Proactive Christianity

I've stumbled across several articles lately which strike a chord. People are beginning to realize how we in the church need to do more than just say what we're not - we need a positive vision about who we are, and who the church is, and how we are supposed to make a difference in the world.

I think part of the solution lies in rediscovering what it means to be created in the image of God.

In A New Kind of Hipster (HT: JT) Brett McCracken writes:

Something started happening as the '90s lunged forward to the 21st century—Christians started recognizing that being in a “semi-cool Christian subculture” was not really all that cool at all. It became increasingly obvious that anything “new” that pop-Christianity came up with was at least three years after its secular counterpart. ...

The new generation of “cool” Christians recognize that copycat subculture is a backward step for the Church, but unfortunately the alternative requires a creative trailblazing for which most are far too tepid. Thus, we’ve settled for a reactionary relevance—a state of “cool” that is less about forging ahead with the new than distancing ourselves from the old. We know we do not want to be the stodgy, bigoted, bad-taste Christians from the pages of Left Behind. We are certain we do not want to propagate Christianity through catch phrases and kitsch, and we are dead set against preaching a white, middle-class Gospel to the red-state choir. ... We know exactly what the relevant new Christianity must not be—boring, whitewashed, schmaltzy—but we feign to understand just what we should be instead.

The problem with the Christian hipster phenomenon is not as superficial as the clothes we wear, the music we download or the artistic movies we see, nor is it that we exist largely as a reaction against something else. No. The problem is that our identity as people of Christ is still skin-deep. That our image and thinking as progressives does not make up for the fact that we still do not think about things as deeply as we should. The Christian hipster pretends to be more thoughtful or intellectual than the Podunk fundamentalist, but are we really? We accept secular art and (gasp!) sometimes vote for a liberal candidate, but do we really think harder because we are “hip"?

Did you catch that 'identity' language in the last paragraph? Our knowledge of who we are as redeemed community of Christ is only skin deep - we haven't yet grasped the significance of what it means to be re-created in the image of God.

Drew Goodmanson puts it like this (HT: SM):

To make a Kingdom-impact on your local community and the world-at-large, you must move from Deconstruction to Kingdom Building. ...

If you are an emerging church, what is your identity? As I attend ‘postmodern’ or churches that would say they are ‘emerging’ they usually can tell me what they are not. We don’t have central leadership, we don’t sing old-school hymns, we don’t have traditional worship, we don’t…[fill in the blank]. In the long run, I don’t think you can rally too many people to this cause and anti-identity.

There's that identity language again!

As Christian's it's certainly important to know what we are not, what we are no longer. But we are more than simply negation - we really are new creation, we have an identity, and it's high time we start growing up into the people we are meant to be. It's not enough to react against what is wrong in the church - we need to be proactive in bringing about what is right.

But before we can understand how to act, we need to understand who we are supposed to be acting like. We need a vision of what it means to be a new creation Christian.

The way that happens is by thinking deeply on Christ (the epitome of God's image) and then acting boldly, sacrificially for the sake of our neighbors (rather than our own comfort or self-interest). We do this not to gain the world's approval, but out of the conviction that we already have the only approval that really matters.

We also need to think deeply about ourselves - taking a good hard look and seeing ourselves for what we are. An honest appraisal will acknowledge two things: how frequently we fall short, but how great is God's grace. As Jack Miller used to say, "Cheer up, you're worse than you could possibly imagine. But God's grace is better than you could hope or dream". In other words, we need to find ourselves in the gospel, and find the gospel in ourselves - changing, rearranging, inspiring, exhorting.

Only when we grasp the glory of Jesus and comprehend his love for his church, only when we see our own need for the gospel as a means for daily living, only when we ourselves begin to comprehend what it means to be sons of the great King, created in his image - when these things finally start to take root in our own personal lives, only then will they flow naturally through our churches and into our communities.

practice what you believe

i rolled out of bed early this morning...5:30...and went to a men's prayer meeting at my church. it was an extremely encouraging and intense hour from 6am to 7am, as it is every week, and as i listened to other men (most of them at least 10 years older than me) confess their lack of a prayerful heart and life I realized something...

most of us don't practice what we believe.

what i mean by that, and i am by far the most guilty of this, is that we don't live our lives in harmony with what we believe. prayer is probably one of the most glaring areas of this in my life. i know that prayer is powerful and essential for close fellowship with god...but i don't pray. do you know what this tells me? that i don't really believe what i say i believe. i know these things about prayer, but i don't believe them.

in my experience, people who really believe something also live it out. jesus really believed in the necessity of prayer and the gospels constantly portray how busy this man from nazareth was. yet in the midst of his busyness, jesus took time to pray. the gospels show us a man who was intimately connected to the father by prayer. jesus practiced what he believed.

i too feel so busy all the time and i am busy doing work that i believe is beneficial to god's kingdom. but i am often so caught up in doing the lord's work that i'm not caught up in the lord. how busy is your life? there are so many areas of our lives other than prayer that we could apply this truth to. take time out today to confess to jesus those areas of your life where you don't truly believe and ask him to help you practice what you believe!

My Significance

Last night, I translated these words from Psalm 8:

When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars which you have put in place,
What is man, that you remember him?
The son of man, that you attend to him?

And it struck me - what an amazing privilege to actually be able to read this in the original, to be able to understand something written over 2500 years ago. But how much more significant, to hear the psalmist's words and realize they apply to me today - who am I, Christian Cryder, that God actually cares for me?

Here I am, a mere speck of dust in the midst of a seemingly infinite cosmos - I will come and go in a few years time without so much as a ripple in the big picture of things. I epitomize insignificance, and yet God takes a personal interest in me. He doesn't value me because I am significant in and of myself; his loving attention makes me significant in spite of myself.

The Psalms are filled with this kind of language, and I find it tremendously encouraging. We are personal beings, who serve a personal God, who encourages us to look at the majesty of creation and ask ourselves what that says about us.

Battlin' Bobby Martin

This is simply amazing - a high school senior who plays varsity football in Dayton Ohio, even though he was born without legs and cannot wear prosthetics because he has no hips. At 3 feet tall, 112 pounds, he plays on punt teams, and as backup nose guard. Sound outmatched? The guy benches 215, and his heart is worth twice that.
This past week, however, Bobby Martin ran into a snag - not with his disability, but with the refs. Officials barred him from playing in the second half because of a rules violation. The problem? "Number 99 has no shoes, knee pads, or thigh pads." Wow.

You can read about it here and here, and there's a nice photo spread over at Sports Illustrated.

The best quote comes from the young man himself, "I love the reaction people have when I make a tackle, like it’s impossible for me do it. I prove them wrong."

Kudos to Bobby for having the guts to actually get out there and do this, and to his parents and coaches for allowing him the opportunity.

And now for a question: What kind of 'quality of life' do you think Bobby Martin has? He seems pretty enthusiastic, determined, and thankful right where he is - all he wants is a chance to compete. Yet how many of us would have considered aborting a fetus like Bobby, precisely on the grounds that it wouldn't be fair to him, that he wouldn't have any 'quality of life'.

Where would Bobby be, if we let others make his decisions for him?

Priceless

These past few days have been exhausting, and to make matters worse I've been having trouble sleeping. Last night I got home at 10:30, long after my kids were in bed, to find this note from my 10 year old daughter sitting on my desk:

Dear Dad,

I know that school and work are difficult. I want you to know that I pray for you all the time. Maybe every morning we could pray at about 7:00. Please tell me if you want to. I would love to pray with you. We all love you so much. Love in Christ always...

Love,
Rebekah

I can't tell you how much this means to me - to see your children loving you when life is hard, to see them loving Christ, to see them sharing in your struggles, to see their faith be strong when yours is weak... that is truly overwhelming. We prayed together this morning, Rebekah and I, and it was priceless.

Thank you Jesus for the way you minister through those who are weak, small, and insignificant in the eyes of the world. May you continue to sustain us in this great adventure...

Postmodern Sex & The Image of God

It's official: over half of all American teens age 15-19 have had oral sex. If you only look at 18-19 year olds, the numbers go up to 70%. Girls are just as involved as boys. Over 10% of women age 15-44 have had some sort of sexual experience with another female. It seems that sex outside of marriage has finally gone mainstream.

These latest findings have social experts in a tizzy – given the serious health risks associated with brazen promiscuity, most are focusing on the obvious: How are we going to control these trends? UC professor Claire Brindis suggests it may be a losing battle: "At 50 percent, we're talking about a major social norm. It's part of kids' lives."

Perhaps we ought to be more interested in what motivates such behavior. I'd like to explore the intersection between our postmodern sexual ethics and the biblical notion that humanity is created imago-dei, in the image of God. What does our approach to sex reveal about our core values and beliefs? What does it say about how we see ourselves? Others? God?

First, (and this may seem obvious), we seem to have a fixation on sex. This shouldn't surprise us, because God designed us for relationship – God as trinity is fundamentally interpersonal, relational; mankind as imago-dei is too (albeit in a derivative sense). Scripture tells us that one of the deepest expressions of a human-to-human relationship occurs in the one-fleshness of a sexual encounter. We fixate on sex because the image of God in us craves deep relationships; we long for fulfillment, and we cannot find it in ourselves alone. This is why teens aren't content with simply masturbating: it's just not fulfilling; we recognize that sex was meant to be interpersonal.

Second, (and this may not be so obvious), our sexual practices are seriously broken. Even the secularists recognize this, or they wouldn't be concerned about the current sexual trends. We desire sex without consequences (hence the emphasis on oral sex, because it is seen as less risky, less "official"). We desire sex without commitment (hence the casual hookups, multiple partners). In short, we desire consumer sex – sex that is cheap, readily available, always on, whenever I want it, with whomever I want it, in whatever way that I want it. I want sex that is all about me.

Once again, this shouldn't surprise us. Scripture teaches that man is fallen, we are bent; instead of being willing to deny ourselves so that we might serve God and others, we repeatedly put our own interests first. We see this manifested clearly in the way we approach sex. We may try to dress it up with words like "responsible" and "consensual", but at the end of the day our sexual ethics are fundamentally self-serving.

This leads to a third point, our sex is not very satisying. For all its quantity and variety, it's quality seems to be sorely lacking. A quick look in your spam folder or the sexuality section at Barnes & Noble illustrates the point: there is a huge industry aimed at selling us products which promise to improve our equipment or our technique. Why? Because there is a huge market. Yet in spite of all the hype, we find that sexual experimentation is exploding, sexual fidelity is evaporating, sexual satisfaction is declining, and broken sexual relationships are more or less the norm (as evidenced by divorce rates, total number of sexual partners, etc). Why? Because it isn't working.

The bottom line is that no matter how much sex we get, we never actually get what we really desire – we still haven't found what we're looking for. That's why there is a sexual progression – both culturally and personally – the sex we are getting now isn't delivering the goods any better than the sex we got yesterday, so we push the envelope, looking for something more. Once again, this shouldn't surprise us: God has so constituted his image within us that we can only find our fulfillment by being reconciled to him.

Unfortunately, when it comes to sexual dysfunction, Christians don't seem to fare much better than unbelievers. Perhaps this stems from an implicit adoption of secular thinking about both sex and the image of God in man – sow their seeds, reap their fruit. The fact that we Christians are such ready reflections of our culture and such poor reflections of Christ (the ultimate manifestation of God's image in man) undoubtedly says more about us than it does about him.

At the same time, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that many Christians do exemplify an imago-dei that really is being changed and renewed; it's still far from perfect in most of us, but Christ does make a difference, we do make progress. The challenge for us is to seek to apply this renewal to all areas of our lives, even in our sexuality. As Christians who are being conformed to the image of Christ, the image of God in us should be transforming our sexual relationships into something truly exemplary.

If we're looking for better sex, we need to start by rennovating our imago-dei.

RLP Gets Saved

Looks like Real Live Preacher (RLP) just got Saved (yes, that movie with McCauley Caulkin that lampoons contemporary American Christianity).

RLP's comments are well worth reading - basically he says, "yeah, at one time or other I've seen most of what that movie paints as Christian experience... so why on earth am I still a Christian?" Good question. Here's part of his answer...

These are the sort of things that used to make me fantasize about leaving Christianity and embracing some other, “less crazy” worldview. Perhaps some form of scientific empiricism would fit the bill, wherein I wouldn’t claim absolute belief about anything without solid and repeatable evidence that can be detected with one of the five senses.

I mean, with empiricism you know you’ll miss some truth simply because humanity has not experienced it yet, and you know you'll have to fudge a bit when it comes to the subject of love, but at least you know where you stand.

Christianity, on the other hand, is all over the map. One minute you’re watching the Discovery Channel and considering the evidence for global warming, and the next minute you’re standing before a group of people and telling them that Jesus died for their sins and rose again on the third day.

Who can make sense of a claim like that?

And yet, I have not left Christianity for a number of personal, emotional, and relational reasons that I have a hard time sorting out myself, much less explaining to others...

...I CAN tell you something that happened to Jeanene and I the morning after we watched “Saved.” It was nothing miraculous or even out of the ordinary, but it meant a lot to us...

Want to know the rest of the story? Well click on over to read it in full. His comments certainly resonate with me.

Why Plant A Church in Missoula, MT?

Someone recently left these comments on our What the Church is All About post:

I enjoyed looking through your site... and was particularly interested in seeing you were wanting to move to Missoula, MT... I grew up in MT and spent many years in Missoula...

However, I have to say, your post "what the church is all about" got a rise out of me! Overall, I agree with everything you had to say...

Mission exists because worship doesn't...
Yahweh is a missional god...
True worship must include mission...

And I liked the two convictions you drew from the above... planting churches to the unchurched (I read unreached) and you plant churches that do the same...

But you stated that you were going to answer what turns out to be an important question to me: why plant a church in Missoula, MT?

I was a part of a bible believing, spirit lead, missions minded church in Missoula (Oh.... right, wrong denomination probably...) A church that actually had planted another church in the "poorest" part of town because there was no church there (but again, probably the wrong denomination...)

I know, I'm just some fake christian who probably smokes and drinks to much and just doesn't "get it"...

But let me just say this, for those who can hear... there are places in the world where there is currently NO CHURCH... why don't you grow some and actually have the where with all to plant a church there?

You'll even have the market on the right denomination...

I know this comes off badly, I don't mean to be a jerk... but why don't you just cut the bull and say it as it is... you want to move to MT and there isn't any denomination you currently attend there...

That's a very good question (which is why we placed it in it's own post back on the front page) - it voices a common concern that many feel about church planting (it also seems to illustrate the curious fact that a church plant is often more threatening to other Christians than it is to unbelievers).

So how would you respond? How did we? Click on over to the original post to see our comments and leave your own...

Stunned, Amazed, Embarrassed

Wow. I am stunned, amazed, and slightly embarrassed to admit this: I have just stumbled across the first piece of rap music that I actually like (as in, "I'd consider buying the album based on what I just heard"). It's called Take The Long Way (snippet 1 | snippet 2) by Po' Girl, and it reminds me of a cross between americana, bluegrass, jazz, and rap. Wow. I am mesmerized...

Why am I writing about this? Because as much as I disdain rap, I figure I better own up to it when I find something I'm actually impressed by. Kudos to Zoe Montana over at RadioIO Acoustic for dishing up that one. I feel like my view of the universe has just subtly yet significantly shifted...

(Update: so how much did this song grab me? Enough that I did just something I've never, ever, done before - I signed up for iTunes and bought my very own copy of the track for .99 cents... cool!)

Martin Luther & Diet Coke

Here's why I like Real Live Preacher - he's a great writer, and he has a great creative knack for putting his finger right where it hurts. Here he talks about Martin Luther & Diet Coke...

I have a recurring daydream that comes to me quite often. I do not understand the significance of it, and if you think you do, I would prefer you keep your thoughts to yourself. I don’t really want to know.

This daydream comes mostly when I should be working on a sermon or when I’m in an elevator. In the dream I am showing the 16th century reformer, Martin Luther, the modern world. How he arrived in our century is not a part of my daydream. Nor is there any explanation for why he speaks modern English.

Martin Luther is absolutely astounded by Diet Coke, elevators, and canned soup. And he says that our world smells funny.

I wince as I look at his monk’s robe, which certainly has not been washed in this or perhaps any other century. “You’re a bit ripe yourself, Marty. But what’s an odor or two among brothers in Christ, eh?”

“Well put,” he says with a polite nod.

He is startled by the fizzy pop when I open an ice cold Diet Coke. He lifts the can to his ancient lips, and his eyes open wide. Then he bends forward at the waist, spraying foamy suds all over the floor.

“What in the unholy name of Zwingli is this? It burns like a brew straight from the devil’s arse!”

“Oh, sorry. That’s called carbonation. They have this way of putting bubbles in some of the things we drink. I don’t know why we like it, but we do. I guess it’s a bit of a shock if you’re not used to it.”

He squints at the can, sounding out the letters. “'Diet of Coke.' I am not familiar with this particular council. Is there to be a disputation? Will I be asked to defend myself? You understand I’m a bit nervous after the incident at Worms.”

“Oh yeah, the Diet of Worms. That’s that council meeting where you were excommunicated, right?”

His eyes broke away from mine, and he looked around the room, then back at me. He nodded hesitantly.

“Don’t worry man, Diet Coke is a whole other thing.”

...

“So…how much longer will you be here?”

“Not much longer. Just a few more minutes and I have to go back.”

“Oh,” I say, sadly. “Okay, how about this? We each get to ask the other two questions about life in his time. I go first.”

Martin Luther nods in agreement.

This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I don’t want to blow it. But suddenly I can’t think of anything to say. And time is running out. I open my mouth and say the first thing that comes to mind...

Want to read the rest? Of course you do! Click on over to the full post...

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

In recent comments on the post Mercy Killing in New Orleans, we've been dancing around the question of: "Why would God allow suffering?" A reader named Charlotte wisely pointed us in the direction of Tim Keller's comments after the Sept 11 attacks:

9. All this does not make me believe more in God, but less. Isn't all this unjust suffering evidence against the existence of God?

The president of American Atheist, the country's oldest organization for nonbelievers in God, said to reporters, "If that [September 11] wasn't a wake up call to a religious nation, I don't know what is. That said to me, 'There is no God.' Where was he, on a coffee break?" ("Atheists Decry Post-Attack Focus on God", Los Angeles Times, October 12, 2001)

There are two ways to answer this.

The skeptic says: "If there is a God, he would have stopped such an evil thing from happening." But how does the skeptic know that this event was evil? All of evolution is based on the survival of the fittest. Violence of the stronger and more adaptive organisms over the weaker and less adaptive is utterly natural in this world. Why is it wrong, then, when humans do what the rest of nature is doing? How could you know if our part of the natural world was unnatural or bad?

"If God does not exist...there is no longer any possibility of an a priori good existing. It is nowhere written that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now on the plane where there are only human beings. Doestoevksy once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted'... If God does not exist, we have neither behind us nor before us a luminous realm of values, nor any means of justification of any behavior whatever. (Jean-Paul Sartre "Existentialism and Humanism")

So evil and suffering are major problems for people who believe in God, but they are actually even bigger problems for people who don't believe in God. If there is no God, what is your basis for being outraged at violence and oppression? How can you insist that something utterly natural to this world is somehow unnatural? And if you are sure that the World Trade Center is an evil, doesn't that comprise some evidence for the existence of God?

But there is a second way to respond to the question: "why would a good and powerful God allow evil and suffering?" There is a hidden train of logic deep in this protest. I think it goes like this:

"1. God would have to have a good reason for allowing evil and suffering to keep going on.

2. I can't think or perceive of any good reason.

3. Therefore, there cannot be any."

Of course, when you lay it out like that you can see how fallacious this reasoning is. If you have a God infinite and great enough to be mad at for not preventing evil and suffering, you have to (at the same time) have a God infinite and great enough to have reasons for allowing evil and suffering that we can't discern. (You can't have it both ways).

But how can we know if he has a good reason? [Christ] the god-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity ostensibly abandoned its traditional privilege, lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death. Thus is explained the 'Lama sabachthani' and the frightful doubt of Christ in agony -- (Albert Camus, Essais)

Camus is saying that though we cannot discern the reasons that God might have for allowing evil, we have a remarkable assurance that he does have them. He himself has suffered infinitely with us, for us, on the cross. Surely this proves he is not indifferent to our suffering.

Excellent answer to an excellent question. Keller is great in just about everything he writes. Click here to read the whole thing...

Thanks again to Charlotte for this pointer!

Taking the Church to the World

Interesting approach of taking the church to the world in Greenwich Village. I like it, and could see us doing something similar in Missoula, MT...

Mercy Killing in New Orleans?

Yesterday Heath gave me a little grief for posting something flippant about the paranormal (which apparently noone understood) rather than dealing with the serious down in New Orleans - "How come you haven't written about why God would cause such a thing?"

Good question. The short answer is - it takes time to write something thoughtful, and I haven't had much of either recently (time or thoughts). The longer answer is - does anyone actually care? I haven't run into too many people actually wringing their hands on this one, but maybe that's just me not getting out enough.

At any rate, here's something for Heath, and hopefully it will get all our attention: according to this article in the UK, doctors in New Orleans actually killed patients rather than evacuate them:

Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals... With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

Couple of thoughts. First, I don't actually know if it's true (can anyone confirm?). Second, I'm very curious to hear what other people think when they read this - does it really bother you? or does it hardly give you pause? Is this an instance of compassion? Or does it go beyond the pale? How does the Bible speak to something like this?

I'd encourage you to read the article for yourself, and then share your thoughts (Heath - you better pipe up here!). I'll post my own ideas a little later, but I want to reflect a bit more before I tip my hand. Until then, the ball's in your court - mercy killing or murder? You tell me...

(Hat tip: James)

the beautiful letdown

it was a beautiful let down
when i crashed and burned
when i found myself alone unknown and hurt
it was a beautiful let down
the day i knew
that all the riches this world had to offer me
would never do

in a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt
i was trying so hard to fit in, fit in,
until i found out
i don't belong here
i don't belong here
i will carry your cross and your song
but i don't belong

have you found that out yet? are you still pursuing the riches this world has to offer? let me know how that works out for you. it's time to see life differently. time to see it for what it really is.

temporary.

we're made for something else. just think of love. love is so out-of-this world. think of a good movie with a great ending that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. but that ending isn't reality. however, if you are honest, after seeing such a movie you have a deep longing to see that ending penetrate reality. i'm here to tell you that the happy ending has penetrated reality! in us who are sojourners on our way to something more.

we are a beautiful let down,
painfully uncool,
the church of the dropouts
and losers and sinners and failures and the fools
oh what a beautiful let down
all resolved in the womb
and join us he wants you too

i don't belong here
i don't belong here
i don't belong here
feels like i don't belong here*

*a beautiful letdown, by switchfoot (2004). this is a great song. have a listen.

Proof of the Paranormal?

Wow, this is extremely interesting. One of my church planter friends in Greeley, CO just tipped me off to something suspiciously paranormal, captured on film:

Christian, I recently stumbled across an interesting video snippet that may help stimulate people's thinking about whether there is something else "out there"

This is a car advert that never made it out of production - As the film crew was shooting, several of them noticed something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist. They thought they were imagining things but it showed up on tape as well.

The ad was never put on TV because the unexplained ghostly phenomenon frightened the production team out of their wits. Watch it closely and about halfway through you will see the white mist crossing in front of the car then following it along the road... Spooky!

If you turn the sound up loud enough, you may be able to hear the camera crews responses in the background.

Click here to see for yourself...

So what do you think? Is this proof of the paranormal? Or just further evidence of how people's minds make something out of nothing?

Power Blog Surfing

People who discover the world of blogging often find themselves overwhelmed after a month or two: "How on earth do you keep track of all those blogs?" The answer, of course, is Bloglines.

Bloglines is a really slick web-based interface that allows you to subscribe to as many blogs as you want, organize them into folders, etc. When you want to catch up on your blog reading, you simply go to bloglines and it will show you what's new. This makes it easy to quickly skim large numbers of blogs in very little time. Viola! You've entered the world of power blog surfing!

If you'd like to see what bloglines looks like, you can take a look at the blogs I regularly read. If you'd like to set this up for yourselves, Orangejack has a nice link to walk you through the process.

hear life differently

we have begun a new blog to compliment this one. it's called hear life differently (hld)

it's a site that will be devoted to the media that we produce. sermons, video clips, and whatever else we can get on some sort of media. basically to avoid cluttering up sld with all of that.

check it out when you get the chance. we are podcasting the site in itunes as well if you are in to that sort of thing. let me know what you think. i could especially use some feedback about how to do this better from those of you who are a bit more savvy on the media side of things.

lots of change

sorry it has been so long since you've heard from me. i know i don't need to apologize because you all understand what we've been going through, but in all honesty i have wanted to post. i've had blogs on the mind for several weeks and it is so frustrating to not have the time to post them. we've been doing a lot of traveling and overall have just been busy. anyway, thanks for your many prayers and thoughts for my family during this tough time in life. keep praying as each day presents a new challenge.

it's truly amazing how much change can happen in one year. life is sometimes a lot like the coast we recently visited in nova scotia where 800 million gallons of water per second move across this point when the tide comes and goes. i found out that this is more water moving in one second than every river in the world combined flowing in one second. it was an amazing sight. it was pretty amazing to see how much the coast changed though with the tide. each day had different beauty depending on what time you were there.

that's a lot like what our year has been like. in december we found out that we were going to grow from a family of 3 to a family of 4. you can imagine our excitement and joy as we began to think about a new life in our home and a sibling for our then 1 year old son. then in february finding out that our new child would not survive. joshua ryan was born silently on july 21.

in addition our family has been preparing to become church planters and in 9 months we will be moving from philadelphia to montana. i have to finish 2 extremely busy semesters of seminary, complete a lot of internship requirements and compile all of my ministry experience into a novel by december. as if that isn't enough, i have to prepare for (in addition to my seminary exams) and take 5 2-hour exams in march in order to fulfill the requirements for ordination in april.

whoa! lots of change and stuff to get done. (by the way, christian also is in the same boat with me--pray for his family and mine as we try to accomplish all of this). this may sound like a complaint about the process to becoming church planters. but the reality is that i am excited about the upcoming year because i know i am going to need to depend on god. i can't possibly accomplish all of these things on my own. but i'm right where i want to be. struggling, desperate, in need of much grace and highly dependent on my father's embrace.

it doesn't matter if we end up planting the most successful church the world has ever seen. it doesn't matter if we fall on our faces and crawl home with our tails between our legs as complete failures in a couple of years. we are son's of the father and as jesus said, (italics are my paraphrase) do not rejoice in your ministry, "but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." (Luke 10.20)

what are you rejoicing in today. as for me...i'm just thankful to be a member of the kingdom. i really have no right to even have that.