what’s in my brain

  • vision day was great, and the video and audio are up at thecreeksidechurch.org
  • i’m really proud of our guest services team as they made this thing happen yesterday.  Go TEAM!
  • Team work makes the dream work, (that’s for you matt hodson)
  • our ministry passports turned out really great – Kate Thaete is a ninja
  • youth group was fun last night
  • church and youth group in one day makes for a super long day and monday is hard to get motivated and get going.
  • Looking forward to purpose leaders meeting in 5 minutes.

Synergy

“Don’t ever question Synergy, Lemon.” – Jack Donaghey (30Rock)

Kathy and I are selling things around our house.  We looked at stuff we haven’t used in awhile and whatever we could sell we posted on Amazon.com.

We had 6 seasons of the King of Queens, which we never watched because the show is actually one, every other hour, every day.  So we were good there.  This past weekend I posted all 6 seasons of the King of Queens on Amazon.com.  This weekend was also the same weekend that Paul Blart: Mall Cop, starring Kevin James premiered in theaters.  Synergy!  We have sold all but one season, pretty stinking awesome.

Go Synergy, Horay For you!

But I’m Not . . .

This morning I read Exodus 4, where Moses gave God his excuses for why Moses wasn’t the right guy for the job.  You Can read the portion here.  I love the God didn’t let Moses get out of his calling.

God doesn’t take our excuses.  We can come up with a million of them, but God sees who we are and who he wants us to be, and he is always pushing us to be who he wants us to be.

Moses was fine being a Midainite Shepherd, but the problem was God wanted him to be and Isrealite Prophet, the rescuer of his people.

I constantly have to remind myself that I’m not yet who God has called me to be. Like the apostle Paul, I press on to the goal. But it’s hard work.  It’s a lot easier to just be who I am today, and forget about it.  But God’s not cool with that.

What has God called you to?  What is the scary thing that you need to do? What is the hard decision you need to make?  God isn’t going to take your excuses, so stop trying to come up with more.

Hope

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.

Church is Boring

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.