Archive | January, 2009

Hope

20 Jan

Seth Godin has another great post today on hope. Read it.

Today with the inauguration we witnessed millions of people who were willing to by hope, from a politician no less.  I believe Barak Obama has what it takes to lead our country out of the many messes that we are in right now.  I believe John McCain could have done it as well (just being honest).  But both of these guys are still just dudes.  There is nothing about them that is more or less special than any of us.  We are all sinful and broken and left to ourselves we are completely hopeless.

The sad thing is that the church, should be able to market hope better than Barak Obama’s campaign did.  We have the message of Jesus Christ, which is the hope for all of us, to be saved from our own sins and our own destruction.  We have hope to spare.  The Gospel is hope and we are known for doing a very poor job of communicating that hope.

The perception of the church to the world is that we are a rigid bunch of people who follow rules.  The Gospel of Hope is not adequately presented in that perception.  So what can we do to change the perceptions?  It has to be more that words, it has to be more than good sermons.  We have to show our hope.  We have to live out our hope every day.  We have to talk about the hope that we have.  We have to connect our hope to our everyday lives.

I’m praying that President Obama will be a great president, but I can’t put my hope in him.  Because he will let me down. Jesus will never let us down.  My prayer is that we would look beyond President Obama and look to Jesus, and that we would put our hope in him.

Psalm 25 is a great reminder of where our hope should be directed.

Star Wars Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it)

19 Jan

This is awesome

Church is Boring

15 Jan

What?!?!

As one who as been trained to be a religious professional I probably shouldn’t creates posts about how the organization by which I am employed is boring.  That’s a pretty big no-no.  So what am I talking about?

I read this post by Seth Godin. And it got me thinking . . .

here are some highlights:

If people aren’t discussing . . .  your movement there’s a reason.

The reason is that you’re boring.

You don’t get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong.

Remarkable is a choice.

Church is boring because people are not talking about it.  People are not talking about what’s happening there, people are not talking about the lives that are being changed, the good that the community is bringing to the neighborhood, the strength of the community, the times of worship.

The last thing a church wants to be is boring, because boring is forgotten on the way home.  There are several qualifiers though.  Anti-boring does not mean flashy; you don’t have to have the best show in town.  Anti-boring does not mean controversial; you don’t need to do a 3 month series on sex in the Bible.  Anti-Boring does not mean pure entertainment; the band doesn’t have to be the best, your preacher doesn’t have to be the funniest, most compelling or best looking pastor in the world.

When it comes to the church, all of those things are neat.  And some churches may be able to grow because of controversy, or production, or just plain good looks.  But a church that’s remarkable gets remarkable for what happens the other 6 days of the week.

Our church is striving to be remarkable.  We want people to talk about what happens on sunday, we want them to remark on what happens in their community group.  We want Creekside to be a community that people just can’t shut up about, because ultimately, when we talk about what’s happening at Creekside, we are talking about what Jesus is up to, and that’s pretty stinkin’ remarkable.

I Agree with Tim

14 Jan

At the Life In Student ministry blog, Tim posted his reasoning for keeping High School and Jr. High combined.

I agree with his assessment.  I grew up in a ministry that had a combined big group mid week and then more age specific sunday school.  The big gathering on wednesday nights were some of my favorite times as a Jr. Higher because I saw people older than me actively engaging their faith, and maybe our group was unique (i hope not) but I always felt that the older kids were very inclusive with the younger ones.

What do you think?

Wise as Serpents?

14 Jan

Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

This verse has always confused me. I don’t understand why Jesus would reference the serpent.

In the context of the verse Jesus is talking about the risk of being a disciple and the coming persecution. I can understand being gentle as doves, but I don’t really get why the serpent is so wise. Is it because snakes are hard to grab? Not saying that Christians are supposed to be evasive, but we should also not try to cause trouble.

I know it’s not saying that we should strike like a serpent, because that’s not gentle like a dove. When the disciples where arrested in Acts we never saw them fighting the arrest.

I don’t know, this verse has always confused me.

Things in my brain

13 Jan

In No particular order

  • I really like coffee
  • my kids are super cute
  • blogging is hard to keep up on when you have a job, a family, and purusing a masters degree
  • the Bible is amazing, read the Drama of Scripture and you’ll see.
  • Malachi is one of the most intense books in said Bible.
  • My wife is crazy hot
  • I love Pho’ (but now I smell like onions)
  • I am not a web professional, but I’m learning a lot about DNS, CNAME, MX records.  IT people speak several languages
  • I like Third Day’s newest album more an more
  • I think I’m really going to enjoy LeaderSync tonight at Creekside.
  • I am looking forward to some future ideas that have been percolating in my brain

That’s that.

Princess Bride Ambigram

12 Jan

Saw this at boingboing. Princess bride is one of the best films ever made by humans and the new cover is really cool.

Evangelism

5 Jan

Great post from Mark D on Evangelism.

http://theresurgence.com/evangelism_driscoll

Resolutions

2 Jan

Last year I made the New Years Resolution to read only one book at a time. And I am proud to say, I Did It!!! That is actually a major accomplishment for me, because during college I developed Literary ADD and I could not focus on one book at a time. As a result, a lot of the content I was ingesting would become muddled with so many voices speaking at once. Reading one book at a time has really helped me to focus and get more from each book. If you are a reader, I would recommend doing something like this for yourself.

Not only was I able to read more books, I was also able to stop reading some books if they were terrible and not feel like I had to finish them.  This year I’m going to try to increase the number of books I read.  My goal for this year, will be to read 75 books.  This shouldn’t be too difficult since I am pursuing my master’s degree.  But it will take a lot of determination.  I’ll keep a list in my readings page.

Bible Reading in 2009

1 Jan

Happy New Year!!! Let’s make 2009 the year we read the whole Bible!  Found this post on Scott H’s Blog, and I thought, hey why not share it with my readers as well:

Just for the record, I’m not a huge fan of reading the entire bible in one year. In general, I’d rather drill down on a few passages over long periods of time than read the bible like drinking water from a fire hose. But, every couple years I feel led to read the whole thing in a year to reorient myself to the big picture.

2009 is such a year. I will read it chronologically and have chosen The Message. I’ve created a couple tools to help me access the daily schedule and content.

  • RSS feed. If you’re like me and check your RSS feeds almost daily this will be a easy way to have access to your schedule and content.
  • 2009 Bible Reading Plan Google Calendar. This is a public Google calendar. You can view it, subscribe to it and even embed it on your blog/site. Or just bookmark this post and come back every single day. ) The following schedule will update daily thanks to my friends at Google.

So I hope this helps you build a bible reading rhythm for 2009.

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