I'm away from the blog right now...

I'll be here until September 6th... And odds are I won't be online. That sounds pretty good to me right now...

My job as a pastor

According to Eugene Peterson (who I agree with fully):

"The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades."

Read the rest of the quote here.

The Journey

A couple of years ago when I started this blog I called it "The Journey" because that has been for me the most meaningful metaphor for my own spiritual life. Just today I spent time reading a Newsweek article about Billy Graham called Pilgrim's Progress and I was reminded once again that we need to allow God to shape us for the whole journey. We never arrive, but are in a constant state of "arriving" as we allow the Holy Spirit to illumine the dark recesses of our hearts and call us to transformation. As a young man I thought that I "got" this Christianity thing. I knew the Bible, the answers, and anything else that you could imagine. I was quick to offer solutions. Christianity/Faith was a system to be mastered. The goal was to be spiritually mature and then to help others do the same. But as I have actually matured, I've realized that I often thought I knew a lot more than I actually knew. (My sister-in-law writes a perceptive blog entry on this idea here) I realize that it sounds like a cliche, but the more I learn the more I realize how little I know. I guess that's why I felt in good company today when I read this quote from Billy Graham:

"Much of my life has been a pilgrimage—constantly learning, changing, growing and maturing. I have come to see in deeper ways some of the implications of my faith and message, not the least of which is in the area of human rights and racial and ethnic understanding."

He talks about learning humility. That's a lesson that seems to be hitting me in the face all the time. I think one of the best explanations of "the journey" is something that I read by Brian McLaren in his book Finding Faith. He talks of four stages of spiritual belief. Daniel Clendinin writes about them saying...

In his book Finding Faith, McLaren suggests four stages of faith development, not as a linear movement from one to the other, but as an "ascending and widening spiral"— simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and finally humility.

When we first come to Christ we often enter into a stage of simplicity. Everything is simple. God loves me, Jesus died for my sins, and now I'm on my way to heaven. There is great confidence in these truths, as there should be. Everything is black and white and simple. The big question for the practice of our faith in life is simply. "Is this right or wrong?" But eventually, as we begin to weave following Jesus into everyday life we enter into "complexity". There are some questions that aren't so cut and dried. Sin seems to have complicated this thing that we call life and we realize that maybe our faith is a system that needs to be figured out. We look for pragmatic answers in Jesus in order to make life work. As long as we work the plan it will all work out okay. That seems to be okay for a while, but the Jesus moves us on into a place where we are forced to be honest that there many things about Him, His teachings, and how they relate to the world that we live in that we just don't understand. Welcome to "perplexity". It is often triggered by meeting someone who has no interest in Jesus and Christianity, but is living a moral life, filled with peace and fulfillment. At times this individual may be bearing more "fruit of the Spirit" than you are. All of the sudden you are confronted with the fact that maybe what you believe is only something that helps you to cope. In perplexity you often become so overwhelmed with trying to reconcile faith in Jesus and life in the world that you come close to the point of abandoning the entire process. And that's okay. Perplexity is were you grow. It's where your spiritual roots dig deep into the soil that is Jesus. It's a vital part of moving you onto "humility". Humility is the place where you acknowledge that Jesus is to big for you to completely grasp, but He is so true that you can completely trust. McLaren reminds us that this isn't a one time process and that it may be repeated several times in different areas of our lives.

I've seen it happen in mine. I wrote about it here, here, and here. And it looks as if this is what has happened in Billy Graham.

Following Jesus is a journey. And we have a more than capable guide. The important thing is that we keep following. Even if you haven't committed your life to Jesus yet, keep seeking. Humble patience is what is needed to keep moving in the right direction.

A little child shall lead them...

My sister-in-law Cyndi writes about something that my kids were a part of here.

The joy they found in doing this was an inspiration to me...and I hope will be to you as well.

Most Creative Music Video Ever...

No fancy camera angles, no pyrotechnics, no computer graphics, just good old fashioned creative entertainment in the form of a music video here. (Real Player required)

P.S. The band is called OK Go. Don't know anything about them, but their site is here.

Either/Or or Both/And

I've been reading alot by Parker J. Palmer lately. In his book The Courage to Teach he quotes Niels Bohr saying something that has challenged my thinking.

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

Now maybe that doesn't strike you like it does me, but let me tell you why I think that this is such an important idea. Far too often in our hurry to defend the Christian faith we kill the mystery that is God. The reality is that God is bigger than us (and we really should be thankful for that - I wrote about that here) and that often two aspects of His nature may seem to us to be opposites, at times even contradictory. In our struggle to eliminate the tension between two profound truths we often deny things that are visibly true.

These discussions have been seen lately regarding the natural disasters we have been confronted with in the world. The question always seems to surface - "Did God cause these hurricanes/ earthquakes?" Automatically we jump to God's defense. We assume that if He is a loving God that these types of things must come from some other source. And maybe they do. But I'm just not sure that we can assume that everything that we think is good comes from God and everything that we think is bad doesn't. One of the things that I'm "re-learning" recently is that we have to be skeptical of our own assumptions. I talked a bit about this in my sermon yesterday - one of my "subpoints" was that we need to learn to question our questions and stop accepting our assumptions as infallible.

Maybe when something difficult or "bad" happens in our life our first reaction needs to move from questioning where it came from to seeking how God wants to use it to make me who He is calling me to be. Maybe it's an opportunity to show forgiveness to someone else. Maybe it's an event that allows you to visibly show the compassion of Jesus. Maybe we need to begin to consider the possibility that God can transform even the most horrible of events into something beautiful and amazing. Maybe somehow He encounters the evil, soaks it up and transforms it into good. Seems like I remember something about an innocent man and a cross...

The more I understand the more I am aware that I really understand very little. But that's okay. The realization puts me in a place where I am slow to speak for God but hungry to listen to God. And maybe that's where He wants me to be anyway...

You have to read this book

I love books. I read a lot of them, sometimes up to two a week. And I recommend books. I think they are very important to stretching our thinking, exposing us to ideas that we need to be shaped into the person that God is making us to be.

And while I always recommend books, I usually do it with a disclaimer. I usually tell people that books are much like shoes. They are made to fit. At times in your life you may pick up an excellent and worthy book, but for some reason it just doesn't fit you at that time. I always tell people not to stress about that or feel bad that I loved a book and they didn't. Reading is often a matter of timing.

But today I'm throwing all of that into the wind. I just finished a book that you have to read. It's called Same Kind of Different as Me, and you have to read it...as soon as possible. I'm not kidding. This is an amazing book.

Amazon says this about it...

A dangerous, homeless drifter who grew up picking cotton in virtual slavery.

An upscale art dealer accustomed to the world of Armani and Chanel.

A gutsy woman with a stubborn dream.

A story so incredible no novelist would dare dream it.

It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana . . . and an East Texas honky-tonk . . . and, without a doubt, in the heart of God. It unfolds in a Hollywood hacienda . . . an upscale New York gallery . . . a downtown dumpster . . . a Texas ranch.

Gritty with pain and betrayal and brutality, this true story also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love.

And I say this...

This book is a beautiful picture of the Kingdom of God as it moves into the hearts and lives of several individuals, setting them free, making them more like Christ, taking them places they never thought they would go, and proclaiming a powerful, real, and captivating Jesus to a world who needs to know Him so desperately.

You need to read this book.

Three quotes that bring some perspective...

The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine — which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.
- Wendell Berry

If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A sermon illustration from my office manager

I found this story on my desk today - a gift from the office manager at our church. She prefaced it by writing, "This is very moving, and would make a great sermon illustration."

In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from college. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air.

The elephant seemed distressed so Mbembe approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot, and found a large thorn embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mbembe worked out the thorn with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down his foot.

The elephant turned to face the man and with a rather stern look on its face, stared at him. For several tense moments Mbembe stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned and walked away.

Mbembe never forgot that elephant or the events of that day. Twenty years later he was walking through a zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing.

The large bull elephant stared at Mbembe and lifted its front foot off the ground then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mbembe couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mbembe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. Suddenly the elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of the man's legs and swung him wildly back and forth along the railing, killing him.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

You see what I have to endure at work. Feel bad for me yet?

I think that this is true...

A great quote from Carl Jung, shared by Darren over at Thin~Spaces

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

That's why the "church" and the relationships that being the "church" forces us into are so important in our own spiritual growth. We need a little irritation every now and then to force us to deal with our own life. What do you think?

The Church and Politics...

A great discussion of the Church and it's role in politics is over at Jesus Creed. Thanks Scot, for opening this up, and thanks to all who are discussing it online. Big questions.

Learning about leadership...

One of the best resources I've found recently that has clear thinking about leadership is Slow Leadership. A good source of ideas and questions to help you in any area of your life where you are called to lead.

A great prayer...

...from The Divine Hours (a guide to fixed hour prayer).

O God, you both comfort me and disturb my complacency through your Spirit. May I recognize the blind, the lame and the prisoner in the circumstances of my life, and understand my call to proclaim the good news to the poor. I ask this through Jesus who is my way, my truth and my life. Amen.

Praying this is great. Living it would be even better.

This is so wrong...

Christian Retailers Put Their Print on Products - LA Times

Virtuous Woman perfume comes packaged with a passage from Proverbs. But what makes the floral fragrance distinctly Christian, Hobbs said, is that it's supposed to be a tool for evangelism.

"It should be enticing enough to provoke questions: 'What's that you're wearing?' " Hobbs said. "Then you take that opportunity to speak of your faith. They've opened the door, and now they're going to get it."

More than 400 vendors packed the Colorado Convention Center last week to showcase the latest accessories for the Christian lifestyle. There were acres of the predictable: books, CDs, greeting cards, inspirational artwork, stuffed animals wearing "Jesus Loves You" T-shirts. Many of the newest items, however, put a religious twist on unexpected products — marketed as a means to reach the unsuspecting and unsaved.

Christian Outdoorsman was taking orders for a camouflage baseball cap with a red cross. In Booth 235, Revelation Products of St. Louis was pitching golf balls and flip-flops. Follow the Son flip-flops have patterned soles that leave the message "Follow Jesus" in the sand.

Gospel Golf Balls are touted as "a great golf ball with a greater purpose." Manufactured by Top-Flite, the golf balls are printed with well-known verses from the Bible, such as John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…. "). Dave Kruse, president of Revelation, said they were meant as "conversation starters," to help men share their faith while teeing up.

An added bonus: Duffers need no longer feel bad about losing a ball in the rough. "If you're playing great, good," Kruse said. "If you're spraying the ball, well … lose a golf ball, share the gospel."

How can we expect people to take the Kingdom of God seriously when it's all about "the stuff". These things make me queasy.

Read the whole article here.

Real Spiritual Transformation...

Kevin Miller over at Out of Ur echoes some of my thoughts from over the past 7 years of working to bring about spiritual transformation in the lives of people. His starts by saying,

"Spiritual Formation: we’ve already got a proven model, but do we want it?"

He then proceeds to ask a question that I think the church leaders of today have to wrestle with.

"What would happen to your life if you lived in close geographical community and relationship with other people; if you lived in submission to authority; if you practiced silence and simplicity and discipline; if you regularly read the Bible and prayed and meditated on what you read; if you made study part of your life; and if you worked hard in some daily occupation, seeing your labor as full of dignity and offering it to God?"

Do we want to be changed? Are we willing to live counter-culturally in order to allow that transformation to take place? It's a question I am asking of myself and thinking through on behalf of the congregation I lead. The jury is still out...


Read the whole post here. He has good ideas, and ones that we need to work out in practical ways.

"I've been everywhere man..."

Well, not everywhere, but lots of places in the US. Check it out here...

Create your own visited states map

The Gift of Giving...

My mother and father-in-law spend time each week visiting Lynn. Lynn is a "40 something" year old woman who has been confined to a bed her whole life. I'm not sure what all her conditions are, but her limbs are twisted and contorted, she can only eat food that has been mashed, and she very rarely gets out of the extended care hospital facility where she lives. She can't talk, but she can communicate by making noises and facial gestures for "yes" and "no". At first glance you might think that she isn't very smart, but you'd learn quickly that Lynn has an incredible intelligence. Once my wife promised to visit her "two weeks from Tuesday". When my wife was delayed and didn't actually arrive for a visit until Thursday, Lynn had a scowl on her face. She made it clear to Angela that she had been expecting her all day on Tuesday. One other time Lynn told Angela and I that her sister Sandy was sick and that she wanted us to take her to the hospital gift shop to buy her a get well card. We did that, feeling good that we had helped out. Truth was that Sandy was just fine and Lynn got a lot of laughter out of playing us for the fools.

Sandy is a wonderful sister who has loved Lynn throughout her life. Lynn has her, and she has my in-laws. My mother-in-law used to work with Lynn and introduced her to my father-in-law over the phone once. My father-in-law, the big tough logger type of guy, was hooked at once. I've watched them as they have given their lives to Lynn over the past 15 years. And I've learned something. They give to Lynn, but they receive so much more. When Lynn lights up as they walk into the room, when she has something to communicate to them and they have to work it through (sometimes for over an hour) to figure it out, when they smile as they tell us stories about Lynn's most recent "prank"...in all these moments my in-laws are receiving blessings from God. They started out this relationship by wanting to do something for Lynn. Who would've guessed that as time went on that they would receive so much from her?

I've spent a lot of time working with people with mental and physical disabilities. One thing that I have learned is that we are the ones who are blessed by being a part of their lives. They are gifts from God that come in unlikely packages. I think that's why I was so moved by the video below. It's the story of a father who brought his disabled son along for the ride as he ran a triathlon. Take a look...



Moving, eh? Let me encourage you to open your heart to some of those "unlikely gifts" from God. I promise that you'll never be the same again.

Simply amazing...

Hat tip to Rudy at Simplify who points us to one of the coolest ideas that I have ever seen...

"A small wheelchair car you drive with a joystick. This Hungarian car is designed as a small vehicle for wheelchair users. The wheelchair-bound user rolls her chair right into it and drives with a joystick. The car's interior space has no front seat -- just a space built to house the driver's own wheelchair so all she has to do is roll in through the extra large car doors and into position. The wheelchair locks into place within easy reach of the car's controls which are centred around a joystick."

Wheelchair car at Simplify

How the Kingdom Comes...

Tim Larson writes really well. And not only does he write well, he also has something valuable to say. Take for example what he writes about the coming of the Kingdom of God…

It seems to me that I have, for a long time, considered the Kingdom of God as some type of all powerful, impregnable force that would conquer by spiritual (military) might, the forces of darkness that pervade our society. It would conquer our culture and way of life with the sword of the Spirit, of course...And then I am faced with the words of Christ, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." "Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” and “The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is’, or ‘There it is’, because the kingdom of God is within you.”

The Kingdom is subversive, always moving in secretly, quietly overwhelming defenses. It absorbs and consumes evil, transforming it into good. The Kingdom of God is the not only the most powerful force in the world, it is often the most surprising. Those who think they control it will often be crushed by it. Yet those who surrender to it will never be the same again. Thanks Tim, for your thoughts. The Kingdom lives and breathes in them.

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The Honesty of Children

A friend (Thanks, Randi) sent me a group of pictures of kid's letters to God. I was amazed by what I saw there. There is an honesty that children have that we need to recover. They say what they feel and think and don't realize that they shouldn't. One of the most telling pictures was this one...



We would never say that, but the truth is that many of us want to follow God on our terms, not on His. He asks for all that we are. May He give us the grace to not hold back.