40 Days...

I usually get ran over by the bandwagons - seriously, I have wagon wheel ruts on my back as deep as the ones at Ft. Laramie. That's ok, though, I have some kind of allergic reaction to whatever it is that most people are into at any given moment anyway. (Don't worry, there's a big but coming.) I just get really annoyed when I see people changing everything about themselves in order to fit in (maybe because that tendency is a constant undercurrent in my own life).

BUT...

Right now, our church is doing the whole 40 Days of Purpose series (probably the biggest bandwagon running in the church right now)... and I like it a lot. Maybe I can rationalize this bandwagon ride by convincing myself that I was ahead of the curve because I read Warren's first book long before I knew how huge it would become. Or maybe a few points of disagreement are enough to make me feel better about 'going with the flow' of thousands of other churches. At any rate, I'm excited to walk through this with WestWay (we went through it in Auburn as well and it was one of the best things the church ever did together).

I'm excited to see people realizing there's a point to this whole thing called life. I've grown up asking "Why?", seeking purpose for everything. (Probably got really annoying when I was a kid and had to know "Why?" all the time.) I've neer been satisfied to just do what I'm told. (Which is really odd, because I was always the kid that did do what I was told - just wasn't satisfied by that.) I pray that people will be able to move past the mundane and discover why they're here.

We started a new 'roughly college age' group last night. There seemed to be a really good mix of people looking forward to walking through a little life together. Can't wait to see how it all unfolds.

hi

I'd really appreciate your prayers.

Wednesday, my wife took our youngest son to the Dr. for a regular checkup. Everything was fine. Yesterday, she took him back in because he'd spent the last day hacking and just seeming really 'sick'.

He's in the hospital now with brochialitis or pneumonia (they're still deciding which). Last night was a long night there and they want to keep him at least until tomorrow.

I hate being sick, but I hate having sick kids even more.

Thanks for your help.
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Update
Siah came home Sunday and is doing quite a bit better. He has to take these breathing treatments for a while and antibiotics, but he's getting back to normal. (Well I guess normal is relative, but he's getting back to being himself again!) Just glad he's back home and doing better.

America's Jesus???

USA Today had an interesting opinion piece titled, What has happend to America's Jesus?.

While I share the writer's dislike of the embarrassing way some claim to speak for Jesus in our country and the ridiculously un-Jesus-like things they do, I think he didn't go back far enough. He's compared today's misconceptions about Jesus to another generation's misconceptions about Jesus, but possibly ignored the actual Jesus altogether. The one who is the Way, Truth, and Life. The one who threw people out of the Temple and healed broken people whom no one else would touch. The one who refused to eat for a 40 day fast and who fed thousands with one kids' meal.

But the article got me thinking...

Who speaks for Jesus today?
Does 'conservative American' really equal 'a voice for Jesus'?
Is more conservative the same as more Christian?
Is Satan using a few hot button issues to distract conservative Christians from the real Jesus or will the battle for Christ truly be won or lost in these issues?
Is one political slant more or less Christian than another?
What are we doing to find out what Jesus really has to say?

What do you think?

Play

Mike Yaconelli wrote this book about the adventure of childlike faith a few years ago. I just picked it back up and was rereading a little. I found myself in the middle of his chapter about Daring Playfulness. It was a good reminder.

"Play is an expression of God's presence in the world; one clear sign of God's absence in society is the absence of playfulness and laughter. Play is not an escape; it is the way to release the life-smothering grip of busyness, stress, and anxiety."

I had planned a worship time with the students tonight where we'd talk about the fact that God wants our hearts, not just our butts in the church chairs a couple times a week. Some music, a video, discussion groups... Instead, we're gonna play!

Don't forget to play with God...

Putting up Markers

When I was in Jr. High - I realized the church wasn't just a bunch of adults singing songs and hearing speeches. I realized that God wanted to speak to me. I realized that He wanted something for and from my life (though I couldn't have dreamed that it would be what He's done with my life so far). I realized He wasn't just a past-tense Creator, but that He was active in the world around me and wanted to be active within me. It was in the context of a place that was really a people called the Church at Bryant.

It was a critical time for me of important spiritual discovery. I met Truth. People like my friend Scott and the youth minister Kyron (though we called him KC then) introduced me to Him. Actually my parents and others had been trying to do that for years, I just didn't pay much attention until then. I love being able to do that now for someone else.

College at Nebraska Christian College was another spiritual watershed in my life. It wasn't just that I was being equipped for ministry and digging deeper into God's Word than ever before. I was being shaped and held in the hand of God. I was learning to be His. I love helping other people learn that.

My first ministry (with the Auburn Christian Church) was another place/people that has marked my life for the good. For the first time, I could see my life (inasmuch as it is Christ's) really making a difference in someone else's. I saw Him becoming real to students as they looked at me. It was a humbling and rewarding time.

This weekend I took some WestWay Jr Highers to GORF at NCC, another important place that's really a people. It's amazing to see God working and to think of the circle of ministry that's happening in my life. I took Jr High kids (from WestWay) to my college home (NCC), where they were hosted by some of my former students (from Auburn) who are growing up and being used by God in some really exciting ways. The juxtaposition of present results and future potential and past efforts painted a great picture for me this weekend. A picture of God at work.

Some of you already know this part, but just to add a bit of God's irony to the picture...
About 10 years ago, the building where the Church at Bryant met was locked up by those people for the final time. But this isn't another 'church gets old and dies' story. The church where I spent Jr. High bought a lumber yard, remodeled, and began meeting on West 27th St. Since they weren't 'at Bryant' anymore, they changed their name to WestWay Christian Church.

Talking to Myself... sort of

A couple days ago, I was having a discussion with a student who was working on a paper. She was writing about malnutrition and starvation in the world and about Compassion as a response to poverty. She presented her introduction to her teacher and was prompted to reconsider her topic. The topic wasn't outside the bounds of the assignment, but the teacher suggested that when she presented the paper in class, the other students might put her down for it.

My response to her, in encouraging her to do the paper as well as possible, was that it doesn't matter who rejects us when Christ has already accepted us. I hope she'll do well. I hope she opens some eyes to how Christ (active in our actions) is the answer to this issue.

As I thought about what I'd said, I realized that I need to hear that, too. It really doesn't matter if people reject me because Christ has already accepted me. I'm a peacemaking type of person. This is great in helping other people resolve their conflicts, but it also leads me to a severe concern with how other people see me. I worry too often about how my actions will be perceived or misperceived. I don't need to. I'm loved by God. I have His acceptance. There's no need to present a mock up of myself. (There's a book by Brennan Manning called Abba's Child that digs into this idea much more deeply.)

Walk This Way...

A couple years ago, at a conference full of people on the campus of Colorado State University, I heard someone call out my last name. I turned around to find a friend of my dad's looking at me with a puzzled look on his face. He apologized and said he thought I was someone else, but then his synapses began firing a little more quickly and he realized the truth. I wasn't who he thought I was... I was the son of who he thought I was.

"You walk just like your dad."

Umm... thanks, I guess. I have to admit that I've never paid particular attention to my gait or that of my father. To be perfectly honest, I'm pretty apathetic about the mechanics of walking. I just do it. I've never examined the similarities, but apperantly, I step like he does.

My dad never told me how to walk. He just walked and I watched.

Someday, someone's going to call out to somebody and tell them they sound like Mike. I hope I live my life in a way that makes that a compliment to those who follow the curious steps I take.

Willing to take a risk?

I got this in an e-mail from Gary Zustiak of CIY with the quotes. Great reminder!

"Bottom line—ministry is not about staging or lighting or MySpace or contemporary worship or dynamic programming—important as those things all are. Ministry is about loving students, loving them with the love of Christ. Sometimes we forget that in the details and pressures of each day’s responsibilities. However, in loving students, sometimes you get your heart broke. There are no guarantees. That is just the way it is. When that happens you might read the following quotes and be encouraged."
--Zus

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could." --Louise Erdich The Painted Drum January 10th, 2006

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, and irredeemable. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is hell." --C. S. Lewis

What will you risk for the sake of loving someone else with the love of Christ?

What a bunch of garbage.

"I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him" (Phil. 3:8-9).

I wonder what kind of garbage I've been collecting? What is it that I need to dump out of my life in order to gain Christ?

Sometimes it's hard to let go of dependence on ourselves. But we have to, because what we really need isn't something we can provide on our own. Paul recognized that his high regard for following religious law wasn't enough. He needed something more. Something he couldn't produce on his own. He needed Christ.

And everything he'd held so dear for so long was garbage compared to knowing Him.

Here's to taking out the trash...

Chugga Chugga...

My kids love trains. My boys, especially are enjoying living in town with a lot of train traffic. I hate that line in Polar Express that says something like, "The important thing about trains isn't where it's going, but choosing to get on..." Of course it matters where you're going!

Anyway, I'm preaching tomorrow - here's the train of thought my mind will take... more or less.

Grew up moving... Dad changed jobs (actually entire career fields)... Once as we loaded up the U-haul at the house we'd just sold, we didn't know where we'd live when we got to where we were going...

When I got married (right after HS) we had nothing (no jobs, no money, no great career path plotted out), had to sell a wedding gift wok to buy enough Ramen to make it to the next (first) paycheck...

Worked as a waiter @ Perkins after graduating college while looking for a ministry...

God provides. He always gives us the tools to do what He's asked us to do. (Doesn't mean it's all good, all the time.)

Just ask Job. Had it all. Lost it all. Had it all again. It wasn't a cakewalk, but God did provide. Our obedience doesn't guarantee ease... but it does guarantee Presence.

Abraham... Isaac, the son of promise (Gen 21)... Moriah (Gen 22)... obedient choice. Heb. 11:17ff - he expected Isaac's resurrection! (Even in Abraham's day, resurrection was pretty, um... rare!) Why would he have expected that? "God will provide."

Moriah is later where Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem. Same area where God did exactly what he saved Abraham from doing. Sacrifice of his Son.

Rom. 12:1ff
Micah 6:6-8
Rom. 8:28ff

This will be my first time speaking to the whole congregation here... hope it's not a train wreck! hehehe (Don't worry, I'll use complete sentences tomorrow.)

Martin Luther King Jr.

Not just a great civil rights leader, but a man of faith in the indiscriminant love of Jesus Christ. He believed in the power of the church to bring about societal change. In his 1963 letter from jail in Birmingham, he challenged local clergy -

“There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period when the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society."

That challenge still echos to us today. We can't just stand around and tell the world that it's messed up. We must do something to bring people to the Healer.
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Here's an interesting article from Relevant's website.
More MLK links:
Audio & text of "I Have a Dream" (with some video excerpts)
Text only of "I Have a Dream"

A Generous Orthodoxy...

One of the early slogans of the particular branch of the church in which I've grown up and served is "We're not the only Christians, we're Christians only." Though some of the people in our movement that I knew as a kid seemed to have forgotten this statement, I always suspected that there really were genuine Jesus following people in other church groups (like Methodists and Lutherans and Baptists and Catholics and...) Our movement began as an effort to unite Christ followers of all stripes by seeking and cherishing the deeper truth of God that had become buried in centuries of differing opinions. At our best, we have done just that; at our worst, we have become one more exclusionary group defining who's in and who's out.

As I read McLaren's book, I couldn't help but think of my roots (and future) in the Christian Church. Much of what he says echoes the simple plea to follow Christ. But instead of cutting out any extra faith labels, he wants to hold on to all of them. (The subtitle for the book is "WHY I AM A missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN") He looks into the histories of these groups, which often have little but scorn for each other, and points out valuable insights that each can bring to the table of the church in the post modern world.

I think his best thoughts were contained in the final chapter, where he describes this generous orthodoxy as one that is constantly in development. 'We're not finished yet.' There's been a lot of criticism of the emergent church that I think stems from this underlying current in the conversation. It seems that many in the church are afraid to acknowledge that we've not yet 'arrived'. But Paul did so - and proclaimed that he would "press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me."

I may not agree with everything McLaren advocates, but I am eager to 'press on' into what is ahead. This is a thoughtful, challenging book that shows many beautiful aspects of various ways of thinking in the church. May Christ followers of all varieties be able to bring our divergent colors together into a rich portrait of His Body.

Repainting the Picture

Some recent events and shows and public reactions have got me thinking about how most people view the church. (I mean people who aren't a part of it.) If you think about portrayals of Christians and the church in film and tv, you can get a picture of how the public views the church - or at least how someone wants them to view the church. With a few exceptions (none of which really are coming to mind), we are drawn in a pretty ugly light.

Narrow minded bigots who are really no different than the guy on the next barstool - except he isn't pretending he's got no problems. Thoughtless answerers of questions that nobody's asking. Self righteous moral police (as well as judge and jury) with the depth of character of a mud puddle in the desert. Pat Robertson's, condemning everyone for everything we imagine they've done against God.

I don't want to be painted in those colors. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing the Bride of Christ acting in this world as His Body should. Doing what He calls her to do. And that whole word 'doing' is key. James 1 talks about hearing the word and doing it. And about caring for orphans and widows who need our care.

In Batman Begins, Bruce is told something like "It's not who you are inside that counts. It's what you do." It doesn't matter how right we think we are, if we don't care about the people around us. What we really are is reflected in our actions.

I know that ultimately most will stand against the church just as most stood against Christ, but I wonder... when will they look at us and see the love of God poured out on people who don't deserve it? Where is that happening now? What happens when the church we think we are truly is the church people see?

Some Challenges Just Shouldn't Be Made...

Check out this article.

Not that bank robbing is a really bright idea anyway, but add a vanity plate that says "FINDME" to the mix and you just have a recipe for instant jail time.

Dakota's Comment

OK, I said last week that I'd comment more about Jeremiah, and Dakota's comment that sparked some thinking, so here's the story...

We were sitting in services at my parents’ church in Cody, WY on Christmas morning. The pastor had promised a brief service, but several kids in the congregation were a little, ummm… ‘restless’. (Ok, most of the restless kids happened to be mine.) As we sang the song of communion, Dakota (he’s our 3-year old son) leaned over to me and whispered, “Dad, I’m running out of quiet.”

As I stifled my laughter, my mind started to work. Here’s this three year old boy, trying his best to be quiet in the quiet of the moment he sensed happening, but knowing that he was just about to ‘run out of quiet’. There was some noise inside him that just had to come out.

I was reminded of Jeremiah “If I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”

My prayer for our students and my own kids and self is that we would be so filled with the presence of God that we can’t possibly keep quiet about Him... That His Word would be in our hearts, like a fire that can’t be contained… That we would become courageous followers who have ‘run out of quiet’…

A Fire?

Jeremiah was at least a little peaved with God when he said in essence... 'You tricked me! You told me to say what You want me to say, I obeyed, and now I'm laughed at by everyone. Everyone is against me because I'm telling them what you tell me to tell them. Can't you tell me to tell them something nice for a change?' I know that's a very loose paraphrase of the situation, but read a few verses from Jeremiah 20 (try verse 7 or so). Before he curses the day he was born (verse 14), he praises God for rescuing the needy (verse 13), calls for God to take vengeance on his persecutors (verse 12), and makes this interesting statement in verse 9 "But if I say, 'I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot."

No matter how tough it got for Jeremiah, he absolutely could not/would not waver from commitment of himself to God's message. He cried and complained to God, but never took the easy out of disobedience. He had a dangerous assignment - to live a life that warned of God's impending judgment. I wonder if he ever just prayed for safety like we do? Safe travel, safe games, safe sleep...

I think it was in An Unstoppable Force, Erwin McManus tells a story about his son asking him to pray that God would keep him safe. Instead, he prayed that God would make him dangerous. I wonder if that's what Jeremiah prayed? 'If you're going to send me out into the wolves, give me sharper teeth. If you're going to hang me out like a piece of meat, make me poison to the enemies who want to chew me up.'

As a pastor to students, I am a part of God shaping the future of our world. Should my primary focus be to show the students how to be safe? Is it even possible to be safe and be committed? Instead, I pray that God would make them dangerous. That the students I know would be made courageous by the working of God in their lives. I pray that the enemy would fear them as they go and make disciples.

Steve at BreatheFire has a cool video of his daughter and some thoughts/discussion about this as well. Check out the How to Raise Fearless Warriors post and make sure to read the comments.
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I may post more on this later because a comment that Dakota made in church Sunday (you'll have to wait) really got me thinking about this. (Plus, I finally got to watch Batman Begins and it raises this whole what do we do with fear thing... which has a lot to do with seeking safety vs. being dangerous.)