, Paul's letters to the first century church would be quite different. As they were, they were letters to sinful people in troubled churches. Paul's challenge was for each of these churches to repent and be reconciled. His challenge was to change.

John wrote in his revelation to imperfect congregations. These churches were not reconciled to God any more than the churches that Paul wrote were reconciled to one another. While I believe that it is important that the church understand and teach the traditions of the previous generations, I do not think that that means that the church's role on earth is to maintain. It isn't to maintain traditions any more than Jesus accepted the Pharisees for their maintenance of Jewish tradition.

What I don't mean here is that the church needs to modernize itself. It is very possible that in the name of contextualizing, the church has become more like the Sadducees with watered-down faith in lieu of political or cultural power. We need stronger faith and a stronger commitment to the Gospel than what so many do when they hope that by looking just like the culture people will come to Jesus because someone slip a watered-down gospel talk in between songs in the big show that we call a worship service.

The church needs to change. And change needs to come in many ways. We cannot settle into comfortable organizations. The church should never be comfortable. The church in Laodicea tried that, and Jesus pledged to spit it out of his mouth (Revelation 3:14-22). I think that has got to be one of the most ominous warnings that God ever gave to anyone. The whole reason for the warning was that the church just wanted to comforably be what is was without love that challenged its members to be something. I would assume that this church had no goal of reconciliation but only a goal of comfortable conformity.

The church must be about the business of helping people to change in reconciliation so that they can help others to be reconciled. With out this goal, there is no valuable purpose for an institutional church to exist. Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, but we as humans cannot accept that same claim, either as individuals or as a body so we need to change. Change will always be uncomfortable.

Christine O'Donnell's folks wisely changed their TV campaign from "I'm not a witch. I'm your wife."

2010-10-11T20:55:00.000-04:00

"I'm not a witch. I'm you wife"

I'm not a witch. I'm you."

Two possible campaign slogans.

We might never know which is more effective.

But we can know that one is funnier.

Especially when it is preceded by "Liar! Liar!"

Should we ask God to relieve our suffering?

2010-10-05T08:15:00.000-04:00

http://read.ly/John12.27.NLT

When Jesus knew his life was coming to a very difficult end he didn't run from the suffering. In fact, he said,

"Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, `Father, save me from this hour'? But this is the very reason I came! Father, bring glory to your name."
Then a voice spoke from heaven, saying, "I have already brought glory to my name, and I will do so again."

When you are in a time of suffering or carrying a burden of grief, is your first prayer that God would take it away? Or is your first prayer that God would bring glory to His name?

Father, bring glory to your name today even if it mean a little discomfort.

How many commands do you need to follow? Pick one as long as it is love.

2010-09-27T11:45:00.000-04:00

Bible scholars have for generations counted the commands in the Bible. Most people would say that the Old Testament has somewhere over 600 commands to follow. Of course, most children's Sunday School classes have focused on the 10 Biggies, the 10 Commandments. There was even a classic movie made of that with wonderful 1960's style special effects.

I think people over think this issue. Jesus said that there are just 2 commandments that summarize everything God asks people to do. They are, love God and love others.

In the Old Testament God made this clear as the summary of the giving of the 10 commandments. He said:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Deuteronomy 6:4-6

And in the New Testament, Jesus makes it clear that all commandments boil down to just these two.

“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40

In reality to love God and love others is the same commandment. If you love God, you will love other people. So, in reality God only requires one thing of you. That is to love.

This should be very freeing. We are to love. We don't have to be theologians to love. We just need to love. We don't have to understand the political climate to love. We just need to be loving to all people. We don't need to have a perfect ecclesiology or eschatology to love. We just need to care for the needs of the people around us and focus on the goodness of God.

What extra things are you doing in your life that may interfere with your raw ability to love? What extra expectation are you putting on others that inhibit their ability to love you back, or may lead you to be less loving of them?

I've heard it said that you should hate the sin but love the sinner. I wonder if we shouldn't just love the sinner and love God and let God focus more on the conviction of the sinner. Sure loving God will demand a separation from sin, but perhaps the best focus for my life is how much I can love God rather than labeling the actions of others as sinful. I often misinterpret actions anyhow.

A warning for parents (part 2)

2010-09-22T07:25:00.001-04:00

[Note: This the the second of a two part blog based on warnings that I have discovered over the last couple years of studying parenting and spiritual issues. In this time I have read two books by Christian Smith, a sociologist who studies spirituality in youth culture. He has identified that one type of faith predominates among American youth. He called it moralistic therapeutic deism. He doesn't consider this type of faith to be healthy. I would agree. Please read yesterday's post if you have not yet.]

As I said in yesterday's post, when I ask parents what their top goals for their children are I usually get these three priorities:

That they would follow God.
That they would do good and avoid evil. (Obedience.)
That they would be safe and happy.

While the first is a godly and biblical goal for parents, the other two are a distraction on the way to developing children who honestly follow God. We have already established that obedience is the wrong goal for parents so today I'll look at the goal of safe, happy children.

This is actually a very easy goal to knock down but it would do a disservice to try to knock it down with isolated verses. There are many examples for why safe living is not God's intention in scripture. Just look at the way that God treats his children: Israel in the Old Testament and the church in the New. Let us look at some more macro examples.

Remember the story of the 12 spies. They were sent into the promised land and asked to bring information about the inhabitants back to Moses and the Israelites. Two responded to God's call to take the land. The other 10 chose to fear scary things and instructed the Israelites to avoid the promise. Because the people chose the safe way out, God punished the people for 40 years.

In Judges, the statement "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" is repeated several times. It is easy to assume that the people of Judges had no leader and no clear agreement about the standard so each one chose to make himself or herself happy. This pursuit of happiness led to all sorts of troubles for the nation.

The Gospels are filled with stories of Jesus turning the tables on happiness. Jesus was not about teaching people the quick way to happiness, rather about putting others needs ahead for one's own. The best example for this principle are the beatitudes. In this teaching (as translated in modern English) Jesus says "happy are those..." But a careful reading makes it clear it is not about the one who wants to be happy to chase his own happiness. Rather it is about putting his immediate needs behind the needs of others.

Over and over again, the case can be made that God wants our happiness and even our safety to fall behind the needs of others and to be reliant on trust for him. If we teach our children to live safe and happy lives, we are short sheeting them. In this way, many Christian parents are no better than their non-Christian neighbors. Our children can easily become an idol for parents. This, in turn, teaches children to make their own state of mind their idol.

I love what C.S. Lewis says about God. Perhaps you remember this dialog in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When one child asked if Aslan (a form of God) is safe, Mr. Beaver replied, "Safe?...He isn't safe. But he's good."

Teach your children to live in the unsafe territory which is goodness, pursuing God with all their hearts. It won't be comfortable for you or for them, but it will be right.

If you'd like to read more about this topic, I'd suggest Crazy Love by Francis Chan.

A warning for parents (part 1)

2010-09-21T07:40:00.001-04:00

[Note: This the the first of a two part blog based on warnings that I have discovered over the last couple year of studying parenting and spiritual issues. In this time I have read two books by Christian Smith, a sociologist who studies spirituality in youth culture. He has identified that one type of faith predominates among American youth. He called it moralistic therapeutic deism. He doesn't consider this type of faith to be healthy. I agree with his analysis.]

If I ask just about any parent in my church what their top goals for their children are I'm likely to get these three priorities:

That they would follow God.
That they would do good and avoid evil. (Obedience.)
That they would be safe and happy.

In reality, I honestly think that deep down inside those are the answers I might give also, but 2 out of 3 of those responses are misguided. In truth, most of us really place the two weaker values ahead of the more biblical.

If you are a Christian parent, there is an absolute command to help your children to follow God. Deuteronomy 6 is the Lord's command to parents (the older generations) to give guidance to children (the younger generation) as the Lord says:

"Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. (NLT)

It might be real easy to say that this passage gives parents two responsibilities: to guide children into love of the Lord and to guide children into obedience. But, that is not really accurate. There is only one responsibility for parents here. That is to love the Lord. Obedience is something that flows from our love for God. Jesus said, "If you love me you will obey my commands" (John 14:15). You will notice in this statement that obeying God's commands is not a command, but are result of our love.

Have you ever notice that most Christians are more like the older prodigal son? We usually look at that story from the eyes of the one who ran off after taking his inheritance. But we think, like the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, that because we have created bounds, that God owes us something. Parents, just teaching your children rules and boundaries isn't enough for proper spiritual development. That parenting style can lead to an entitlement complex where children grow up thinking that because they followed the rules, God owes them.

Unfortunately, when Christian parents focus on obedience, they don't create people who love God. They create obedient children. In fact, that obedience is often not to God at all, but rather to the parents. In my experience, these children often walk away from spiritual things we they are no longer under their parents' authority. Even if they continue in obedience, they can do this without a deep, honest love for God.

Instead of focusing on teaching your children obedience, make a priority of teaching them to love God and to love others. As evident in the Deuteronomy passage, conversations on obedience will be important along the way as they learn to live out their love for God and their love for others, but obedience isn't the starting point. The major mistake I notice when obedience is the starting point is that parents make their own law the measure of good. That might include non-biblical rules like those that guide the way they dress, the importance of attending church functions and sitting certain ways in those functions, and choosing a parent-approved life path. Be careful not to create a false law in your children's life. It is better to create a honest love.

I would recommend that parents read Grace Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel and The Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight. These books will help parents to focus on putting love for God ahead of obedience to you.

[Tomorrow I'll post on the thereputic mistake that parents make.]

I love boobies and book burnings

2010-09-11T11:39:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago as my family sat in Chicago Midway Airport waiting to board our flight home from our wonderful time in the Midwest, I noticed a boy about middle-school age sitting with an escort. He had up and down both arms a good number of those rubber band style bracelets. Every single one of the bands had printed in bold letters, "I love boobies."

I've seen this phrase before on bumper stickers, but this time it really shocked me. I asked my teenage daughter if she notices. Her response, "Dad, almost every boy in school wears those."

Doing remarkable things is a good way to get your message out. People notice you or your organization when you make bold and shocking statements. I have a friend who calls it the man bites dog factor. The I Love Boobies bands are apparently a breast cancer awareness campaign. In my opinion it is a misguided campaign as instead of getting people to look at the need for a cure for a disease that claims many beloved mothers, sisters, daughters and friends, the campaign turns boys to giggling and trivializing the female. It highlights the breast as a sex toy and a joke.

Today I am so happy that Pastor Terry Jones has rescinded his church's plan for burning the Koran. I'm not sure why exactly he and his church thought it was a good idea to plan and make public a Koran burning. I can guess that they are very happy about the fact that fewer than 10 days ago, googling "Pastor Terry Jones" would have returned some pretty plain websites and most certainly no news. I can imagine that the church is happy that this has been a tool for furthering their message, which I would venture they think is the Gospel of Christ. They have become remarkable in the most direct sense of the word. People are remarking about Terry Jones' church.

The problem with building notoriety for planning Koran burnings is the same problem as the I Love Boobies campaign. You get a message out, but it is the wrong message. It is a negative twist on what you are actually trying to say.

If Terry Jones wants to share the message of Christ, he is going to have a lot of repair work to do to demonstrate that Christ is about love. He came to die for those who read and obey the Koran. He gave up his life for those kinds of people. The problem with I Love Boobies bands is that some wearers don't really care much for healing sick breasts, they are just looking for the next pair of healthy boobies.

What are some less obvious ways that Christians send a wrong message about Jesus when they are trying to make the Gospel more remarkable?

Does discernment have to lead to condemnation?

2010-09-09T10:16:00.000-04:00

Skye Jethani has an interesting article on Out of Ur. In Judge Not he discusses two different uses of the word judge in the Bible: to discern and to condemn. When Jesus says, "judge not or you will be judged," he certainly did not mean we should not use discernment. We are constantly told to be discerning in the Scriptures. The problem is, when we discern that something is evil or wrong, we often move straight to the judgment of condemnation. Does condemnation have to follow the discernment? What is an appropriate Christian response to discerning something is less than perfect?

Happy Labor Day: Cheers to being average!

2010-09-06T07:51:00.000-04:00

Today we celebrate the American worker. So if you haven't lost your job in the last year. Cheers! If you aren't self employed. Cheers! If you don't have the ability to look into the future and discover through an entrepreneurial mind great ways to develop something new without being on shift work or doing the 9 to 5. Cheers! If you don't take leadership to a new level. Cheers!

Of course, Labor Day is the celebration of the vastly important average Joe. The common laborer is very important to our society. With out those people, nothing would get done. I love and respect and even hold up with a lot of esteem the average people of this world.

Still doesn't it seem ironic that we have a day to celebrate being average? Doesn't it seem narcissistic to have a day when people (laborers in this case) get together to celebrate themselves?

Just wondering. I'm going to celebrate by spending the day with people who don't fit the definision of laborer. I didn't plan it that way it just happened. I don't know that we will ever once mention the average worker or labor unions in the course of our celebration. How about you?

P90X: Is it an answer to the fat Christian's problem?

2010-08-30T09:48:00.002-04:00

I'm trying to lose some weight and to discover a better attitude about my physical body. As a follower of Christ, I have fallen into the dualistic trap that it is my spirit that matters, not my body. As a result, I've been too happy to give into my body's immediate desires to eat and to rest. Now I find myself pushing the edge of the obesity charts and my body hurts with even the most minimal exercise. So, I've started using the Livestrong.com (and associate iPhone app) tools for tracking calories ingested and exercise. In 10 days, I've lost about 3 very temperamental pounds. If I stopped tracking today, I'm pretty sure I'd gain those puppies back by the weekend.

My problem, that leads to my question is that I'm tracking, but I don't know that what I'm doing is going to fix the problem. So, is P90X the answer to this Christian's fat problem?

I ask about this product because so many Christians are jumping on it. We even have a men's group that encourages guys to do it on the same schedule. A few of those guys have shown more definition, but I'm not sure that many have shown me that P90X is a tool that I should use.

Let me define my goal first of all. My problem is a sin that I need to overcome. Gluttony or sloth or both, one might call it. Whatever it is called, my problem is giving into material desires. The result of my sin is a body that is inefficient, a food bill that is too high, and a self propitiating habit of sitting on the couch watching meaningless TV.
So, what can P90X do for me? On the surface, it doesn't seem this is the tool for me, but I'd love to hear from those who have tried it. In short, my sin is idolizing material needs of my body. It seem to me that this program only builds on that by focusing on how your body will look in 90 day. Does P90X do more for the user than the surface draw of making one look good? An obsession for looking good can also be a form of idolatry.

Second, I hear a lot of the work is too difficult to complete. Is P90X doable for a fat, lazy guy?

Third, I really wonder about the sustainability of this program. Again, I can loose weight using my calorie tracker, but I've done that in the past, but I don't feel that I truly learned to overcome my sin. I just learned to stuff it. Does P90X teach any lasting values of health? Have you been able to maintain those values?

I would sure appreciate help with this.

When the pagans influence the church, what should we do?

2010-08-23T11:50:00.001-04:00

When reading makes me frustrated the point of abrasion can come in two forms: 1) The authors haven't done what I would have hoped that they would do or 2) What I'm reading is too far from what I (or we) are doing for me to see how to get there. Obviously the latter is not bad as it can bring new ways of looking at issues and challenge me to move forward.

I just finished reading (as part of my vacation reading plan) Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices by Frank Viola and George Barna. I found myself frustrated as I read this book. In this case, I had alternating feeling of frustration from both sources. Viola and Barna have challenged me to do something, to think about the church and where to go from here and to live a life more centered on Jesus. At the same time, I think they fall short of their goal, even, at times, suggesting backward movement where the church has progressed positively and often deciding that the best days of the church were some glorified day that makes no sense to us today.

Their purpose was to "remove a great deal of debris in order to make room for the Lord Jesus Christ to be the fully functioning head of His church." This is a noble goal, and one that I agree with the authors as they set a need. They do a reasonable job of pointing out debris that needs to be removed. I agree that the church building has been falsely raised to a point of idolatry. Similarly, I agree whole heartedly that they idea of dressing up for church as it is a sign of my having when other don't is a great distraction from the message of the gospel. I have been pushing to move our church away from age-graded discipleship methods and from a separation of power, clergy and laity.

While I agree often with the authors as they criticized the institutionalized and paganized church, I struggle more with the solution which too often is to return to some model of church-life from the first century. That sounds fine and dandy, as certainly, if Jesus and the apostles lived in the first century, those folks had direct access to what the church should be. This might be somewhat true, but not completely. In fact, if you read the epistles, you should notice that a lot of them were written as correctives to a church that was already missing the mark.

Of course, our authors would likely respond that their premise is that the correctives where de-institutionalizing the church. This is true, but still, I think that the authors too often lead us back to a fictional image of the church. It may be that they did much research to discover what the church looked like and was supposed to act like, but it is still an image that we have little evidence to know how this early church formed, moved and interacted. Moreover, there is less evidence to help us to know what a church must look like 2000 years later. We do not really know that the first century church held normative practices or how many of their practices were our of necessity since the church was small and just begining in its formation.

I agree that we need to remove debris from the institutional church. A lot of debris. In almost everything there is junk that needs to be removed. Relics of cultures past must be put to rest or they become idols in our worship. The solution, though, is not to replicate a church from another culture long ago, but to re-learn how the church (the people in the family of God) can free ourselves of old cultural relics and appropriately connect with a culture today.

I think the church does need to be more organic; more natural to this world and culture; more focus on Jesus Christ and his gospel. Reading Pagan Christianity has helped me to take another look at influences that are clouding our relationship with Jesus Christ. I would recommend it as reading for church leaders (which the authors would say shouldn't exist) and for all church members as we continue to discover God's vision for the church today. My application, however, would be to examine our practices, know that the culture will influence who we are as a people, and eliminate any practice that distracts us from God.

Saying goodbye to Verizon

2010-07-02T19:31:00.000-04:00

Me: Hello verizon. I'm a current customer. You just raise my bill and the Comcast guy is at the door offering me a better deal.
Verizon: I'm happy to help you with that. Your bill just increased $10 after 2 years with no increase. Correct?
Me: It was 1 year.
verizon (after a few moments and some account searching): The bundle would be $99 [for internet and TV].
Me: That's $10 more than Comcast is offering. They also through in premium channels and phone for that price.
verizon: That's the same type of offer you got from us [last year].

Me in my head: Duh, that's why I'm inviting the Comcast guy to sign me up.

Bye, Bye Verizon! I'm sadder to see Vonage go.

Fathers are important

2010-06-19T21:57:00.000-04:00

Psychology today has a great article that should be an encouragement to fathers. Fathers matter in the life their children even if you are different than the more widely celebrated parent. It seems that there is a new body of research that have analyzed the way that fathers add value to the emotional develop of children. Interestingly enough, researchers are discovering that fathers influence is important but different from mother.

What emerges from their [ work is the beginning of a truly modern concept of paternity, one in which old assumptions are overturned or, at the very least, cast in a radically different light. Far from Mead's "social accident," fatherhood turns out to be a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children.Key to this new idea of fatherhood is a premise so mundane that most of us take it for granted: fathers parent differently than mothers do. They play with their children more.

Interestingly, while mothers tend to relate more on a emotional level, children learn a lot about relation to others emotionally from their fathers. Children learn a lot about reading the emotions of other, reacting to those emotions, and listening to others. Fathers play an important role in teaching children how to cope in certain situations.

Unfortunately, the benefit of what a father brings to a child is diminished in the industrialized and post-industrialized economies have generally caused more fathers than mothers to be distant from their children regularly. Further, the trend has been to emphasize the typical maternal characteristics and to de-emphasize the more playful and less nurturing parenting styles.

Of course, none of this should be taken to make the mother's role less important. But dads we should be encourage that being a dad is an important role. Being different from a mom is important, too.

Fathers you are important in the development of your children. Mothers celebrate the difference that your children's father makes in their lives. Dads be playful and spend as much time with your children as possible.

Happy Fathers Day.

God is more like a wild animal

2010-06-07T16:27:00.001-04:00

CS Lewis responded to the question "Is God safe?" with the answer, "No, but he's good."

I thought of that when I saw this picture....

(via)

A zoo is an artificial environment where we think we are going to look at wild animals.

They aren't wild. Zoos aren't natural. They pen once wild animals up in a place where they are isolated from any danger they could cause.

Too often I think Christians put God into their own little Church Zoo.

He's safe in there.
He can't claw at us.
Doesn't he look just like a little teddy bear.

That's not the way God really is. That's just the way he appears.

Let's let God out of the cage. Run the risk of him ripping us to shreds. Look at him in his natural environment.

Then we might know just how good he really can be.

Otherwise he might just become a freak show for 2nd graders to visit on a field trip.

Thanks to Abraham Piper for the picture idea.

Woe to the church?

2010-05-28T06:50:00.002-04:00

Read Matthew 23.

In Matthew 23 Jesus blasts 7 "woes" to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law. Jesus' lament wasn't that the Pharisees were not religious in their action. It was that their religion was doing little to help them or other to do God's will.

The seven woes are:

They created a false religion that actually kept people away from the Kingdom of God.
They created disciples who were committed to dead religious practices.
They devalued the things of God (i.e., the Temple and alter of God) to increase the value of their own work (i.e., offerings and gold).
They ignored the purpose of the Law (i.e., justice, mercy and faithfulness).
They used ceremonial cleanliness to hide the sins of their hearts.
They maintained a religious appearance that masked their spiritual deadness.
They lifted up the memories of spiritual giants but displayed attitudes of those who martyred the prophets and righteous.

It is easy to be religious, but what might we in the church today be doing that detracts from doing what God values the most?

I'm going to guess that many will start listing things like we aren't strong enough of sin or we don't preach hell enough. We might even be encouraged to say that we aren't strong enough on encouraging people to attend our church services or prayer groups. But look again at Jesus' woes. It seems that these are the kinds of things that the Pharisees and Scribes were focused on. Jesus wanted to change the focus all together.

Beware! There are many Pharisees in the American church even today. Many of them might be heroes and symbols of the most religious folks. One of them might be me. It is possible the my religious emphases are a stumbling block for some on the way to the Kingdom of God. It might be that you are one in some aspects of your faith.

Reflection on a strange strike

2010-05-27T09:32:00.001-04:00

So the teacher are going on strike. Not walking out, but swearing to only do what they are contracted to do and nothing more.

Two thoughts: First, why the big deal? Can the community really be upset that someone is only doing what they are paid to do? If I go to Applebee's for dinner and my server only seats me, takes my order, brings my food and my check, and takes my payment, should I be upset that the server didn't also make friendly talk with my table? No, I don't have the right to demand that of the server.

On the other hand, a server who is friendly, takes the time to get to know me personally, and remembers my name will encourage both a bigger tip and my loyalty as a customer. That server would have pride in the end of the day that they are doing more than just earning a paycheck.

So, to the people in the school district just south of me, take heart. Your children's teachers are doing exactly what you (as taxpayers and voters) have asked them to do. You teachers in the same district, is that really enough? Can you really be pleased with your work when you allow an organization to dictate to you that you shouldn't go the extra step to feel good about your day?

How contemporary is my traditional church?

2010-05-19T10:50:00.000-04:00

I was looking through my book selves and found this quote:

There are only two options to the church today: one is to struggle to patch up the contemporary church, retaining all we can of traditional forms and patterns of live, resisting with all our might the forces that demand change (until the whole edifice crumbles as a new generation rejecting empty form and seeing no meaning, abandons our churches--leaving them to die as gracefully as possible). The other option is to accept the challenge of change, and to channel it--to seek to build together a church which will be a true expression of The Church, yet uniquely suited to our 21st century world.

This statement is quite appropriate as we talk about the church in 2010. There is a battle between doing church the old way and or changing our methods to make sense in a changing culture. Interestingly, I found this quote on the cover of A New Face for the Church, written in 1970 by Lawrence O. Richards. Not much has changed in 40 years. In fact, the only thing that I can see that has changed is the methods that the old church calls sacred.

When it's tradition verse culture, Truth should win

2010-05-14T11:07:00.004-04:00

I just heard an insightful sermon on traditions in the church. Mark Foreman, pastor of North Coast Calvary Chapel in Carlsbad, California spoke on Matthew 15:1-20. I would highly recommend giving it a listen.

Here are some things that I learned about traditions from Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees. These ideas reflect what Mark Foreman said, but I’ll say them in my own words.

We all have traditions. Even if you think the things you are doing are tradition-less, you have a tradition. For me, my traditions tend to be to stubbornly dig in my heels at the first sniff of any tradition.
Traditions are not bad on their own. They can be valuable tools for conveying truth.
Traditions become our culture and as our culture, they can blind us from the truth. Because we are so enveloped in our culture, we can loose the language and skills we need to discern when a tradition has become an idol.
While we ought not substitute our traditions (i.e., Christian culture) for truth, we cannot let our culture (i.e., worldly habits) lean in to define truth. The Word of God is our final guide on truth.
When we are angry at a Christian brother or sister, we need to evaluate if the source of our anger is really truth of it is actually a conflict of traditions.
Traditions that tear the church apart need to be reevaluated.
“In essentials unity. In nonessentials liberty. In all things love.”

So, in the debate of traditional church verse the culturally relevant church, the truth of the Gospel of Christ should be the only winner.

I'm going to be working on some traditions of my own. What struggles in your life might be coming from a conflict of traditions? What practices does our church have that might be blind obedience to tradition rather than thoughtfully conveying the Gospel of Christ.

The meat of teaching

2010-05-11T08:17:00.000-04:00

On occasion I hear someone say that the church should have more meat in its teaching. I ask them what they mean. Interestingly, I seldom get an answer that is thought out ahead of time. They aren't usually sure, they just don't feel the teachers use enough big words, give enough background information, list enough cross references, or are not clear enough on the doctrines of the Church. Certainly all of those things are important. But I think meat is something all together different.

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn.In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food!Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:11-14

Learning the information, the doctrine, the background and the reasons why we do something is what the author of Hebrews calls milk. Solid food (meat) is teaching and doing what God calls us to do. Student who are sitting in classes listening are nursing their faith like a baby nurses from his mother. Every person needs to do that for a season, but that cannot be the on-going form of discipleship. A baby needs less than a year of nursing before it is ready for solid food. I would suggest that disciples become fat on milk if they are not discipling in some manner within a year of their start on the journey.

To really grow in your faith, find situations where you will be challenged to live out your faith and do so with the watchful eye of a mentor helping you along the way.

To really help someone else grow, teach them until they get to the point where they can teach anyone else and be effective, then push them to do just that. Teaching is the highest form of learning. Doing is the meat we are after.

If teaching is discipleship, who are you teaching? Who are you helping to teach another?

Deep Church review

2010-05-08T22:37:00.000-04:00

I have found that with so many changes going on in the church (my church as well as the Western church), I have been drawn to reading books on Ecclesiology. Back in seminary I remember comparing Resident Aliens with Rediscovering Church. It seems that I was the only one in Scott Wenig's Church Administration class who felt more aligned with Hauerwas and Willimon's book (RA) than with the exceedingly popular book by the Hybles. The pragmatic work of the Willow Creek megachurch just seemed too shortsighted to me.

I just worked my way through Deep Church by Jim Belcher (2009, IVP, Kindle Edition). In this book he investigates the debate between traditional and the emergent models of church. This is a raging debate in Christian leadership circles. If you aren't a leader, you might not think you care, but the truth is, the model of church will effect the way, the purpose and the form of your relationship with believers. Belcher talks briefly about the pragmatic movement of the church grow/seeker sensitive movement, but does not analyze it beyond deeming in dead. (Interesting that less than a dozen years ago, most of the students in my class were inline with this movement.)

In the end, Belcher is trying to set up a third way between the traditional church (fundamentalism) and the emergent church. His third way envelopes three elements for defining the body that Christ left for his work on Earth. They are the Bible, traditions and culture. Of course, both the traditional and emergent church believe they are using the Bible in their development, but they see the Bible in very different ways. The traditional camp interprets the Bible based on traditions. The emergent side works from a context of understanding the Bible according to the culture.

In the end, I think that Belcher has presented an excellent option to these Ecclesiologies. He calls this third way the deep church. I struggle a bit with his discussion on politics and worship. While I agree that those in the emergent camp too often focus on arts when talking about culture and agree that Christians need to be involved in all aspects of culture, I think that Christians need to be careful here. Too often we have adopted a worldly political system and named it Christian (whether it be conservative or liberal). We cannot afford to do that and maintain our witness. At this point of very divisive politics, Christians need to be questioning hard both poles of the political spectrum. Belcher hints at this but the warning needs to be stronger.

On my second issue of traditions in worship. I do not disagree that we need to understand and connect with our historical context as we worship as the body of Christ. But that is always going to be difficult. What tradition do we connect to is always going to be a difficult question. A glance at Belcher's Redeemer Presbyterian Church website shows a very western church image. How do we account for which traditions we follow? How do we discount an inappropriate tradition? It would seem that we need to ask these questions or the church will be driven to adopt practices of by-gone cultures which do not draw us closer to the Cross. For example, while the author chose his denomination over (among other things) a strong belief in ordination. The tradition of ordination, of course, came from the same tradition that gave us the totalitarian papacy. At the same time, while hymns are the history of the church that grew up in the west, why do we usually ignore African spirituals or music from eastern cultures?

In the end, I was quite impress and swayed by Deep Church. The issue I have are minor and I like the way that Belcher is working to bring the positive of both extremes in the church debate together. I would love to hear from others as we work out the issues of worship and culture. Do you think Belcher found a reasonable middle point?

Understanding the Bible in cartoon

2010-04-20T16:39:00.000-04:00

I found this great tool today. You can make a cartoon movie with not much trouble at all. I made this one today on understanding the Bible. It took me about 40 minutes. Enjoy the story.

Talk on disciplining children

2010-04-10T10:21:00.000-04:00

I'm speaking next week to a group of moms about disciplining children. Here's a quick preview of what I think I'll talk about.

The purpose of discipline (discipleship)
Keys of God's discipline model (Grace and Truth)
Tactical discipline

Plan toward a goal rather than react
Focus on purpose not facts
Teach love through obedience not because I say so
Demonstrate joy not emotionless responsibility
Guide to life-long meaning not just how to be a good kid

What do you think? Is it practical enough? Will it give young moms more than they already have?

Biblical Family?

2010-03-22T15:53:00.000-04:00

My title at the church is Pastor of Life Development. People ask me what that mean all the time. Usually, if I don't figure that they really care what I do specifically, I just tell them that I'm a family pastor. That is sort of true but not really.

Family is a complicated thing. What is a family? Many, or most, evangelical Christians that I know lament the loss of the the traditional family. I might agree that family as our grandparents understood a family to be is going away, but what are we really lamenting? Most people would say that we are loosing the biblical family. But is that true? What did the family look like in the Bible? Was it more like the Duggers or like the Osbounes?

Scot McKnight, professor of New Testament at North Park University, has an interesting post today about a book by the Scottish theologian Stephen Holmes. I would suggest that these men will paint a different picture of the biblical family for us.

In my role of pastor of Life Development, I want it to be more inclusive that just managing the spiritual lives of nuclear families. I hope that Life Development is about challenging all people to a great involvement in mentoring and disciplining the next generation. First, with parents taking a greater part in their children's spiritual development. But just as important is that all people all people--married or not, old or young, with children or without--see that they have an important part to play in the spiritual development of the next generation.

Never eat zebra and sponsor a Kenyan girl because they count

2010-03-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

Compassion is doing a blogger's tour of Kenya right now. I'm glad they are especially since my daughter began to sponsor a Kenyan child a year ago. Her child's name is Margaret. In a recent letter to El, Margaret asks my daughter if she knew what a census was. It seems that the census was taken in her village. Margaret seemed very excited because "she was counted too."

All kids count. We just need to help them to know that. Sponsoring one with Compassion will make that known.

I know you're wondering to read Shawn Grove's post to find out why you should never eat zebra. The pictures are great, too.

PT: Perfectionism leads to miserable children

2010-03-02T08:20:00.000-05:00

Dr. Jim Taylor writes on Pychology Today's blog that children suffer when they feel pressure to be perfect. On the heals of our "All In the Family" series where I talked about ways that parents provoke their children to anger, this article could be helpful for understanding some ways that parents can cause this kind of pressure in the lives of children. Is it possible that you are sending messages, either explicitly or implicitly, that your love is contingent on their success? Here are some ways that parents may to that.

Rewarding success and punishing failure.

When children succeed, their parents lavish them with love, attention, and gifts. But when they fail, their parents either withdraw their love and become cold and distant, or express strong anger and resentment toward their children. -Jim Taylor

Model perfectionism by be unduly frustrated at yourself when you fail or overly competitive.

Children see how their parents hate themselves when they're not perfect, so they feel they must be perfect so their parents won't hate them. These parents unwittingly communicate to their children that anything less than perfection won't be tolerated in the family. -Jim Taylor

Projecting your flaws on your children.

These parents project their flaws onto their children and try to fix those flaws by giving love when their children don't show the flaws and withdrawing love when they do. Unfortunately, instead of creating perfect children and absolving themselves of their own imperfections, they pass them on to their children and stay flawed themselves. -Jim Taylor

Taylor goes on to suggest that parents need not be perfect, rather they should strive for excellence. That's a confusing statement, but what he means is work hard to do good as much as possible but allow yourself to fail. I would add that you should let your children fail as well. Bs, Cs, Ds, and even Fs are OK. Big a benchwarmer on a second rate team isn't the worst thing. Not having the whole Bible memory packet complete isn't spiritual suicide. These things don't signal that children are failing at life. They should be a challenge to know where to improve or maybe a signal that the child has a different path in life.

Hope for young adults: a review of Soul Searching

2010-01-28T10:47:00.001-05:00

I have now read several different books on the lives of what Smith and Snell call emergent adults; The First Year Out by Tim Clydesdales, Path to Purpose by William Damon and now Souls in Transition. Now I have just complete Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford University Press, 2009) by Christian Smith and Patricia Snell. This book focuses most directly on the spiritual health of this age group.

I find Souls in Transition to have a flavor of mixed of concern and hope. Spiritually, 18 to 25-year olds are dropping out of the church in large numbers. We have all suspected this fact and the authors prove it is true with an immense amount of data. As youth transition into adulthood they are finds spiritual question and a desire for a certain lifestyle to be a deterrent from attending the religion of their youth. As a group, there is an across the board shift from more religious commitment to less religious commitment.

On the other hand, the authors have some hope. Like every generation before, I have heard older people of faith proclaim that this younger generation is more lost than ever before. Smith and Snell find that perception is simply not true. At least as far as their study goes back (1972), the current emergent adults are not dropping out any faster than previous generations. In fact, there is a hint that current emergents are actually maintaining faith at a higher rate.

I particularly enjoyed the application of the study. In brief, maintain faith through the emergent adult years is not a matter so much of addressing emergent adults, but a healthier treatment of the teens. Smith and Snell describe that as a process of socializing that first starts in the home but is echoed in mentors within the church. Older adults of faith, both parents and church-folk, need to avoid the pitfall of encouraging youth to push away from them. The myth says that youth no longer want adults to participate in their lives. Instead, the authors’ data show that youth want adult contact, but they need it on new terms. Youth that receive a good amount of attention from adults of faith are more likely to maintain their faith into adulthood.

I long for thunder

2010-01-25T05:56:00.001-05:00

I long for thunder

I long for thunder
Thunder rolling in
The kind I can hear for an hour before the first raindrops fall

I long for thunder
Thunder that when it arrives the house shakes
The dog paces
And I think this is what the end will be like

I long for thunder
The flashing of light
The count down before the CRASH
The search for candles to replace electric lights

I long for thunder
It brings me back to my childhood
To my father telling me "it's all OK"
The comfort I have in knowing
It's much bigger than me

I long for thunder
But alass. It is winter and the rain that comes
Only brings wind, icey pings, and the sound of the heater kicking up

I may long for thunder
But today I'll face the cold rain
Knowing that I'm fortunate enought to have a warm house for retreat
And it is still bigger than me

Steve Johnson

The uncomfortable Blue Parakeet can make you think

2010-01-09T08:35:00.002-05:00

Recently, a good friend complained to me that a particular Bible discussion didn't help to clarify the particular issue in his mind. He said, "I walked a way less sure and more confused." My response was "good."

Over the recent years I have become more comfortable with the idea that God is too big for us to know with clarity. Without a doubt, we are to strive each day to know him better than the last day. We are to study his word (the Bible), listen to expert comentaries, and discuss it in faithful groups of Christians. These are important steps for the follower of Christ and will facilitate spiritual growth.

We cannot expect that Christian growth means that we are less confused, that we know God more perfectly, or that our study will raise much of anything but more questions. Karl Barth (pronounced bart), a Swiss, Neo-orthodox theologian who valiantly battle liberal theology in the early to mid-1900s, called this dialectical theology because he believed that too much of God was paradoxical and unknowable to the human. Barth's point was that the best answer to a theological question was the next best question.

This brings me to my book review on Scot McKnight's The Blue Parakeet (Zondervan, 2008, 240 pages). (I provided this link for your convenience should you like to read the book. I read the Kindle version.) McKnight is a thoughtful, seasoned Bible scholar who teaches at North Park University in Chicago. In The Blue Parakeet, McKight examines how we should read the Bible, particularly the difficult passages. I'll let you read the book to discover why it is named so.

McKnight, by his own reasoning, is an evangelical scholar. There are many with a more narrow interpretation of evangelical who wouldn't agree, because many evangelicals will only identify with others who subscribe to specific set of doctrine. This doctrine is often narrow in interpretation and broad in scope.

One point that many evangelicals will struggle with the Blue Parakeet and McKnight, is that he is in many way post-modern. He makes a strong argument that the Bible must be read as a story (not a fiction story) and applied according to the context of the reader. He argues that too many want to read the Bible as a list of laws, morsels of blessings, an psychological inkblot, a puzzle, or examples of Maestros. I will let McKnight explain those.

McKnight, on the other hand, believe the Bible is God's story from begining to end, with each book being the author's telling of the story at a particular time to a particular people. The challenge then is to read the Bible with an understanding of that time and people, and learn what that means to today and to the people you live among. This is not easy. It is more work than the other ways we can read the Bible. It also means that two people in two different places may draw different interpretations, particularly with respect to a passage's application.

At this point, I'm sure that many of my Christian friends are getting uncomfortable. That is alright. I was too, and I think that it is that discomfort that drove me to read the rest of the Blue Parakeet with an open, but discerning mind. In the end, discernment is the crux of McKnight's book. Everything in the Bible must be discerned with the Holy Spirit and nothing is settled.

This post is already too long, but there is more I would like to say about these matter. I hope to do so in other posts. Let me just conclude by saying that as I read the Blue Parakeet, I felt uncomfortable. I still do not agree with every point he makes, but I can tell you that I also began asking a lot more questions about my God, myself and my understanding of what it means to know God. I was driven deeper into my Bible, and, while I developed more questions, I believe that the depth of my questions is growing. I believe this book has helped me to grow as a believer, too.

How to improve your adolescent's grades by one letter in just 15 minutes

2009-12-21T15:15:00.001-05:00

Give them more sleep.

Ashley Merryman demonstrates that more sleep will improve your adolescent's grades, make them happier people and make them safer drivers. So when are parents going to start pushing school boards to adjust the school calendar? Maybe it should be a priority.

Myth of Christmas: Immaculate Conception

2009-12-15T14:58:00.001-05:00

I believe in the birth of Jesus as it is told in the Bible. I believe that it was miraculous and that he was born of a virgin. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, however, is pure myth. Many people mistake these two doctrines. I just heard a well-educated and prominant Christian author/speaker make this mistake.

The Immaculate Conception doesn't refer to how Jesus came onto this earth. It is about Mary's birth. Particularly, it is the belief that Mary came into this world without original sin, or without a sin nature for that matter. This is not a biblically defensible doctrine.

As you think about the truths of the coming of our Savior, consider the misconceptions that are often spread this time of year. Can you think of any others?

Is the Christian Religion a Myth. Review of Greg Boyd's book

2009-12-13T20:30:00.002-05:00

Greg Boyd isn't the kind of pastor who says the things you'd expect pastors to say. No, he calls them as he sees them and The Myth of a Christian Religion: Loosing Your Religion maintains his MO. Of course, if you pick this book up knowing the title and didn't figure that this would be a different look at our faith, you didn't read the title.

Boyd's thesis is that Jesus didn't come to start a religion, but he came to start a revolutions. (Again, plain in the title.) A religion is too institutional, too people centered for what Jesus came to do. He didn't come to create more ritual. He came to be counter-cultural.

The revolution is against so many bad habits that people fall into. Interestingly, they are the same bad habits that many/most American Christians have: Idolatry of stuff; Judgmentalism; Individualism; Gaining power through military action. He adds issues like sex and secularism. By secularism, in contrast to so many Christians, he isn't attacking the secular world for being secular. Rather he is frustrated with Christians who live dualistic lives of sacred and secular.

Boyd's voice is important for the American Church to hear. We need more people pointing the misconceived values that have become standard in our churches and personal practices. He makes some bold statements. Bold statements will make some people uncomfortable, and he's certainly not perfect in his analysis, but this discomfort may be the Spirit prompting the reader to reconsider things that we often take as true without recent contemplation.

Review of The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani

2009-12-09T09:09:00.001-05:00

The Divine Commodity by Leadership Journal editor Skye Jethani (Zondervan: 2009) is a green vegetable book, not a dessert book. It doesn't taste good, but it is good for you. You won't be happy that you read it, but you'll be better off. Skye Jethani will challenge your comfortable way of doing church. He will push you to consider your faith more than your religious out workings. He destroyed any chance I had of enjoying Christmas like in the feel-good way it has always been. Jethani does all this using a wonderful comparison of the church and van Gogh paintings. It's a creative, well-written book, and as such a easy book to read. It's not an easy book to consume.

Should we celebrate Advent (or Christmas)

2009-12-05T10:00:00.001-05:00

Note: I originally posted this as a response to a blog by Mark Roberts. He wrote on the question Is Advent Biblical? I would suggest that you read his post. He writes very well. I decided to re-post my response on my blog because I think it explains well why I'm not all keen on this season, Advent as well as Christmas.

Whether Advent is biblical, is not my concern. Certainly, it is based in the very biblical goals that you ask us to consider. All things, including Advent, and for that matter Christmas, are permissible.

However, I wonder how beneficial it is for the church to celebrate this season. I include Christmas as we currently celebrate it, particularly by demanding that the money takers take our money in the most religious was.

This whole season is a distraction. I don't know of a single family in my church that will spend more time focused on the elements of Advent that you talk about as good, instead use the Advent season to focus on material things. Celebrating Advent as a church encourages Open Season for materialism.

I say this as one who as a pastor to children. There is almost no way to spend Advent focused on Jesus. Advent, by its nature, focuses on the minor things of the scriptures, not the coming of the Savior. Sure Jesus is the consistent thread of the Advent season, but he because a minor player as we spend the month focus on Mary and donkeys, Joseph, Wise Men and Angels. Camels usually take a bigger role that Jesus. Even Jesus is caricature during this season. We talk a lot about a baby, but our link to the Jesus that died for our sins is usually lost in making Jesus God's gift to us. It is true that Jesus is a gift to us, but the way it plays out in the way we do Advent and Christmas is that Jesus is just another gift like the many we will rush out to buy after our worship service.

Sure Advent is permissible. There are many noble reasons for celebrating the season. Unfortunately, Advent and Christmas are not beneficial. Sure, you can name the half dozen people you know that turned to Christ in this season, but consider how many turn away from him and turn toward minor issues of faith or toward worldly matters.

Are you making your kids want to live with you forever?

2009-12-03T16:53:00.001-05:00

It may be that your lifestyle is stunting the maturity of your children in such a way that they won't have the drive to move out of your home. A recent article in Psychology Today says that the trend for children to live with their parents later is attributable to our affluent lifestyle. Stephen Mason writes

It means that the tide of hormones that hits pubescent kids, the tide that causes them to want to fly from the nest provided by their parents, has been greatly attenuated by the economics of America in the 21st Century. The rights of passage and the periods of apprenticeship that have always been a part of the teen years and of growing up, have been largely replaced by an additional decade of utter dependence.

With jetlag, returning home brings contemplation

2009-12-01T15:30:00.001-05:00

We're home.

We were all awake by 5am this morning.

Writing might be interesting because my mind is already shutting down for the day.

But I have a lot to think about after our wonderful trip to Italy.

First, pray for these things:

Our family has a busy first week back. Pray for strength, focus and alertness as we get back on schedule.
Pray for Tim and Jacki as the weakening dollar makes funds tighter.
Pray for Il Faro in Naples, the Bible School students and Il Faro in Turin as they contemplate the message I brought about youth and family ministry.
Pray for Richard, a man I met on the plane from Rome. We had a deep discussion that open a door to the Gospel. He never thought that the Christian religion was anything other than the judgment he sees in the News. Pray that he will be bombarded with others who share that Christ's message is one of love.

What am I contemplating?

How can we at Grace Point learn from the mentoring and youth in ministry in Naples?
How can I be more active in discipling young believers?
If we lived in a house that only had heat on for one short period over 10 days, can we cut back our energy use in our home?
After spending 10 days contemplating the Italian culture, do I really know the Bucks County USA culture?
Is it OK for me to wear the scarf with a heart on it in the US just because I saw a couple men in Italy wearing it?

Thanks for all our love, support and prayers.

Praying for Italy

2009-11-27T05:46:00.002-05:00

Dear friends,
We continue to have a wonderful visit here in Italy. Yesterday, for Thanksgiving, we ate Kebabs. Not exactly a traditional, American Thanksgiving meal, but we were standing on the streets of Rome while we ate.

Rome was beautiful and amazing. Our tour was more of a overview of the sites in the city, but it was meaningful none the less. Visiting the Basilica of St. Peter was meaningful as we saw statue after statue of one Saint or the other, only to find the statue of Jesus tucked in the corner. It reminded me of how easy it can be to tuck Jesus into the corner of my ministry lifting up my own work or the work of people I admire. I can easily get distracted with all the other things that I want to honor. But Jesus is the one most deserving on honor.

Please continue to pray for us. The next three nights I will be speaking to different groups. Tonight and Sunday to church leaders from many local church. Saturday night, I'll speak to the youth of many of those churches. Pray for great boldness. The culture needs the message that I bring about all people doing their part for the Kingdom. They have a Pope/Godfather way of looking at ministry here, but they are one the verge of overcoming it. Pray also for clarity in my words and for Tim as he translates.

Please take a moment to catch up with us at my blog and Stef blog. We've both updated since Tuesday.

God bless you all. We miss you.
Steve (for the whole family)

Developing a light in the darkness

2009-11-27T05:26:00.001-05:00

Once upon the time, Rome was the headquarters of the church in the Western world. While it still is the center of Catholicism, the message of Christ is, at best, marginalized in this culture. This is a postmodern nation. The Catholic Church is a part of the culture, but that does not equate to faith in Christ. Italy is by most measure a dark world.

The good news is that Christ has not abandoned Italy. He loves these people and is working to bring salvation to them. I am excited about the work that God is doing through a humble church called Il Faro. Il Faro is the project for two American missionaries, Tim Monahan and Tim Faulkner. The leadership doesn't stop with the missionaries. There are also 3 volunteer Italian pastors leading this team with a plan to turn the senior leadership over to a well qualified man named Luigi.

What amazes me about Il Faro is that they represent 3 clear cultural groups (Italian, American, African), yet they are in all ways (excluding language) unified in purpose and in worship. When I walked into the church service, I witnessed a beautiful mix of Americans (predominately service men, women and families) and Neapolitan Italians with a few African immigrants, all in one room worshiping together. Music and style tastes are put aside. All songs are sung in a blend of English and Italian, one line in one language repeated in the other.

It's beautiful to hear someone pray to our Lord in an unknown language. It always reminds me that our God is greater than any culture. The leadership team at Il Faro knows this fact and have used the greatness of God and his singular mission of reaching the world as a centerpiece to draw the church together. The members all know this common mission. The leaders constantly challenge them to live the mission. As a result, they are, in all reality, one church.

Speaking with Tim Faulkner this morning, he reminds me that this is a result, a direct result, of the work of Grace Point. Through our support, our prayer and much wise counsel, Grace Point has helped to unify this church. The two Tim's and the other pastors are all very different in their mix of personalities and gifts, and that mix is a benefit for this church.

I have visited other churches this week. They are all different and all being used one way or another for delivering God's Word to the Italian people, but none as effectively as Il Faro in Naples. I hope that the people of Grace Point know the value of their work. It isn't in creating a big project or by counting the number of professions of faith that come from a outreach event. The value of this church and our participation in it is our long-term commitment to strong leadership, wise counsel and prayer.

Il Faro is a light to Naples. Grace Point is a part of providing that light to the darkness of this community. God is working through all of us.

Praise God. And Happy Thanksgiving.

Update for our friends

2009-11-24T04:36:00.002-05:00

Dear praying friends,

Thanks for your support. Some of you were not getting our updates. Here's a quick note to remind you to check out our American Thanksgiving in Italy Facebook page and my blog http://deetsjohn.blogspot.com.

We'll do more later, but our internet service is spotty, so we do what we can.

Please pray for Jacki who is still struggling with pain.

God bless you all,
Steve

A quick story about how God works

2009-11-24T04:07:00.003-05:00

At the Naples (Italy) soccer game on Sunday, we sat down next to an Italian man who hear us speaking in English. He was excited to practice his English on us and did a great job. He shared a bit about the game and the Naples team in particular. It's not unusual for Italians to want to practice English with an American.

The unusual thing about this story is that while Stefanie and I talked to this man, an young man the row behind him overheard us. He said to Stefanie, "Excuse me. Are you American? I overheard you talking."

It turns out this young man, Ryan, is a 17-year-old exchange student from North or Scranton, a town only minutes away from Tim's parents. What are the chances of us running into each other in a city of millions and a stadium of 70,000?

We hope to have Ryan to our Thanksgiving dinner later this week. Pray that this will be another door of ministry for the Faulkners and the Johnson.

One weekend down

2009-11-23T06:39:00.002-05:00

Dear friends,
Today is Monday and we made it through a crazy weekend. Crazy but wonderful. We are reunited in Naples. Today is a bit of a down day for us as Tim and I have time to work at the church while the ladies are at the Faulkner home doing schoolwork and cleaning up a bit. Yesterday was a good day of worship at Il Faro. God is doing great things here.

Please continue to pray for us. I'm finding myself a little tired but still very excited about our work here. The people are a delight.

Pray also for:

Giacoma, a bible school student, who is in the hospital after some sort of negative food reaction. Tim and I will be meeting her at the hospital and connecting her with a ride back to the school in Rome. Rome is about 2 hours from Naples.
Pray for Jacki. She has been in a good amount of pain since we've been here. She will have some test today. Pray for healing.
Strength and rest for our family. It was a busy weekend and we are tired. At least we slept well last night.

Praise God for:

Strength so far.
A wonderful worship time in the Faulkners bi-cultural church (Il Faro). It is amazing to hear people pray in multiple languages reminding us that God is omni-cultural.
Insight into a well-led, on-fire church, Il Faro. They are few and far between in Italy.

Thank you for your prayer.

Steve

My attempt at a rainy-day tragic poem

2009-11-01T07:18:00.001-05:00

The Tragedy of the Weather Cycle

I opened up my window to see
Many, many faces smiling back at me

So many face out there
I'd yet to brush my hair

Embarrassment quickly faded
To and feeling much more jaded

As i realized happy faces
Where just rain drops

In the game against rain and sun
Brightness has yet to make a run

No warmth from the heavenly glow
Only wetness from head to toe

Those smiles seemed more like sneers
As the drop looked much like tears

But I have this consolation
Is soon it will be sunny and 32-degrees

There's blessing in being single or being married

2009-10-15T09:57:00.001-04:00

I hear someone speak about Proverbs 18:22 on a popular Christian, family radio show. I was taken aback. I know that the family is valued by this particular show, but I actually haven't listened to it for years because of their propensity to idolize elements of the family. The particular commentator said that it is the parents' job to encourage their adult sons to find a wife as soon as possible. She used Proverbs 18:22 as her rational. Of course, the shows host agreed.

I'm fearful that it is very possible to abuse Proverbs 18:22. Yes, it says that finding a wife is a good thing. Yes, it says their is favor of the Lord in finding a wife. And I'd agree, there is favor and blessing in a wife.

On the other hand, this by no means is a command for parents or the church to encourage people to marry. Compared that idea with 1 Corinthians 7:8. In that verse, Paul clearly reverses the challenge saying if you are unmarried, you are better off to stay unmarried unless (v. 9) you cannot control yourself. Self control is as much a with the favor of the Lord as finding a wife. Singleness is as much a blessing as marriage. If your adult child does not pursue a marriage partner, rejoice and help them to use their singleness as a way of being free to serve the Lord with their whole life.

There are a lot of Christian broadcasters on the airwaves with a very narrow way of looking at the Scriptures. They are narrow because they value certain things. I'd challenge parents to look at the Bible in its entirety. With out and eye to the fullness of Scripture, values can become idols.

The problem with pendulums and the lessons we get from them

2009-09-28T11:05:00.001-04:00

[Note: this may be the most technical post I've ever written. It is also pretty long. I'm sorry about that. But the good news is that it has picture!]

I've heard a bit about pendulums lately. That is, the pendulum of philosophic argumentation. Most recently
Stef shared a blog post about the movie Lord, Save Us from Your Followers. The post was titled, Ken Davis & the Law of the Pendulum by Greg Sponberg. Rather than writing about the movie, I was to discuss the problem with the Law of the Pendulum.

First, some background on the Law would show us that in history, philosophic arguments tend to swing from one extreme to the other. Particularly in this discussion the swing is from Truth to Grace. These swings are as a result of a culture that puts too much weight on one side, then a counter culture forcing the issue the other way. So, in the case of Truth verses Grace, the Western church is often seen as moving out of a time when truth was held too strongly and God's grace under-emphasized. Of course, not everyone agrees with this perception, but people like Ken Davis do. So they begin emphasizing grace. And of course, the reaction of the pro-truth crowd is that the pro-grace people give up on truth. Naturally, there is a counter reaction to the first reaction and the pendulum begins swinging.

For a physical pendulum to work, it must swing from one side to the other without outside force. Gravity is the only force at work, theoretically. And as Sponberg points out in his blog, the swing is ever decreesing. That is true because there are more forces than just gravity, namely air friction is causing the pendulum to slow down. This is true for a physical pendulum.

The problem is, it isn't necessarily true for the philosophic pendulum which is of course a metaphor, and all metaphors have their limitations.

Here's what I see as the problem. A natural pendulum has a point of equilibrium. Demonstrated in this picture, that equilibrium is when gravity holds it steady at point C. For our philosophic pendulum, this might be named absolute truth, the point of perfect agreement with Truth or with God.

The problem occurs when the a misunderstanding moves a culture to an extreme position. That's demonstrated by the swing to R2 in this diagram. For the sake of argument, let's say that R2 is those who feel they have to uphold truth at all costs.

Naturally, the reaction against that philosophy, is those who believe they have to uphold Grace at all cost. The are represented by L2 on this diagram. The seem very far apart and they are. It would be natural for people to want to expell much energy fighting against the pull of R2 if you hold L2 position and visa versa.

The truth is, few people ever end up in the world of the L2 or R2. In the Christian debate of Truth and Grace, almost all Christians I know of believe in both. Therefore, they are more accurately portrayed by the position of L1 and R1.

Here's the problem. No matter where any person or group is on the swing of the pendulum, it is the perception of that person or group, to assume that they are holding to the truth, or that they are holding to the C position. Because of that, it seem that any pull away from the C position is a pull to the extreme of another position. More reasonably, most people aren't advocates of any position, but seeking the truth, the C of whatever it is we are thinking about. Where we feel tension is when our culture (our church/our society/our family) has settled on an extreme position we may desire to move from that position, but at that point even the centralist argument is going to feel like the pendulum is swinging hard. And the truth is, the pull to a centralist position will create in itself a momentum to the opposite direction. This will be uncomfortable. People will be yelling about the slippery slope of this or of that. There will be accusations of pendulumating the issue.

Here's the good thing. When a natural pendulum is stuck (say the grandfather clock has something jammed up against it), it takes a force to begin the pendulum';s movement again. It is only through that force that the swing can again work itself toward the point of equilibrium.

So our lesson in this long and technical post is that when we are faced with philosophic arguments that challenge our perceptions or our cultural norms, rather than labeling them bad from the onset, consider how they are helping us to find the final point of equilibrium. In the end, God is the force of gravity that will pull us all the the center eventually.

Parents, when it comes to preparing for college, Relax!

2009-09-21T11:00:00.001-04:00

Tim Clydesdale, a sociology professor at the College of NJ who has spoken to parents at our church, sent me this article today. It is great and deserves notice by parents.

In the article Jay Matthews of the Washington Post echos a statement that Clydesdale made at Grace Point last May. That is, the quality of school you attend doesn't greatly predict your future. The implication for parents and school administrators should be relax. I've had way too many discussions with parents about what they are putting their children through in order to get them to the best college. Pushing them into the highest level courses, extra tutoring when they struggle to get A's in those classes, adding multiple demanding extra curricular, and many other tricks that they thing will help to build their child's resume. None of these things is wrong in moderation and in the right manner, but what I witness is too many youth who are over stressed and, worse yet, have their identity wrapped up in their success.

I followed Mr. Matthews' example and thought of a few people that I've greatly admired over the last 15 years and looked up their colleges. In my list are people I've worked for, studied under, enjoyed their music, recognized their accomplishment as overcomers, read their books and follow their blogs. The colleges represented on this list are as follows (in particular order): 2 at Michigan, Friends University, California San Diego, Reed College, Stanford, Wheaton and Augustana. Of those, two did not receive degrees. One only audited classes and another left to start his career.

So my challenge to parents, as well as school leaders, is to help children understand their real value. Ultimately that is in a relationship to Jesus Christ, but even within that relationship you children, all of them, have something unique that they need to develop. A university may be a part of that, but not likely the tell-tale part of what they can accomplish. Education is important, but education can come in so many different ways. Build a great relationship with your children. Help them to develop other relationships with mentors who will provide guidance. Provide for your children opportunities to experience things bigger or different than them. Foster their spirits. These will help your children to succeed much more than stretching them to a point that they end up in schools that don't really help them in the end.

Community, Gospel and the Word: a Review of Total Church

2009-08-21T13:02:00.001-04:00

I found Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis (Crossway Books, 2008) to be a wonderful and challenging book. There are some aspects of theology that I would disagree with Chester and Timmis. But that might be the reason I've been so challenged to contemplate how this book should impact my life.

Chester and Timmis are the co-founders of the Crowded House in Sheffield, UK. The are proponents of smaller, more intimate church communities developed predominately through church planting.

I really respect the belief that the church is at its core Gospel Centered and Community Centered. (Although I do wish they would have found a better way to word that because you really can't have two centers.) What I took out of this book is that with everything that we do in the church or in our lives (which are really the same thing if you are to follow Jesus) should be considered with respect to missionality, truth in the Word and how it relates to the community of God. I appreciate the movement away from the individualistic mindset of modern evangelistic church toward a theology of community.

I'm not sure I would connect this theology as tightly with Calvinism as they do. They do this implicitly, not in any direct statement. More by quoting Calvin as the authority in key arguments. In the end, it seems to me to be closer to a heritage of the anabaptist. I'd suggest contemplating this alongside Stanley Grenz Theology and the Community of God.

As a result of reading this book, I'm doing more research on the theology of community as developed by Grenz, William Klein and the Crowded House. Also, I will be challenging my church staff to re-consider the theology of all of our church programs and visional work. My goal would be to assure that we are developing as a Gospel community ourselves.

I would also love to see our next step moving toward planting. How exciting would that be.

Beware the great danger of the suburbs

2009-08-15T13:24:00.001-04:00

Did you notice the great danger in your suburban neighborhood? Dave Gibbon has. I've been concerned for some time about this danger.

The suburban enclaves with their middle class citizens and well- manicured lawns, gates, and guards protecting our Orwellian lifestyle and toys, Starbucks a few minutes apart from each busy intersection, and boasting some of the best schools in the country may actually be the most dangerous locations to live. Okay, we may not have the high murder counts or robberies, but I wonder if the suburbs have become breeding grounds for the accessible and shallow thrills of drugs and alcohol abuse, extravagant parties and proms, and mere facades of happiness and the American Dream. Just ask your local city drug dealer about his primary consumers. . . suburban teenagers and college students.

Okay, I’m not a researcher, but my gut impression from my travels and intersection with youth in the major cities of the world as well as the suburbs and rural communities is that they are all equally dangerous but just in different ways.

The dangers of the suburbs entail the lack of imagination (where do you find real art museums, innovative music venues and creative opportunities to explore nature. Sure there are exceptions but it’s not the norm); materialism; greed; isolation behind cookie-cutter neighborhoods and homogeneous clubs and churches; boredom: apathy; the fascination with the relevant more than the real; a love affair with popularity more than loving the poor; and a thirst for excitement superficially satisfied in the Friday night party. This takes precedence over a dangerous ride with God on the frontlines of His movement.

Nostalgia: grapes and baseball

2009-08-13T09:48:00.001-04:00

I had one of those nostalgic moments this morning while looking in the fridge. I saw grapes. They were kind of old, squishing and small. I like grapes, but I like them only when they are plump and juicy.

When I saw the grapes my mind drifted back to a summer's day while I was in seminary. I loved the experience of living on campus. I guess I'm just a social kind of guy. The particular day that I'm think about, we had some wonderful grapes that I was eating out in the campus court yard. A fellow student came by eating another kind of grape. Mine were large with purple skins and white fruit. His looked like mine on the outsides, but the insides were midnight black. I don't know if I ever found grapes like those again.

I think this moment popped into my head because as I checked my Facebook this morning another seminary friend had posted something about missing Cubs games. He lives in New Zealand. Apparently, it's hard to watch baseball down there. I imagine so. I had just watched the Phillies whoop up on Cubs last night. Go Phillies! I've never been to a Cubs game and never really been to Chicago. He did his undergrad studies there.

I'd never been to a Cubs game, but just watching a Cubs game in that beautiful stadium called Wrigley Field can make a man nostalgic. What a sport! What a stadium!

Nostalgia is a good thing. It helps us to reflect. It helps us to feel better about who we are. It's a good thing, but it has its limitations. You can't go back. Nostalgia isn't a reason to make major decisions. It will trick your mind. Those grapes were good, but I know those days are gone. I'm sure that Wrigley is a great place to spend the afternoon, but it just that and offers little more to life.

I skipped the grapes this morning. Just didn't think they'd stack up against my memory. I also suggest to my friend watching mlb online. It would cost a few pennies, but a lot less than a trip form Cambridge to Chicago. The Cubs are blowing it again anyhow.

Come to think of it. The Cubs blowing the season is in fact nostalgia.

I do miss those days though. I miss those guys.

Down Hill

2009-07-21T09:29:00.001-04:00

Seth Godin has another blog post that made me think. Actually, I've meant to post on this topic for some time. I think about it nearly every time on out for a walk. It may surprise you now when you look at my body shape, but when I was younger I ran competitively. I didn't really like running, but I liked the challenge of getting better at something. Along the way, two wise men taught me how to run hills, which is good, because I lived in Colorado at the time.

Early in my running career, my father told me never to quit on the uphill. He said it's too easy to do that. A lot of people do that because that's when it hurts the most. But if you don't quit, you have the ability to pass the most competitors.

My high school cross country coach also taught me about hill running. He taught me to use short powerful steps going up hill, and long loose strides going down. He also said that the last 10% of this hill was the point to really make a move. Yes it hurt the most, but as the hill rounds to level, the extra work the runner puts in will turn to speed and the competition will loose heart.

My cross country team was excellent at running the hilly courses. Not because it hurt less for us, but because we were more ready for the uphill stretches, and we used that to our psychological advantage.

Godin talks about bike riding on hills. The work is done on the uphill. Down hill is limited by gravity and safety concerns. The only way to pass a competitor going down hill is to coast better than the other guy. You can learn some tricks to do that, but ticks only help so much. You can beet the pack going uphill by using strength, conditioning, strategy and psychology.

Another thing that I learned to do on the downhill run was to look ahead and prepare for the next hill. Size it up. Learn which points you can push and how much juice you need to hold in reserve for the top. If you get caught up in how fast you're going down the hill, you will be surprised when you realize the slope changes.

I think this is all applicable to life and leadership. We have slopes in our path. In order to get to a down hill period, you have to have an uphill. You have to work. What are you hills in life right now?

Is it the economy? A lost job? Don't think about quitting. Find creative ways that you can put more time into the things your best at. Remember, Microsoft and Apple both began at a time when the economy was down.

I'd love to hear what your hills are right now. Maybe you're on a down hill. That's good to. What are you doing to get ready for the next climb?

Good tool for Bible blogging

2009-06-13T21:24:00.001-04:00

If you blog and include Bible references on occation, you need the tool that I just added. Look what it did to my post with the most Bible references. The tool is RefTagger Bible Reference Pop-Up by Logos. To add the tool was just a matter of adding the following code just before my last tag.

Growth of a moment

2009-06-10T06:39:00.003-04:00

I was reading Seth Godin's blog this morning. He's talking about the growth of a movement. Guy #3 is his post title. This video demonstrates the Guy #3 principle.

I'm usually the dork at the beginning or one who runs in later. I need more Guy #3 in my life.

Life After Home Audio

2009-06-05T16:34:00.001-04:00

Sunday Evening we had the pleasure to host Dr. Tim Clydesdale at Grace Point. Tim, author of The First Year Out and professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey, came to share his research on the experience of first year college student. I had the pleasure of interviewing him. The event was records and is available on the Grace Point website .

Listen now .

Just call me....?

2009-06-03T12:52:00.001-04:00

I was thinking about my name the other day. Steve Johnson. It's a great name. Almost nobody misspells it. There are a few who get confused. "Is Steve spelled with a 'V' or a 'PH'?" "Johnson is that with an 'O', an 'E', or an 'I'?" (Yes there have been a few in my life who would think my last name was "Johnsin".

My name is a good name. I know hundreds of thousands of moms and dads have agreed with that in the past 50 years. They gave it to there children.

Skye Jathani had an interesting blog today about weird names. He says that with the election of Barak Obama weird names are suddenly in style. That's what got me to reflecting back to the day I was thinking about my name. Not only is "Steve Johnson" not weird, there are times that I think my identity is lost in my name.

Try it, Google your name (chances are you've done that before). When I good "Steve Johnson" including the quotes, Google returns over 800,000 hits. I gave up really quickly any idea of digging down to see how many of those actually refer to me, but I'll venture to say it is very few.

Google "Skye Jathani" and you'll find about 8000 hits, 3 pages in, all relate to the same guy.

So, my idea was that maybe I should change my name. I already have for my blog using my childhood nickname "Deets". Maybe I should start using that more often. It kind of has a cool differentness to it, don't you think?

Then I started thinking, my name doesn't really give me any identity as far as my heritage goes. Johnson can be Swedish, English, Scottish or Icelandic. I asked my dad which it was once. He said one day he as his grandmother what grandpa Johnson was. Her response..."He was a skunk." That's not really helpful in giving me a positive cultural identity.

I don't know much of my heritage, but I do know that my maternal grandfather immigrated from the Basque Country of Spain. The Basque culture is really unique. Of course, Grandpa Bruner, as I learned to call him, had change his name to something more common in his youth. I guess he didn't want to stand out with the name Ascargorta.

So here was my thought, I could use Deets as my name, but I could inject it with a bit of Basque heritage. In the Basque language (which is very different than Spanish), there is a common use of "tx" in spelling certain words. You know how sometimes and 'x' can sound like a 'z'. Deetx would be a really unique name and spelling. Don't you think? Of course, as much as I understand the Basque language, that would be pronounced deech. And deech isn't really Basque at all.

Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying, I could change my name, but I'm still the same me. God knows me as a unique person...my common name can't hide that. In Christ, my name has already been changed, from Steve Johnson to Steve Johnson God's Son. That is my heritage. It may be common, or it may be weird, but it is me.

Perfect love, fear and risk

2009-05-11T10:02:00.002-04:00

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18

If my ministry is ruled by fear, then it is not formed by God's love. I admit, too often, I do what I do because I don't want to loose what I have. But, I have nothing accept the life that is given me be God and in Christ. Therefore, if I act in love, I can risk everything. I should be willing to risk everything!

What has fear kept you from risking today?

Thoughts on Salvation: the Coin

2009-05-06T08:50:00.001-04:00

Could it be that salvation is a coin with two clear sides?

If all you ever think about is the salvation of individual souls, you will be happy every time the coin lands on heads. But when it lands on tails, you will be frustrated.

If all you ever think about is the salvation of culture, then you will be please with tails and frustrated with heads.

Does not God's Word place the individual and culture side-by-side?

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Are you afraid?

2009-04-29T12:27:00.001-04:00

We live in a time with a lot of people giving us many reasons to be afraid--Swine Flu, the economy, the national debt, terrorism, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, pirates from Somalia, tax hikes, earth quakes, floods, tornado, etc. The Weather Channel runs a series call, It Could Happen Tomorrow. The History Channel is running series on Gangs and UFO.

I hear that there is a new term for the obsession of such fears. It's called pessimism porn. Chicken Little was addicted to it. I think I have problem too since my two favorite TV shows are Lost and Jericho. Of course, I'll never know how Jericho ended since they pulled it off the air, but I'm watching season 1 on reruns right now. Lost plays on fears that the whole world can be in jeopardy from a number of different people or sources. Maybe most of our TV shows do the same sort of things.

That's not new either, look at any 1950s sci-fi movie. Nuclear disasters were the reason for so many things to be afraid.

Here, though, is a list of verses that I think will help you when these things become scare. I think every parent needs to review these verses whenever they are overwhelmed by the things that could go wrong in the life of their children. Before and after you watch the news, pull a couple of these verses out. They should help to set your mind at ease.

Gen 15:1
Gen 21:17
Gen 26:24
Gen 46:3
Exod 14:13
Exod 20:20
Num 14:9
Num 21:34
Deut 1:17
Deut 1:21
Deut 1:29
Deut 3:2
Deut 3:22
Deut 7:18
Deut 18:22
Deut 20:1
Deut 31:6
Deut 31:8
Josh 8:1
Josh 10:8
Josh 10:25
Josh 11:6
Judg 6:23
1 Sam 12:20
2 Kings 1:15
2 Kings 19:6
2 Kings 25:24
1 Chron 22:13
1 Chron 28:20
2 Chron 20:15
2 Chron 20:17
2 Chron 32:7
Isa 10:24
Isa 37:6
Isa 40:9
Isa 41:14
Isa 43:5
Isa 44:2
Isa 44:8
Isa 54:4
Jer 1:8
Jer 40:9
Jer 42:11
Ezek 2:6
Ezek 3:9
Dan 10:12
Dan 10:19
Zech 8:13
Zech 8:15
Matt 1:20
Matt 10:26
Matt 10:28
Matt 28:5
Matt 28:10
Luke 1:13
Luke 1:30
Luke 2:10
Luke 12:4
Luke 12:32
John 12:15
John 14:27
Acts 18:9
Acts 27:24
Rev 1:17
Rev 2:10

Do you think your circumstances are really worse that all these folks? If not, then I think God's message to you is the same. Do not be afraid. Have faith. He is able.

Things to never tell a child: #5 You're better safe than sorry

2009-04-27T11:24:00.001-04:00

I don't think parents too often actually sit a child down and tell them that you're better safe than sorry. I can remember hearing this in the past, as in during my childhood, but I don't think it was a message given by my parents. It was probably something I picked up in my 1.5 years of Cub Scouts or with the ultraconservative Jr. High football coach who bravely lead my team to a zero win season. "Better safe than sorry, Men."

Here's the thing, while I don't have evidence that parents use these words when talking to their children, I do think that Christian parents and the churches of America teach this all the time.

That's why we live in the suburbs by the way. That's why we pay high house prices to live in school districts that are free of the riff raff, gangs and drugs of the inner-city.

In my children's high schools each child is allow 1.5 electives in their course schedule. One day in two they have either gym or health. The other day they can learn art or philosophy or music or something. Now they have another option to take those courses if they desire, but few do. Why? Because you'll be better safe than sorry. Therefore, every school administer, teacher and course book recommends that they take at least 3 years of foreign language.

Now I'm not against foreign languages. I wish I would have learned more. But I can tell you, those courses I took in high school didn't teach me one lick how to communicate to people of other languages. I don't think my kids will be better off either. Both of them are taking German anyhow. The fact is, everyone I've ever known who I'd need to talk to who spoke German, spoke English too.

I'm not against learning German. I'm against the better safe than sorry mentality that directs artistic kids or kids with a scientific bent into the same course schedule. "Why?" I asked the school counselor once. "Because you never know if you are going to apply for a school that demands 3 or 4 years of foreign language for applicants." Hmm. I looked it up, and very few schools actually make that demand. Very few.

Now the church lives this way too. People lived that way in Jesus' day. He called them Pharisees and teachers of the Law. These were people who were so afraid of breaking the Law of God that they made their own laws to protect it.

We do similar things in a different way. We expect that our children should go to college because otherwise there will be closed doors. We send them on safe mission trips to safe regions of the world so that they can have a good experience. We work extra hours in our jobs because we want our kids to have every economic advantage. We tell them to be good strong Christians, but don't act weird. Make sure that you fit into the church group. No weird clothes or strange music that people don't get. We offer program after program so that no child (or adult) will feel left out. We offer services with every kinds of music so that everyone feels they have a place.

Why? Because, we’re better safe than sorry. Don't burn any bridges.

I'm not sure that Jesus lived this way. He burned bridges. Not every bridge, but the safe ones. Not the bridges to the marginalized, but the bridges to the mainstream. He didn't mind making those "religious" people feel left out.

He wasn't safe. No, his behavior cost him his life.

That's drastic. Do we want to put our children in a place where their lives will be in danger? Of course not, but their lives will be shallow unless we allow them to push those limit.

Stef showed me a video this morning where Francis Chan gave a silly analogy of Christians as gymnasts who plays it safe . It’s silly because no Olympic gymnast would cling to a balance beam like he does in this video. In the same way, Christians can't cling to their faith in such a safe way as to not risk "loosing" it. It's God's job to protect the hearts of our children. The Holy Spirit is responsible for working these things into their hearts. All we can do as parents is teach our children is teach to trust, or teach them to fear.

I hope that I'm teaching my children to trust God. That's faith. Fear is a lack of faith. To not have faith is to be an unbeliever. I hope my kids are learning to be believers.

Bono has a line on U2's latest album, No Line on the Horizon. He says, "Stop helping God across the street like a little old lady." It took me a bit to understand this line, but he's talking about being religious folks who are trying to make religion safe rather than a matter of faith.

So, I want parents, teachers and mentors to consider this. Are you helping God across the street or are you helping the children in your life to develop a faith that allows for real risk? If you are then stop! Take them out of the "better safe than sorry classes and help them to discover faith by trial.

Faith isn’t safe, but, in the end, faith is the only real thing we can have. In the end to live a safe life is to be sorry if we don’t allow our children to develop this real, active faith that is not afraid.

Which is more freedom?

2009-04-22T08:21:00.000-04:00

I've been listening to the latest Mars Hill Audio with Ken Meyer. If you are a heady person and like to think about complicated things, I recommend this mp3 subscription, http://marshillaudio.org/. If not your going to think it sounds too much like NPR and will turn it off.

This quarter's journal features some discussions about freedom, particularly with respect to free market or economic issues, but they say you can only understand economic freedom in light of theology. (This post isn't about economics in any way. It's about relationship.)

Here's my illustration and question. This morning after riding my exercise bike I took a 5 minute cool-down walk down the block. Caspian (my pooch) knows when my bike ride is coming to an end. He usually shows up at peddleside when my timer beeps or my peddling slows.

He knows that I take him on this walk. I'll take him without a leash.

I take him because I know he needs the walk as much as I do before he's locked in his crate for the day. I don't use a leash because I'm tire and don't feel like looking for one for a five minute walk. Besides, most of the neighbors are off at work or school. There's little chance of running across another dog walker.

This is what I was thinking this morning.

When I walk him without a leash, because I know that I'm violating my HOA rules, I demand that he heal the whole time. He must walk a foot or two from my left leg. If he starts to move ahead or is distracted by a fun smell, I immediately give him a "hey" or a quick foot tap to remind him that he has to be close. He's getting pretty go at this because he loves walking with me.

If I were to go for a walk in the middle of the day, or a little longer of a walk, I'd put him on lead. He likes that too. On command, he'll even jump up an stick his nose into his Gentle Leader because his knows what that means and that means a fun walk. We have a long leash. I think it's 12-feet long. When we walk, I let him use all 12 plus as long as there aren't any cars, small children or white fluffy dogs that he loves soooooo much. He can smell every smell and pee on every bush or cable box. What fun for a dog!

So, my question. Which one affords him more freedom? He he free when he has the ability to run off but stays close because of his respect for me? Or is he free when he's allowed to do pretty much what ever he wants as long as I can pull him back by the leash?

Which picture is paints your relationship with God?

Review: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell/iPhone Kindle App.

2009-04-18T22:31:00.001-04:00

I just finished reading my first Kindle book. I don't have a Kindle, but I used the iPhone App.

In brief, I liked reading on my iPhone. It moved really well, I always had the book with me, and I didn't have any trouble with seeing the book at all. The down side was that I couldn't tap on the notes links at all. I got to one or two after tap-tap-tap-tap, but a few notes I just gave up on reading after tapping a good number of times. I'll tell you I read this book much, much faster than I would have read the typical 320 page book. That length book usually takes me 3 to 4 times longer with starts and stops. I was challenged to read this without any long delays. Speaks well for both the Kindle App and for Outliers.

As for the book. Malcom Gladwell outlines a compelling thesis in Outliers. I gather that his main point is that success doesn't just happen, and that there aren't some people who are born to succeed. Rather, success is a matter of many key factors lining up just right. Birthdate, opportunities to practice a trade, timing of swinging economic trends and regional/people-group culture a play a part in defining those who have succeeded in great measure.

Gladwell caught my attention in the first chapter as he spoke about birth timing. I've noticed this before. As students work through schools and through sports, those who are the oldest in their class year succeed at a higher rate than the younger. Success is in some measure determined by timing of your birth.

Gladwell goes on to show other ways that highly successful people have benefited from things outside their control. Of course, the true outliers always took advantage of the opportunities that they are given.

As Gladwell pulls the information together, he proposes that in order to make more people successful, they need opportunities. I think that is simple enough. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that studying outliers is at all a way that we can help more people succeed. Outliers are just that, outliers. That means they are the rare few who succeed far beyond anyone else. The Beatles are outliers, but can't realistically develop a system that will make every disadvantaged, hopeful musician into the next Super band. If we develop that system, everyone will be that good, presumably, thus they won't be that special. The true outliers will rise up in some other way.

My next complaint with Outliers is that I am concerned by the measure of success in the end. I've heard this measure being used time and time again. That is, I think that Gladwell seemed to indicate that if we found the things that each culture did well and helped all other cultures to assimilate those aspects, then every culture will be more successful.

It work in Korean Air as the learned to fly like Americans. It seems to be working in some inner-city schools, the KIPP schools, as they assimilate educational principles of the rice cultures (Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore, etc.).

First, while I'm sure that we don't want Korean pilots to fly more airplanes into hillsides, and we don't want a math illiterate American culture, I'm not sure that we can define success by saying that every culture should have super success in math or what ever else some cultures may have. Why does this concern me? While I respect the achievements of many Asian people that I know, I'm not sure that academic success is really a measure of success at all. I thought Gladwell made that point early on in the book. My concern is that of many Asians who have stressed academics, I've found that many are miserable in their pursuit of that success. Japan's exceedingly high suicide rate evidences this fact as 36 out of 1000 men commit suicide every year and 14 of 1000 women do. There are other nations as high or higher, but they all seem to be nations of economic stress, particularly those who are struggling to find their way out of their communistic background.

Another problem I have with this rice culture as measure of success, is that I'm not sure it is creating many more true outliers. For example, you have to go to #16 on the list of Forbes' Riches People list to find someone from the rice culture. Further, I only find 3 rice-culture members on in the top 50. Again, I don't think we should measure cultural success by the riches people list, or by any outliers, but it seems to me that Gladwell sets the stage for that assumption to be made.

I think we would be good to look at this book in a positive light. We learned from it that success requires a hand from interested people along the way. Let's extend that hand whenever we can. We've learned that our background, our culture provides areas of strengths and weaknesses. Let's celebrate our strengths and diversity. I don't think we need to have a world economy where every culture bleeds into one. Let's aim for one that realized the beauty of diversity.

Things to never tell a child: #4 Grandma will be waiting for us in heaven

2009-04-16T15:57:00.001-04:00

This is a difficult one. It comes out when people are grieving. They miss Grandma. They're longing for a chance to talk to her one more time. But don't say it to a child. A child thinks in concrete terms and if you paint heave to look like Grandma's house, their image of and purpose for heaven will fall short of that which God has in store.

I don't like too talk too much about heaven. Heaven is out there. We talk about it all the time. Our hope is that some day we will all live together in heaven.

Or is it?

Our hope is that we can please God. Our reward is that God will bring us into his presence. Grandma is a wonderful part of our life on earth, but our reward isn't about recreating our relationships from earth in a new place. The afterlife is about God. (Actually, this life is about God, too.) At any rate, it is not good for children to miss that point and the central point of this life or the next.

Of course, when I use Grandma in this post, it could just as easily be any person of a dear relationship.

Don't think that we should not assume that Grandma will be in heaven. That's possible as far as we mean by heaven in the presence of God for eternity. In that picture, Grandma may visit us. But we can't assume that. The thing is, we don't really know what the afterlife has in store for us. We know a bit about it, but we don't know much.

What do we know?
We know that God will be the center of it.
We know that it is a city which implies that there will be people there--lots of people.
We know that there will be other spiritual creatures there.
We know that our Lord is preparing a place for us--and he's coming back to take us there.
We know that there will be no death or pain or crying.
We know that it is a reward for those who are righteous in Christ.

Instead of painting a false or assumed picture for a child, help them to understand the known things of the afterlife. Tell him that Jesus loves Grandma very much and she is happy with him. Some day we can be there to.

I hope that we get to see Grandma in heaven. What a special reunion it would be. But, as special as it may be, I just might run right by Grandma on my way to the King. I hope Grandma isn't offended. If she's thinking about it at all, she'll probably be happier for my reunion with my Savior.

I don't know what that will be like, but I know that this life and the next is about God first. God's arms will be and are open, waiting for me.

I can't wait. But I will wait.

Things to never tell a child: #3 Prayer Works

2009-04-13T16:03:00.002-04:00

Does God answer prayer? Absolutely! So why shouldn't you tell children that prayer works?

Because prayer isn't a tool for us to get what we want. Prayer is prayer not a Internet order form, not a 1-800 number to God Services, not an line to the help desk in the sky.

Prayer is a human's relational connect to the Creator. It's about listening to God as much as (arguably more so) a way of petitioning God.

I know the Bible says Ask and it will be given to you and with prayer and petition make your requests known to God. In that light, we should know that God wants us to make requests and, in context, when we ask for holiness, God will give it to us. But these verses don't paint a pragmatic use of a get what you want service.

Look at the Ask, Seek, Knock passage in Matthew 7:7-12. The passage is sandwich between a passage on not judging others and the narrow gate to God. It isn't about God's willingness to give us whatever we want. It is about God's desire to give us holiness and is desire for us to ask for that. The only way to interpret this passage differently is to look at these things as unconnected thoughts. But they are connected.

Likewise, Philippians 4:6 does say make your request known to God, but the only promise is that God's peace will guard are hearts. Again, in times of trouble, God is offering us holiness, not our desired result.

So what's wrong with telling a child that prayer works? It's wrong because from a human perspective, often prayer doesn't work. Many times people, godly people with good intentions and solid faith, don't get what they hope for when the pray. Paul didn't! The Apostle prayed many time for the thorn in his flesh to be taken away (2 Corinthians 12:7-8). I don't know that it ever was. Why wasn't it taken? Because, Paul concluded, it was a messenger for Paul to understand God's grace, a messenger for Paul to become more holy.

If you tell a child that prayer works and they pray for a puppy, they expect a puppy. If the puppy doesn't come, the God either doesn't care or isn't capable. What if the desire is less selfish? If a child prays for his mother to be healed of cancer and the cancer doesn't go away, again God is either uncaring or incapable. Many many times prayer does not work.

Don't tell a child that prayer works, rather tell them the value of prayer as a relational tool. Tell of the wonder of being able to talk to or listen to God, the maker of all things. Make prayer a matter of wonder in the eyes of children. Don't cause a child to stumble in his faith by misrepresenting prayer, but give them the excitement to be in the presence of God and the hope of realizing ever increasing holiness in his life. But even then, let a child know that sometimes when we pray, God doesn't seem as close as we want, but that doesn't mean he's not their. Our feelings can hide the truth also.

Things to never tell a child: #2 God will make you happy

2009-04-07T08:34:00.004-04:00

"I'm in right up right down right happy all the time"
What a crock! I'm not happy all the time. I doubt seriously that you're happy all the time. Actually we are likely happy less than half of the time.

Most of are lives are spent just existing. Happiness is fleeting. Anyone who says that change when you "ask Jesus into your heart" is just wrong. A fruit of the Spirit is joy. Joy and happiness are synonyms. Rather than giving a theological argument about the difference between the two, I propose that God gives neither--At least
on the short term.

Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. Fruit is a long work in progress--not a switch. The problem with telling children that the should be happy all the time is that it just won't prove to be true. Everyone has down times in their lives. Many good godly people suffer from depression even.

If you tell someone that they should be happy all the time you telling them that when the don't fell happy something is a lie. They can either believe they feeling, thus distrusting God or God's ability. Or they can distrust their emotions. I've heard many well meaning Sunday School teachers teach the second. "Emotions are untrustworthy." they say.

The danger with this is that emotions are real and real is trustworthy. Over time a person will either become mentally ill from stuffing their emotions or they will choose to disbelieve God.

Allow your children the best chances to discover the truth about God and about the difficulties that exist I'm this world. Teach them that it is ok-even good-to feel sad. God gives them those emotions for a reason. Never let them believe that they should be happy all the time.

Note: I'm trying something new today by sending this remotely. Pardon typos more than usual. I'll try to clean it up later.

Things to never tell a child: #1 The church is God's house

2009-04-03T14:13:00.001-04:00

Never teach a child that the church is God's house.
I hear this one when parent (usually) want their child to know that they should be on their best behavior. Other times it is give as a reason to be excited about going to church services or programs. It usually works only for the youngest children or as part of a threat.

When I hear people talking about not running in the house of God, I get a picture of a God who is snooty. You know, that old, proper grandparent type person who has you sit on the edge of the couch because the comfortable looking chair is too precious to actually sit on.

Never tell your children that the building that the people of God meet in is God's house. The Church is God's people, his Bride. The church is not a building. The building that the people of God meet in is not his house. God is everywhere. If you teach your children that the building, the church, is God's house and deserves special rules, you also teach them that those rules don't apply at home, at school, in the park, or at the local mall. It teaches that there are places and times to be holy and places and times that that's not important.

I want my children to be holy always. I know that they aren't going to be that way, but my hope is that they will be holy 24/7. I want God and pleasing God to be the motivation wherever they are.

The Temple was called the House of God in the Old Testament, but the church building is not the Temple. The Church is the people of God, called out in his holiness to be holy. The Temple is the people of God. So why you should never say of the building that it is God's house, the truth is the Church (people) are the Temple of God and we are God's house to live holy no matter where we are. Teach your children to be holy at all time but not with threats of messing up the house of some snooty God.

Banning Jargon

2009-03-19T22:44:00.001-04:00

A governing council in the UK has banned the use of jargon and cliches. Interesting idea. In light of my last post on listening prayer, Still Listening, I wonder what the typical Christian prayer time would sound like if we banned words and phrases like "we just", "dear God", "please bless", "if it's your will", etc.

What are some other jargon words that we use in prayer?

Culture and Faith in the Twitter world

2009-03-18T10:24:00.001-04:00

I just did a Twitter Search on the words "culture" and "faith". Interesting results. I think you can see Andy Crouch's postures come out so clearly. Here are a few of the Tweets and, in green, my thoughts on which Posture is represented. You can hear about these in Andy's talk at Grace Point on March 15.

4hardy: starbucks northpark...absorbing culture sharing faith Consume

jrminkel: "in the U.S. the default for culture is a blind faith in science, rather than a war on science." Condemn

AndyGroenink: @jasonmitchener 6 page assignment on case study of reaching another culture, I picked the Muslim faith Critic

heathr: And yes Tom u can be Jewish and gay. Maybe not the Jewish your parents get, but your faith is yours + yr culture is big enough for u! Consume

cjcasciotta: was interviewed by MTV about faith and American Idol. I hope I got the point across that the church should create culture, not copy it Create

sumapriapus: Watchmen: This is why conservatives have a tough problem today. The pop culture undermines faith, family and freedom. Condemn/Critic

brandonrae: [ HIP-HOP ] [ PANACEA ] [ STARLITE ] [ Enjoy, and have faith in theculture that I love ] ♫ http://blip.fm/~2v9zv Consume

I didn't see copy there although on person talked about how Christians should not copy culture. The rest were all there. I'd love to hear your analysis of these tweets. Maybe you could search again and see if they all still show up.

Still Listening

2009-03-17T20:22:00.001-04:00

I'm still listening. Listening to God during prayer and worship rather than speaking.

I don't know that I can say that listening has come with any great breakthroughs. Nothing obvious but a few things have come out.

I've learned that I can always listen to God more.
      I've learned that I can listen to people more.
            I've learned that more people can listen to God more.

It's still too easy for me to tell God what I want. Yeah, I'm not speaking out, but I still sit in want hoping that God willl give me what I want.

People are speaking to me constantly. I don't alway hear what they say. Listening to God is important. Listening to people is important too.

While I'm listening I've learned that much, maybe most, of what we say is jargon. We use the same prayer phrases over and over again.
            "Dear God..."
                   "We just......"
               "Please bless......"
             "If it is in your will......"
  These phrase may represent those things that we most need to convey to God, but I doubt it. These things represent the lingo that we feel free to use in public.

I use those words too.

I hope that I continue to learn more. More ways to listen to God. More ways to speak with him intimately.

Every dad of a daughter, young or old, needs to read this

2009-03-12T15:39:00.002-04:00

I remember these days. I was in seminary studying on my couch and breaking to play Barbies, talk about squirpers (don't ask) or reading while my hair was pulled until hair clips and bows stayed put. I'm miss these days.

http://www.shaungroves.com/shlog/entry/before_the_game_changes/

White as Snow

2009-03-12T11:12:00.002-04:00

This new U2 album is beautiful. I can't believe how wonderful the song White As Snow is. U2's website describes this song about the dying soldier as he reflects over his life. It isn't at all a typical U2 song. Bono sings differently; it's quiet and reflective; and the melody line is based on the Christmas staple Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel. I think that is significant because the Christ imagery in the song is obvious to me.

Throughout the song there is reference to the lamb that is white as snow. There is a talk of a divine love and a need for forgiveness. Of course, the subject has strayed form that love and found a loss of forgiveness, but there seems to be a longing to get back to that lamb.

Once I knew there was a love divine
Then came a time I thought it knew me not
Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not
Only the lamb as white as snow

Interestingly, it seems that the death scene is also a scene of life and baptism, all be it, an unpleasant one.

And the water, it was icy
As it washed over me

I get the feeling that the mortally wounded soldier has found the lamb and now reflects on the state of people. I feel that all people are looking for the lamb. Some to become white as snow, but most to devourer it. This sentiment comes in the last verse where he closes the song by wishing that everyone could be white as snow.

As boys we would go hunting in the woods
To sleep the night shooting out the stars
Now the wolves are every passing stranger
Every face we cannot know
If only a heart could be as white as snow
If only a heart could be as white as snow

In many ways I think the band reveal a new discovery in this song. They've long included anti-war sentiments in their music, and this song continues those sentiments. Now they demonstrate the humanness of the fighting man and the burning desire of the soldier not to kill his enemy, but to see his enemy turn holy--A longing that all men and women would seek peace.

Of course, that peace can only come with the return of Emmanuel. Come Emmanuel!

March listening

2009-03-07T17:15:00.001-05:00

What beautiful weather we are having today. As part of my listening exercise, I just spent a few minutes listening as the grill warms up. Here is what I heard...

A kid screaming while playing about a block away.
   My daughter making some whining noise as she watched Harry Potter 20 feet through the back door.
   The sound track of Harry Potter about 10 feet from her.
   I bunch of black birds cackling as the flutter around about 15 to 30 feet up in the trees.
   A jet hundreds of feet above my head approaching the Trenton Airport.
My dog peeing two feet away.

No messages from God in that, but for the welcoming of spring and the joy of a day off.

Praying with eyes and ears wide open

2009-03-04T14:04:00.001-05:00

Recently, I posted that I was going to experiment with praying without words. Actually, I have now begun the experiment with the goal of making me more open to hearing and seeing God in my prayer life. Having read in Ecclesiastes that a fool opens his mouth in worship, I began a period of keeping my mouth closed during prayer. That means I am not speaking prayer, not actively entertaining verbal thoughts while I pray. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking. I am. I mean that I'm not speaking words to God in my brain. I'm using my mind and my ears to listen to what God has for me.

At about the same time, I did a word study in the Bible for "pray" and "eye". I was curious, does the Bible ever tell us to close our eyes during prayer. You know what? It doesn't. In fact, in 7 out of 8 occurrences of "pray" and "eye" in the scriptures, the passage is actually connected with opening eyes or looking with eyes. (In the 8th passage eyes and prayer are not directly connected.) Of course, in most of these passages the one praying was asking God to open His eyes, but at that same time, I was thinking, why do we insist on closing our eyes?

I understand that there is the practical reason that we might be distracted with our eyes open. True, but I find that I can be distracted (or asleep) with my eyes closed. If the pray-er is asking God to look, why wouldn't the pray-er want to be looking was well.

So, as a second part of my experiment, for the month of March, I'm trying to learn to keep my eyes open while I pray. This month, I'm going to pray with my eyes and ears wide open for God's message through me. I believe I will experience this. I think it may come in corporate prayer as I hear and see the hearts of others pouring out. I think it may come in private prayer as I see God's glory working in the world around me. And really, I am prepared for it to come any way God brings his message to me.

Do I believe that people are wrong for speaking and closing their eyes while the pray? No. I may go back to doing that again when March is over. I just think I've gotten into a habit of speaking to God words he already knows in ways that I've never considered. I'm trying to retrain myself. That's all.

What have I learned in the first week? I've learned that it is really hard to break habits and it is awkward to do around others when my practices are so habitual. I can't wait for God to show me something more. And he will because God is an extrovert waiting to talk to every person.

Andy Crouch coming to Grace Point in 10 days

2009-03-04T13:32:00.002-05:00

Andy Crouch, award winning author of Culture Making , is coming to Grace Point on March 15 at 6pm. For more information and to register for this free discussion on Making Culture Makers visit the event page.

Grace Point is located at 592 Washington Crossing Road, Newtown, PA 18940.

The First Year Out

2009-03-02T12:57:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading The First Year Out by Tim Clydesdale . Clydesdale is a sociology professor at the College of New Jersey. This book is the result of a research project he had completed with high school graduates. He meet the subjects while in their senior year at a New Jersey high school and followed them through the first year after graduations.

This book represents wonderful research in an important area. It tends to read a bit like a research book, I guess, since that's what it is. Not really ready for a mom or dad to pick up as they prepare for jr. to go off to college. Still, I really like the information Clydesdale presents. His implications for parents may have made the whole book worthwhile for me...(reworded)

parents should partner with their children in the post-high school planning process.
look beyond college. The career that follows will be a much bigger part of their life and the "best" college isn't always what is right for the right career path.

many children need a year off to evaluate what is right. Give it too them. I particularly like the idea of volunteering. In the church, I could come up with a million ways to make that worthwhile.

While parents are partners in the planning process, the child must make the final call. No more, "mom wants me to be a ____, so I'm going to be."

That's good advice for students. I wish Clydesdale would have given better help for the church. I'll be working on trying to apply what he deems a spiritual lockbox and how we can help students avoid setting their faith aside for a period after high school.

Can I pray without words?

2009-02-23T09:58:00.001-05:00

I've been working on Eccliesiaties the last couple weeks. This is the first time I've gone through it in a while and, again, I want to thank the people of the Bible Postcast for bringing me back to this book of great wisdom. Today I'm awed by the wisdom of the first few verses of Chapter 5. We forget about being silent before the Lord and I'm not sure we know how to do it well, neither in prayer or in worship. Too often it becomes a way of seperating us from the rest of the community of God. You know those times that a worship leader will say, "Close your eyes and imagine that it is just you and God here in this room." I despise that. I don't come to worship with a community in order to pretend that the community is not there.

No matter how we are to worship and pray in silence, Solomon reminds us that we are better to approach the throne silently.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Clearly my dear brothers and sisters of evangelical practices don't come to listen but to speak. Neither in worship or in prayer. How many times have I been in a prayer group that spent 30 minutes talking about all the hopes, fears and wishes of the people and friends of people in the room, then after talking about those things everyone closes their eyes and in a "prayerful attitude" talk about those things again? The intention is good, a desire to see God's hand moving among themselves and those that they mention. Unfortunately, the desires of fools is also pure. It is the fool's knowledge of reality that is lacking.

I don't know what are corporate prayer times and worship would look like if we come together to listen, but I know that I am going to make an attempt to do so. For the next 4 weeks, in prayer times and in worship, I'm going to put my energy, my mind to listening. Not to others, but to God. Not to the god in my own head, but to God as he works among the people of my church.

I wonder if you will join me? Does this make you uncomfortable? Does it seem too mystical? It does to me in a way, but I'm not sure what else to do with this passage.

Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God.

Is busyness a Christian value?

2009-02-16T10:25:00.004-05:00

Is busyness a Christian virtue?

How about industriousness?

How about hard work?

Is idleness a sin?

What make idleness idleness? How long must one not be industrious before they are idle?

These are some questions that arose for me this morning as I listened to the Bible Podcast from the good people at Bible.org . The passage today was from Ecclesiastes 4. I particularly keyed into verses 5 and 6.

4:5 The fool folds his hands and does no work,
so he has nothing to eat but his own flesh.
4:6 Better is one handful with some rest
than two hands full of toiland chasing the wind.

Obviously, doing nothing is foolish for very practical reasons. You will run out of food. But notice that the opposite of doing nothing (sloth) is not busyness. Busyness is called "chasing the wind" which is also foolishness.

It is better to strive today for what you need today. It is better to take a rest as rests are needed.

I'm assuming that most people reading this (assuming anyone is reading this at all) fall into two camps. I know some people read blog for escape. It's OK to escape for a period of rest from the toil of the world, but if you are deep into blogs all day and otherwise unproductive, perhaps you have are a fool with folded hands.

On the other hand, I'd bet more people that I encounter in the blog-o-sphere are like the people I have around me all day. People striving to get one step ahead. People networking and building toward a "better future." People chasing their next goal or their next dream. People seeking a greater influence or a greater profit. People chasing after the wind.

Being industriousness is not a sin, but busily buzzing from one opportunity to the next is foolishness.

Seeking what good God has for you today is the only reasonable use of your day. That means finding not the work that pays the best, but the work that you are best created to do. It means having relationships with people with a purpose beyond what can he or she do to help me get ahead. It means enjoying the things that God has already given you whether those things be your family, your friends, you stuff or your work.

In what ways have you been chasing after the wind?

Reflextion: God is not an introvert

2009-02-03T13:30:00.005-05:00

In order to get to really know what an introvert is thinking, you have to work really hard, ask all the right questions and hope that the introvert is willing to open the door of their heart wide enough that you can peek in.

I think that's how I've seen God. Maybe it is the old man on a cloud image of God that leads me to think that prayer is about me asking and saying the right things, then straining to hear a quick word or two from God, then maybe I'll understand a bit about his will. But, now, I don't think that's true.

God is an extrovert. He gets his enjoyment out of people, talking to them, telling them about his experience, his emotions, his burning desires.

If you don't know what an extrovert is thinking, it could be that you've either closed your ears to them or you misunderstand them. Perhaps you see them as too flighty or self absorbed. But if you think this, you may be missing the fact that they really just want to communicate and demonstrate love to everyone.

Let God be an extrovert and I think you'll understand more about his desire to show love to you.

What I'm working on

2009-01-27T06:20:00.001-05:00

Here is a graphical representation of the creative thing I'm working on during the winter months.

Keep checking back. There is more about this coming.

Hibernation and X Games

2009-01-26T08:43:00.002-05:00

It's the middle of Winter now, January 26, a week before Punxsutawney Phil annually informs us that winter will go on, and so often for 6 more week. The holidays have passed and all the joy of those things has become irrelevant.

It seems I have two options at this time. Succumb to the strong call to retreat into my home and hibernate. The television seasons are all gearing up to help me with that options. I caught Lost last week and can't wait for next Wednesday.

However, while scanning the TV channels this week, I noticed that the annual Winter Games are on. Snow
boarders and skiers doing ridiculous tricks for points, but even when the loose by falling on their heads they get up pumped because of the adrenaline rush they produced.

I realize that this winter season gives me two options. Hibernate and do little of anything or seek incredible weather related thrills by becoming an audacious snowboarder.

Since the snow stinks in my area and my knees don't work as they should, maybe I need to find other ways to seek my thrills so I'm going to use this Winter to start something new. I'm going to try to do something and gather people together in a way that I've never seen before. I'm going to be creative in doing so. And I just might dream up the details to this new, exciting thing while watching the X Games in my PJs.

What's better boring or WOW?

2009-01-15T09:06:00.001-05:00

Seth Godin's blog this morning accuses me (the reader) of being boring. Boring is doing the safe thing. In some ways, I'm not real boring. I challenge the status quo. But in other ways, I am boring. I don't want my status quo messed up. I like my life. I like to go home sit on my lazy boy and flip channels.

Godin's post reminds me of a quote from Stef's current favorite TV show. Duff, the Ace of Cakes, says, "They may say "Wow! That sucks." But at least they'll say, 'Wow.'"

Boring things/boring people are safe. Nothing new means expected outcome. Excitement isn't predictable. So, here are my questions: Do you prefer boring friends or exciting friends? Do you prefer a boring boss or and exciting boss? Would you prefer a boring or exciting economic cycle?

I don't think you can have boring excitement. You also can't have a safe unknown.

Honoring God's Name

2009-01-09T19:28:00.002-05:00

I spoke at Grace Point a couple weeks ago. It's taken me a while to get this up because my computer hasn't been handling video the way I'd like, but here is a YouTube video to demonstrate the slides that Greg Schwartz created for me. I think they're pretty cool! How often have you seen comic books used in church? The service was a once a year family--kids with parents--service. I thought the kids might appreciate these images more than fill-in-the-blank PowerPoint slides.

The talk was almost three times longer than the video. If you'd like to listen to the full message you can get the mp3 at Grace Point's website.

New Year Predictions 2009

2009-01-01T16:23:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year to all. I pray that you will find 2009 fulfilling.

I thought I'd make my predictions for the coming year. Some are more obvious than others. I don't think I get too ostentatious.

The economy will go up and it will go down, especially as we measure it according to the sock market. In the end there will be a push to find another economic barometer because the stock market will be seen as too artificial.
We'll have a new president; he'll be a minority, the first ever in the White House; Conservative Christian leaders will not be happy with him, but many other Christian leaders will consider his first months in a positive light.
The Obamas will get a dog as they move into the White House. It will be a mutt (sort of).
The Eagles will not win the Super Bowl. Some fans will continue to call for Reid's head. Others will call for a change of quarterback. Neither will happen before the 2009 season.
Phillies fans will boo at least one of the World Series heroes before the end of the first home game. The Phillies will not repeat as World Series champs.
There will not be a civil war that fragments the US, but some tensions will rise.
Microsoft will not have a Y2K10 issue, but they will make news sometime in the year for a major attack on their operating system.
Gas prices will go back up this summer but not to the $4 mark of last summer.
In Iraq, the US withdraw will be behind schedule at the end of 2009. The Military will point to an escalation of insurgents uprisings as the reason.
It will be cold in the winter and hot in the summer and everyone will claim climate is the cause for it seeming hotter than it used to be or colder than it used to be. At least one hurricane will strike the US and people will again focus on how much climate change has increased the chance of the event happening.
Captain Phil will return the the Cornela Marie. His sons will rip him off, he'll get angry and say bleeeeep a lot, then in the end he'll tell them he's so proud of their progress on the boat.
Jack will get the gang back together to search for the Island, but they won't find it this season. Or they will find it, but they won't find their friends on the Island.
I'll continue to love my wife and she'll continue to be a better writer than me. My girls will continue to amaze me. We'll continue to wish we had more money, but, in reality, will be happy we don't have everything we want.

Why do Americans need smaller homes?

2008-12-22T08:18:00.001-05:00

Maybe the environment would benefit. Maybe it would help the country to develop a better economic stability if we built more smaller homes. But those aren't the reasons I'd suggest the country needs to downsize.

I've found that the more time my family spends in the same room, the better balance we have. If I have a big home, my kids are in their space, I'm in the yard working and my wife is doing her stuff to up-keep the home in her space. The little amount of time that we all actually spend at home is not spent together.

In a smaller home, my family spends a lot of time together. That time is time that we are building our relationships. That's time that we are learning to love each other.

I'm hopeful that the economic downturn will have some benefits for the family. Smaller homes can lead to better family relationships.

How does your family use the space in your home?

Blood-Water Music on NoiseTrade Widget

2008-12-18T22:52:00.001-05:00

Worship Styles

2008-12-15T11:55:00.002-05:00

The issue of worship styles is like the issue of abortion. Everyone has an opinion; everyone hope that their side will win; but no hit of an end is coming soon.

This issue was raised once again this weekend. Some people don't want to attend a certain service because the worship leader that is not of their style will be leading. Hmmm.

"Why don't you like his style?" I asked.

Their response, "We just don't. We know that some people do, but we just can't worship to that style of music."

I return, "Then is it worship that you are doing when the music is of your choosing, or are you just feeling good?"

They didn't understand me. But that's OK.

Worship to me is about service not about feelings. It is hard to think about the word in a modern Western mindset because we are not encouraged to worship anyone.

So, think back to a time when there were kings and queens ruling the world. Worship is a monarchical term--It's from the world of all powerful rulers.

A subject was to worship a king. He would do this in several ways. First, he would serve the king to provide him with a great bounty or victory. Second, in the king's presence, the subject would lower himself so the kings greatness was demonstrated.

Interesting, when you look that way, I don't see any reason that worship was about making the subject feel good. Sure, feeling good may be a side benefit if the kingdom prospers, but the king was still the one who decided if the subject was to receive any benefit at all. The subject just served.

Music may be part of the worship of a king. For those who are gifted, the king may offer a ministry of music. Songs being powerful motivators may be part of the gathering of the subjects but the song would certainly be chosen by the king, not those gathering.

I can't find a single verse in the scripture that connect worship with music. You know, something like, "David worshiped God by playing his favorite songs." There are examples of wonderful music in both Testaments, but I wonder if it is more notable that the words used for worship mean "to pay homage" which means to pay respect. The word for worshiper (λατρεύω) comes from a word that mean "to serve."

It doesn't sound like these terms are about me feeling good when I do it. It sounds like the focus is always on the king. If the focus is on God when we worship, why do we need to enjoy the music at all? If we serve a King who desires our obedience as our sacrifice isn't our obedience to His commandments the greatest worship. And if the greatest commandment is to love God and love others isn't worship then the way we demonstrate great love to God and others?

And if someone else is hurting or lost and needs what the church has to offer, is the most loving thing to break down walls that would make them feel uncomfortable? Perhaps our music is that thing.

So I ask one last question about worship...
Is is possible that the greatest form of worship might be when I put myself into a place where I'm completely uncomfortable, with music I can't understand and that hurts my ears, in order that I might help save a new generation of hurting people for the love of God?

I'm not sure we can call feeling good worship at all.

Safely Watched

2008-12-10T07:03:00.000-05:00

Once when my daughter was younger
I allowed her to stray

the crowded room and shiny things
and she was caught up in her world

She strayed a couple isles
Picking up shiny things

She walk away with out knowing
her distance from her safe place

I didn't want to walk away
but when I called her she didn't come

I didn't let her leave my sight
I followed her close behind

But she wasn't looking for me
She was caught up in her own desires

Freedom was fun for a moment
No one told her do not touch

But freedom can be scary
when you discover your aloneness

Her safe place had left
her freedom now confusion

I didn't go to her right away
I allowed her to know her emptiness

That fear I'm sure will reminder
that her place is with her father

I'm not sure her exact emotions
they flooded her face so quickly

At first it seem confusion
then more a bit like pain

The glitter than had drawn her attention
was now meaningless and a barrier

She began to search for me in the vastness
she looked in the faces of others passing by

But strangers were not safe
It was her father she desired

She her confusion turn to pain
she called out to her father

With out delay my heart broke
and my desire was for her

So I stepped out from behind the shiny things
Swooped her into my arms

"I was her sweetheart
I'll never leave you"

"I was afraid daddy, I need you
Don't leave me again"

Our love is now focus
her desires more pure

But what I'm learning
what I'm wondering

Was that my child there
that day?

What I'm thinking, what I'm learning is
that that wasn't my daughter that day

The child lost whose was drawn by glitter
wasn't a daughter at all

It was me and I was my Father
and I was always safely watched

Why I blog

2008-12-08T07:59:00.000-05:00

Recently, I read that a blog can be about one of two people: yourself or the reader. I read a bunch of blogs and have found that generally true. My blog--this one--is about me and for me. I started it to communicate my otherwise unspoken thoughts. It's sort of a journal.

So A World that I'm Partly Made of is at its core a journal of thoughts intended for me as I think them through. It is a reflection on the world from my point of view.

On the other hand, I could have written these thoughts down in a journal book stored in my desk. But I haven't. My blog is public because maybe there is someone out there that will benefit from knowing how I think, understanding my values, and reading links to others who help me to form my thoughts.

So, if you're reading this, you're welcome to poke around, comment or leave as you like. Since it is about me and for me, it will be raw, rough and maybe a little one sided. I don't have it proof read which is dangerous for a dyslexic writer. I do hope it will also be honest and insightful, and I hope that seeing things through my point of view helps you to understand your world better.

Does God like Christmas?

2008-12-02T06:28:00.002-05:00

This time of year I get what we call the I-wanters. That is, I see all the good sales, and I want things.

Last weekend, I stopped in the ATT store to see how much the iPhone was going for these days. It was nice, and slightly more than I had budgeted for my birthday gift. Since I have a December birthday, maybe I could talk Stef into bundling it with my Christmas gift. Yeah! That's a good idea.

So....I talked to the man about the iPhone, only to find out it was the only phone in the store that required a $30-per-month data plan. Now the $200 phone would cost me... oh... around $560 for the year over what I'm currently paying for mobile service.

So, being a smart guy, I asked the guy, "Are there any phones that you'd recommend over the iPhone.

His eye's light up as he guided me across the room to show me the new Blackberry Bold. At only $400 this phone has high rating in just about everything over the iPhone.

Oh, it looked so nice, and there was an option of a $100 rebate. I'll I'd have to do is order the dataplan for 3 months. Let's see, $30 data plan times 3 equals $90. That's $10 saving and i get to use the super fast G3 network for 3 months. Certainly, if Stef could see the 3G's blazing speed, she'd want me to have it. "Oh," and he added, "This phone has one of the best turn-by-turn GPS system in the world. It even beats those that they put into Lexus and BMW cars. That's only a $10-per-month service charge."

"WOW! I love GPS! That could only be so cooooooool!" And it could be my birthday present/Christmas present. Now I want it, and I want it BAD! Let's ignor that fact that this phone would only cost me $400-$100 rebate+$90 for the first 3 monts of data service + in reality $30 times 9 because I really want the phone for the cool data feature + $120 for the monthly GPS service. I could have this baby for only $780. Only $650 dollars more than I had budgeted for birthday and Christmas gifts.

You see, we are trying to downplay gifts this year. We don't need stuff, but as Seth Godin points out in his bog Hungry, its the marketer's job to make me want stuff. It's my job to realize I don't need it.

The video at the top of this unusually long post is Jon Foreman performing his song Instead. It is a lovely reworking of the sentiments in Is. 1:11-17 or maybe Amos 5:21-24. When it comes to Christmas, I'm never really happy.

I wonder if it is because this season has become on of those festivals that Isaiah and Amos write about. Could God really be pleased with me when I celebrate the coming of his Son with buying myself a cell phone or buying my child a new 50-inch flatscreen TV? Maybe I'm not that far out--maybe it is just the Wii @ $400 that I'm getting my kid to set along side the PS3 and X-box? Or whatever else it might be that is cause me to have the I-wanters? Can those I-wanter be what God hates when they overcome my attention on justice and righteous living?

Lost is coming and this the Fray video is cool

2008-11-26T13:38:00.002-05:00

I'm a Lost fan. Have been since I was hooked in Season 2. Now, I'm impatiently waiting for the penultimate season. Enjoy this video.

Lost Friday nights start at my house in January. (I know Lost is on Wednesday, but with all I have to do on Wednesday it's easier to wait until Friday.) Beside, that's when we can get people together.

These are my values--What are yours?

2008-11-26T06:45:00.005-05:00

Our staff talked about values today. You know, the attitudes deep inside you that guide your actions--the reasons your do what you do. I've thought a lot about strengths and personalities lately, but have forgotten values. I want to thank Jay Williams for taking us through this interesting workshop.

Here are my core values. I hope to follow up with the why behind each.

Family: Family are the people that are closest to you. In a family, you can be who God designed you to be without fear, scorn or judgment. Family loves you for who you are, unconditionally, but always challenges each member to grow and respect norms and authority so the the whole family benefits.

This usually includes those related to you, it doesn't have to be limited to those people and sometimes those people don't act too much like family.

I'm fortunate, I find this value in Stef, Moriah and Elie. I have found it in my family of my childhood, but we aren't together too often any more. I'm beginning to find aspects of it with some of the people of our church. That's what I love most about Friday nights in my house.

Creativity: Creativity is the ability to think bigger and dream beyond current reality. To be fully creative, those big dreams must be communicated to others, and challenge them to also think bigger and dream beyond reality.

I value creativity. I am not by nature creative in the sense that I can't sing, play an instrument, paint, build, draw, or write particularly well. Those are all tools for expressing creativity. To be a good drawer, doesn't make you creative. It is just medium for those who are creative to express their thoughts.

I'm still searching for my best medium of creativity.

Freedom: Freedom is the ability to choose--according to your free will--that which God designed you to do, say or write.

Freedom is for anarchy. Anarchy is freedom only for the strongest as the weak are push to oblivion. Freedom is I can choose according to my will and design in such a way that you can better choose according to your will and design.

We exercise freedom in our home. I think it is leading my daughters to be more creative people.

These are my core values as I discovered this week. I have other values too--teaching and peace are certainly secondary--but the first three values stand out.

Living with dyslexia follow up

2008-11-24T14:27:00.000-05:00

Quickly, no one seemed to be able to figure the sign out.

Before I say what the sign really said, I want to be clear, that I have only ever thought that the Screwy Curve was because we were driving up a mountain road. No other conotation have come to my mind.

Screwy Curve, when scrambled and on 'e' removed makes the phrase....

living with dyslexia (1)

2008-11-22T11:03:00.002-05:00

I have the curse(1) or joy of living(3) with(4) dyslexia. Dyslexia is a reading disorder in which the brain mixes stuff up. At least(5,6) that's what some experts(7-9) say. Others say everyone(10) mixes stuff up; those who claim(11) the disorder just(12-14) aren't trying(15) hard enough.

Obviously, it is a curse, because it can be really frustrating(16) mixing things up. For example(17-20), I've counted 20 times already that I've used the back space to correct mistyped word. I also struggle with(21) vowels(22-25) sounds. I really can't tell the difference(26) between a short "i" and a short "a".

As for not trying hard enough(26-30), I've reread short papers 6 or more times and still have people point out errors(31) pointed out on first reading by others (usually my wife(32)).

Ok, that sounds frustrating(33), so how can dyslexia(34) be a joy? Well, I can read some really funny things at times. Of course, no one else gets the joke, but I'm OK with laughing alone(35).

One memorable dyslexic(36,37) moment came on a road trip with(38) a college friend. Driving down a country road, I clearly saw(38) this sign.

Can you guess what my college buddy(39,40) read on the sign?

Note: Numbers(41) in ( ) indicate times I actually(42) backspaced because(43) I mistyped a word.

Start making a new culture

2008-11-19T13:53:00.002-05:00

Andy Crouch asks there questions in his book Culture Making . There is a great video from Q where he reveals those questions.

The Questions:

What are you cultivating?
What are you creating?
Who are you co-creators?

Cultivating is taking something in culture and making it better, more productive, or valuable for today.

Creating is making something new out of nothing?

Co-creators are those who help you to make culture anew. They start as a small group (3), move to a larger group (12), and then to a community (120). (Sounds similar to Seth Godin's Tribes, doesn't it.)

Answering these question:

I'm cultivating a new way to do family ministry at Grace Point.
I'm not sure what I'm creating just yet, but it will be something to help connect families.
I have a few circles of 3, sometimes they connect, but not always. I think the most important two people pertaining to what I'm cultivating are Nate and Cassandra - my youth and children's directors.

Advent Conspiracy

2008-11-13T10:55:00.000-05:00

Advent Conspiracy

Two Christmases ago, we started giving our children a gift every year that they could make a donation to a charity of their choice. I love the idea of the Advent Conspiracy and have been encourage to give more this year than before. Sure the economy is down and you are already thinking of cutting back.

Here's the deal. If you cut back 75% of what your child would receive in a normal year, are you really cutting on their needs or is it still want items. If you give to something like Blood:Water Mission, you're giving a child fresh water, a much needed need.

Watch the video and join me.