Humility needed...

Here's a fascinating post from Willzhead. Read it slowly and let it impact you. And don't miss Will's conclusion...

"What ideas are we still holding on to because of social conditioning, culture or other factors? What things do we believe that are utterly inconsistent with the call of Christ on our lives?"

Read the post

The Trouble with Email...

Email is the best and worst thing that has happened to the church in the past few years. As a pastor I spend a considerable amount of time helping people communicate better with each other. And email, while it increases the amount of communication, doesn't always increase the quality of the communication. Here's my words of wisdom: be careful in regards to what you say, and in your interpretation of what you think they said. Wired news writes...

"According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time."

Read the rest here

Good Music...

I'm pretty picky when it comes to music. I find that so much of Christian music today is nothing but drivel and trite lyrics. I like a song that has some meaning. I want to be able to reflect on the lyrics and see multi-layered meanings...profound metaphors. And I want the music to fit the lyrics. For a long time I thought that the only person who could do that was my great friend Matt Auten. (If you aren't familiar with Matt's music you are missing out.) But I've found another one. Chris Rice. I started listening to Chris a couple of years ago and am continually amazed. His music moves me. God speaks to me through his lyrics. You should check him out.

He has several songs that I really love, but one of my favorites has to be Smell the Color 9. It took me a while to love this song, but I have grown to appreciate both the honesty and the fun of someone who is learning to trust a God that sometimes seems far away. Here's the lyric...

I would take “no” for an answer
Just to know I heard You speak
And I’m wonderin’ why I’ve never
Seen the signs they claim they see
Are the special revelations
Meant for everybody but me?
Maybe I don’t truly know You
Or maybe I just simply believe

‘Cause I can sniff, I can see
And I can count up pretty high
But these faculties aren’t getting me
Any closer to the sky
But my heart of faith keeps poundin’
So I know I’m doin’ fine
But sometimes finding You
Is just like trying to
Smell the color nine

Now I’ve never ‘felt the presence’
But I know You’re always near
And I’ve never ‘heard the calling’
But somehow You’ve led me right here
So I’m not looking for burning bushes
Or some divine graffiti to appear
I’m just beggin’ You for some wisdom
And I believe You’re puttin’ some here

‘Cause I can sniff, I can seek,
I can count up pretty high
But these faculties aren’t getting me
Any closer to the sky
But my heart of faith keeps poundin’
So I know I’m doin’ fine
But sometimes finding You
Is just like trying to
Smell the color nine

Smell the color nine?
But nine’s not a color
And even if it were you can’t smell a color
That’s my point exactly...

You need to hear it to do it justice. Do yourself a favor. Let God speak to you through Chris Rice's (and Matt Auten's) lyrics.

Shaping...

The thing I love about preaching is that it forces you to wrestle with the text of Scripture. You can't (or maybe I should say you shouldn't) just look for a message to share. The goal is to see what truth is there and try it on for size. I'm currently working on a sermon series that shows the parallels between the Jews journey out of slavery in Egypt to the "Promised Land" and our own spiritual journey from slavery to sin to freedom in Christ. I've always loved the metaphor of the wilderness journey as one that speaks to where we live right now. Our lives are often filled with struggle and pain, just as the Jews struggled wandering through the desert. We feel like God is hiding sometimes. They felt it too. But perhaps the most powerful idea that I've seen lately is that God uses all the circumstances of the wilderness to make the Jews the people that he wants them to be. He painfully strips away the parts of them that are not dependent on Him and helps them to see that He is their God. Here's what He says to Moses in Ex. 9:16 -

“But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

God uses our experiences, both wonderful and painful, to show us who He is, to show the world who He is, and to make us into the people we need to be. We miss this shaping process too often in our own lives. Our experiences are not just experiences, they are one of the ways that God shapes who we are. They are difficulties that drive us into His arms and remind us of our own powerlessness. They make us followers. It would be nice if life were easy. But easy lives make for weak people. Easy lives make for people who think they could probably handle this thing all on their own. In the wilderness, however, we realize the truth. We learn that if it wasn't for Jesus we would be hopelessly lost. He shapes us through the difficulty.

As in most things we really are like little children. We don't actually know what it is that we need. And God says, "Trust me. I love you. I would never put you through pain if it wasn't something that would help you to grow."

He's making us into a people who look like Jesus. At times that can be very painful. But the process is one that makes us whole.

Good words...

My brother Mike preached a great sermon this week. You can hear it online here.

Just for fun...

Here's a great link. There is much more to England than just the monarchy. See for yourself here.

Okay, I'm back, kind of...

I've been taking a bit of heat from a few people for not writing anything in over 2 months. Sorry. I know that the two of you who actually read this blog (thanks mom and dad) have missed me so I'll try to do better.

As an introspective person I've been trying to figure out why it is that I haven't posted much lately. I'm guessing that part of it was being in Mexico for a month. But I've also realized that posting my thoughts is an emotional task for me. And since we've returned home my job has taken about all of the emotion that I have to spare.

A friend of mine named Vic McMillan passed away just about 2 weeks after we got back to Hope. Vic served as a "father-type" figure to me for many years. When I first came to Hope (7 years ago), Vic and another man vacuumed the church every Thursday. They'd go for coffee at 10:00 am and I usually tagged along. As a new pastor I found our discussions to be affirming, challenging, and life-giving. The amazing thing about Vic was that he had no clue that God was using him in the lives of those around him. I once tried to tell him how much I appreciated all that he had given to me and was amazed that he found it hard to accept. In his mind he was just Vic.

In the past few years, however, Vic had not been happy with some of the changes in leadership structure at our church. He felt we were always looking for the new and improved and neglecting some of the tried and true methods. He and I had a few difficult conversations. We always made sure that we left those moments as brothers, but they were difficult times for both Vic and me; times of tears and pain. My love and respect for Vic made me extremely cautious of change, but the changes in our ministry context sometimes led me down a path that Vic wouldn't recommend. That's one of the greatest challenges of leadership, I believe. Leading even when it hurts those you love (and those who love you).

Needless to say our relationship was strained for the past year or two. But I knew Vic loved me. I knew that he prayed for me. I knew that He wanted nothing more than God to work in our church.

And watching him die was an emotional experience for me. I know he's in heaven. He has a way better pastor there than he had here. But I do miss him. And I wish we'd had more time.

I've written way more than I thought I would. Just trying to say that when I'm on an emotional roller-coaster with my job that I am not too motivated to share that with the world. But things are settling down a bit now. And maybe I'll be back around the blogosphere. Maybe what I need to do in those moments is to write. Who knows?

A Great Article...

...from Andy Crouch in the most recent Christianity Today. He says what I often feel. Especially after meeting with the members of our Regional Fellowship this week. I am tired, but I am hopeful. Here's most of the article...

"Not long ago I attended a strategy session for the culture war. Participants examined the decline of marriage, the cheapening and flattening of human sexuality into contextless pleasure, the exploitation and destruction of unborn human beings. Speeches were given. Brows were furrowed. Resolutions were made. War, I was reminded, does terrible things to the warriors.

In the room were veterans of a conflict that has simmered for decades, with few victories for the conservative side. All were earnestly committed to the cause. And most, to be blunt, were not having a very good time.

I support many, if not all, of their aims. There is a time for concerted action and forceful advocacy when a culture is beset, as ours indisputably is, with violence against the weak and the disintegration of our deepest promises. There was violence and disintegration in the day of Jesus, too. Jesus was hardly shy about confronting the patterns of sin in his culture - though he was consistently harder on the pious than he was on the pagans.

But everywhere Jesus went, life blossomed. The sick were healed, lepers were touched, daughters and sons were plucked from the mouth of the grave. Jesus left behind him a trail of leaps and laughter, reunited families, and terrific wine, as well as dumbfounded synagogue leaders, uneasy monarchs, and sleepless procurators. His witness against violence, amidst a culture in rebellion against the good, was neither withdrawal nor war. It was simply life: abundant, just, generous life. And, ultimately, a willingness to let the enemies of life do their worst, confident that even death could not extinguish the abundant life of God.

...I had to leave the meeting early. I took a train to a very different sort of meeting. In a row house on a West Philadelphia street, the leaders of a small church were gathering for a weekend of study and prayer.

Their pastors are a young couple, gifted and winsome and bright, who freely admit that they have little idea what they are doing, but who have a vision for a thriving church in the heart of the city. The church's neighborhood, a bit like our culture, is a bewildering mixture of gleaming affluence and grimy neglect.

In a cozy living room furnished with well-worn sofas, we munched on Kentucky Fried Chicken and quaffed Yellow Tail merlot. Candles were flickering. The leaders were laughing, talking, catching up on one another's stories: young mothers and grandmothers, thin graduate students and amply proportioned social workers, neighborhood lifers and newcomers, their skin many different hues, drawn to one another by the gospel.

I took a deep breath. I sank into the scruffy couch. The conversation died down, and we began to pray, soaking in a comforting, empowering silence. Then we talked about their church's abundance of ministries and shortage of finances, the dizzying array of needs to be found just by going a few blocks in any direction, and the biblical stories of God's people in exile, agents of peace in the midst of pagan cities.

I left that night feeling a tremendous sense of hope, the hope I have found over and over again in the most unlikely places, in war zones both figurative and literal where Christ's followers worship and serve. There is nothing that can break your heart like the church, but neither is there anything that can so restore your heart as being among a few people whose love is transparent, tenacious, and utterly not their own doing.

I do not know how, or whether, the culture war can be won. Human culture, like human nature, is too incorrigible, too intractable, for unambiguous victories. I suspect we have consigned our armies to a conflict that is unwinnable by definition, and by making disciples into warriors, we have risked robbing them of the hilarious high calling that is the new birthright of every Christian: to be an agent of improbable, impossible life in the midst of the world."

Read the whole article

Wonder and Fascination...

Today my 5 year old turned 6. She’s the baby of the family, the youngest of four beautiful girls. Maybe that’s why her birthday sets me to thinking. I watched her as she played at the public swimming pool tonight. Too young to be on her own; tethered to her dad by her lack of swimming ability and the pool rules, yet happy to be close by.

As she reminded me to watch her every move, my mind drifted back to this day six years ago. I can still remember her real birthday. I watched in awe as my wife did more than I could ever imagine in order to bring Bethany into the world. Even though she wasn’t our first, she was our first Bethany, and I held her with all the wonder and fascination of a first time papa, maybe even a bit more. I mean, after all, I knew what was coming in the days ahead.

I’d never been more wrong. By the next afternoon the doctors were showing concern. Bethany wasn’t eating. She began to throw up bile and so a tube was put into her nose to drain her stomach. It was the first of many tubes and wires to come. The medical personnel said many things, “We’re not sure what this is”, “This is very serious”, “Your daughter could die.” We moved from one hospital to another for more tests. Finally just past midnight we were sent to a third. They found a large cyst in her abdomen. But we could tell the doctors weren’t happy with that. It didn’t explain what was happening to her. The next morning we’d watch as they wheeled her from the intensive care nursery into surgery. The baby just down the ward from her who had been taken into surgery a few hours earlier didn’t come back. I wondered if Bethany would ever celebrate a birthday.

But obviously she did. Six, in fact. And I am hoping for many more. But the truth that really gripped me tonight was that I am in exactly the same spot that I was six years ago. I have no idea what tomorrow may bring. I trust that God does, and while I often argue with Him as to the way He chooses to do things, He hasn’t offered me the reins yet. So I watch her tonight, once again with all the wonder and fascination of a first time papa, this time a little more aware of the delicacy of this thing we call life.

And I like it that way. I don’t want to know what is coming tomorrow. Jesus said it pretty clearly, “Each day has enough worry of it’s own.” So my goal is to savor what I have. Six years have passed like six days. Soon she won’t be tethered to me by anything, other than her own wishes, and we know how fickle little girls can be. There will be times I want to hide her away, protect her from pain, keep her safe and naive and six years old. But that’s not my job. My job is to love her, serve her, lay down my life for her. To keep that wonder and fascination alive in me and maybe even pass a little on to her.

Happy Birthday Beth. See you tomorrow.

Trading Up...

Here's a great story...

"Kyle MacDonald had a red paper clip and a dream: Could he use the community power of the Internet to barter that paper clip for something better, and trade that thing for something else and so on and so on until he had a house?

After a cross-continental trading trek involving a fish-shaped pen, a town named Yahk and the Web's astonishing ability to bestow celebrity, MacDonald is getting close. He's up to one year's free rent on a house in Phoenix"

Read the rest...

Messy, Messy Churches

I've really appreciated much that Jim Martin has written, but this post on "Messy, Messy Churches" is one of the best things I've ever read. I have been blessed to live among a church that, while not perfect, is learning to be "grace-full". Take the time for a lesson in what the church should be...

"I've learned some things in the most unlikely places. I thank God for many years spent in school. I thank him for the opportunity to wrestle with important ideas. But--it was in Florence, Alabama almost 24 years ago that I began to wrestle with the grace of God."

Read More:

Too much faith for me...

I don't think that I have enough faith to believe this explanation...

"Rare conditions could have conspired to create hard-to-see ice on the Sea of Galilee that a person could have walked on back when Jesus is said to have walked on water, a scientist said today."

Read More

Service and Power...

Great quote from Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC.

"If you seek power before service, you'll neither get power, nor serve. If you seek to serve people more than to gain power, you will not only serve people, you will gain influence. That's very much the way Jesus did it."

That's worth reading again and again.

Thanks to Emergesque for the tip.

Read More (NY Times - free registration required)

Losing the "why" in the quest for "how"

Far too often in my discussions with other church and ministry "junkies" the topic of conversation focuses on the "how" of church instead of the "why". Brad Abare from Church Marketing Sucks writes a great blog about what really matters.

"Yet the questions remain: How much should I do? What should I avoid? What is cool? What works? Here's a simple approach I've learned...
If the electricity went out, and your walls fell down, and your biggest givers died, what would you have left? Would you have a community of people still seeking after the heart of God? Would you still worship even without a band? Would you still be able to learn about God even though you can't show a video or a PowerPoint slide? In other words, what you have when everything else goes away is what your church is really all about. I recall the words of Brennan Manning in his book The Importance of Being Foolish:

Consider how our churches have explored and exploited our need to replace the numbness in our lives with a passion for something, anything. We've created worship in which music is meant to stir the emotions but the soul is left unmoved, in which the words spoken are little more than manipulations of the heart. We have created cathartic experiences filled with weeping and dancing in the Spirit that leaves us with the sense that we have touched God but that fail to give us the sense that God has touched us. We run to churches where the message feels good and where we feel energized and uplifted--but never challenged or convicted. 'It is not surprising that spiritual experiences are mushrooming all over the place and have become highly sought-after commercial items,' writes Henri Nouwen. 'Many people flock to places and persons who promise intensive experiences of togetherness, cathartic emotions of exhilaration and sweetness, and liberating sensations of rapture and ecstasy. In our desperate need for fulfillment and our restless search for the experience of divine intimacy, we are all too prone to construct our own spiritual events."

We can hide behind great church brands and marketing campaigns. We can plow new grounds in getting the world to take notice of our creativity. We can even make a name for ourself in our communities. But what remains when the lights are out and the sound is unplugged? When the hurricane wipes it all way. When the earthquake swallows your best intentions. When God speaks, I'd rather be in a position to listen than scrambling for the microphone to make sure he's heard. Instead of getting so jazzed up about showing a Bruce Almighty film clip, I want to make sure I'm seeing God's real miracles every day."

Read More

Looking for a paid ministry position?

I hear the Sr. Pastor is not easy to work with, but the location is awesome...

Link

Numbering our days...

I love it when Mark Buchanan writes. This months CT magazine has an excerpt from his new book, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring the Sabbath (Word, 2005). As always, Mark is saying things that have some umph - things that need to be said. Here's a few excerpts.

"Teach us to number our days aright," Moses asked God, "that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12)...

...Pay attention to how God is afoot in the mystery of each moment, in its mad rush or maddening plod. He is present in both. But too often, we are so time-obsessed that we take no time to really notice. I have a pastor friend in Toronto who one day after a Sunday service received a note: "Pastor Peter, I would appreciate it if you prayed shorter prayers. Your pastoral prayer this past Sunday was 12 minutes, 43 seconds in length. Please strive for greater brevity."

The note was unsigned. The only thing we know about this man, woman, or child is that the writer is so bound by time—counting the minutes—that he has never learned to number his days. This person can tell time, but not discern seasons. Miss that, and you miss wisdom. For only those who number their days aright gain a wise heart. Only they become God's sages: those calm, unhurried people who live in each moment fully, savoring simple things, celebrating small epiphanies, unafraid of life's inevitable surprises and reverses, adaptive to change yet not chasing after it...

...Purposefulness requires that we pay attention, and paying attention means, almost by definition, that we make room for surprise. We become hospitable to interruption. To sustain it, we need theological touchstones for it—a conviction in our bones that God is Lord of our days and years, and that his purposes and his presence often come disguised as detours, messes, defeats.

I came to you naked, Jesus says. I came to you thirsty.

"When, Lord?" we ask, startled.

When he wore the disguise of an interruption.

Think a moment of all the events and encounters that have shaped you most deeply and lastingly. How many did you see coming? How many did you engineer, manufacture, chase down? And how many were interruptions? Children? You might have planned as meticulously as a NASA rocket launch, but did you have any idea, really, what it would be like, who this child in your arms really was, who you would become because of him or her?

The span between life as we intend it and life as we receive it is vast. Our true purpose is worked out in that gap. It is fashioned in the crucible of interruptions.

Read More

Some exciting news...

"Amazingly, more new churches are being established in the UK than Starbucks shops. While 481 UK Starbucks branches have started since 1998, more than 500 churches have been established during the same time, based on only 18 of the more than 400 denominations in the UK, which indicates that there may actually be more churches that have opened. "

Now that's encouraging...Hat tip to Jordon for the link.

Read More

I love passion...

...and I see it in Bono's speech to the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday.

Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives. Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone. I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill… I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff… maybe, maybe not… But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. “If you remove the yolk from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places” It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions. [You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.] ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.’ (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.

It's a speech worth reading. You can find the whole text here, or at Random Musing, or for you video junkies, the CNN video is here.

An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Canada

From my 9 year old daughter, Madison.

Dear Mr. Prime Minster

Hi my name is Madison Kuhn and I am 9 years old. I am writing this letter to you because my Dad is a diabetic and I don't think it's fair that he can't have choclate bars. So my request is that with your help we can make sugar free snickers. I would love to do something like this for my Dad. So if you have time my e-mail is pinkytoe@canadakuhns.com. Please help me.

Thank you
Madison Kuhn

As a Dad you just gotta love that!

A gift...

I've written here and here about struggles and the need to accept everything as a gift from God. I guess I shouldn't have opened my big mouth because often your own words come back to challenge you. A couple of weeks ago I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Let's just say that it was a bit of a shock. Is this a gift? Not one that I would have wanted.

Well, after some time to think it through I have to admit that it is. It's a gift that forces me to eat healthy foods, get some regular exercise, remember that the flesh is weak, and increases my longing for heaven. The more I think about these ideas the more I am sure that they are foundational to life as a believer in Christ. Everything God brings our way is done in love and for our benefit. It may not always appear that way, but that's why faith has to come in to play. Paul reminds us of this in Romans 8:28:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (emphasis mine)

One of the keys to life is facing it with the realization that everything that comes to me today is a gift from God. Now, if living it was just as easy as writing it.