How do you best connect with God

Here is the link to the Spiritual Pathways Assessment.

The Relationship Between Music and Worship

Worship is much more than singing. So often we associate music with worship, and, therefore, if we don't sing, or if we don't connect with God through music like some people do, we feel a little inferior. Are we missing something? My hope for this Sunday evening is that we leave understanding a little more about what worship truly is.

Saying all that...today I read this post about singing. I agree with the author that there is something about a community gathering to sing praises and adoration to God, our Creator and Father, and to Jesus, our Savior and King. It's a good read.

One Thing God Never Promised

As I have followed the news about the happenings to the people of Virginia Tech I have had a few thoughts, though minuscule, surface. Within 12 hours of the evil and dastardly acts of the student gunman several university campuses across the country held candlelight vigils. A basketball arena at Virginia Tech was at max capacity as Dr. Giovanni, a former English Professor there who had previously confronted the depraved and unsafe behavior of the murderer, brought the mourners to their feet with her stirring statements--speaking truth poetically into the situation.

During the year prior to and following the attacks on September 11th, 2001, I worked for a hotel situated on the water just north of San Francisco and Sausalito. September is the perfect time of year to visit and sightsee there. Our hotel was packed. I was off that day but went there because we didn't have a television at the time. As I entered our office the staff huddled together in talk. I went out to watch television in the lobby and the lobby was packed, virtually by everyone in the hotel, who, by the way, had fully functioning televisions in their rooms. Families ate breakfast together and talked with their new neighbors from all over the US. One client looked at me in bewilderment after the first tower fell and said, "My apartment is five blocks from there." He was a frequent face at the front desk throughout his stay--just talking. Our lobby was rarely full--people come, eat, and go. Today they lingered. We extended our breakfast hours and our attention to the holistic needs of the people.

There is something movingly profound about being present with others during tragedy. We don't want to be alone. We gain strength from being with another and another truly being with us. If someone dies we don't stay home. We congregate at the funeral home. If someone is hurt we don't stay home. We meet them at the hospital. When a child gets injured the child doesn't go the backyard to be alone. The child runs to find the parents for consolation.

God never said that life would be fair. I have often argued with God, even have sworn at him because of the hardness of grief and the mystery of his choices. He has answered in part and over time. But one thing I am learning is that He said that when life was unfair, terrifying and dangerous we would not have to be alone; he would be with us. Jesus' name, remember, is "Emmanuel," which means "God with Us."

Psalm 23 speaks to this: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow I'll fear no evil."

Why will I not fear? There is so much in life that strikes terror. Evil is frightening and makes me question the goodness, sovereignty and smartness of God. Why would I not fear?

"Because you are with me."

How fantastic is that?! That is the promise--not the void of grievous circumstances but the presence of God when times are dark.

God does not promise us that hardships will not befall us. He didn't spare his own son suffering but offered him up as an atoning sacrifice. He promises to walk right there with us deep in the valley where little sunlight gets in. He enters the arena of suffering and sets things in perspective, beautifully speaking wisdom into our situation.

Church & Culture Pt. 5

"How is Christianity to be distinctive in a culture where everyone assumes themselves to be Christian?"

This is a very important question for us. I wasn't faced with this question near as much in the bay area as I have been here. I'm discovering that even in our neighborhood, this question has to be asked.

The following are excerpts from a post I read this morning that deals with this question.

This was the context in which I grew up. To put it charitably, most folks in my home town thought of themselves as Christians. Some evidently were by their profession and their lives. Some, no doubt, were not. But, most people didn't condemn themselves or think so poorly of themselves to self-identify as "practical atheist" or "unbeliever." Even the poolhall hustlers and the alcoholics claimed they knew God, "always said their prayers," and the "God knows their heart."

Many assumed the label "Christian" because they were certainly not practitioners of any other religion. They were not, for example, muslims. In fact, until I returned home during my sophomore year in college as a professing muslim, very few people had ever seen a muslim. No, everyone at least believed in some way, and that made most everyone "Christian" since that was either a family or community legacy bequeathed to all. Nominalism.

The more I think about the situation, the clearer it is to me that in trying to reflect genuine Christian distinctiveness in a nominal Christian culture definitions are critical. The root problem might be described as a failure to define "Christian" and Christianity in terms that bring into sharper contrast regenerate and unregenerate life, in terms that stress spiritual conversion, faith, grace, love and hope over and against moralism, patriotism, and spiritual relativism.

Insights on Worship

Greg Laurie writes on worship in today's Harvest Devotional:

A number of words in the Bible are translated "worship." The one used the most often means "to bow down and do homage." Another biblical word for worship means "to kiss toward." Put the two words together, and you will have a good idea of what real worship is. We worship God because He is worthy. In doing so, we bow down and pay homage to Him. That speaks of reverence and respect for God. But we also "kiss toward" Him, which speaks of tenderness and intimacy.

Worship

I have been studying on the topic of worship for this Sunday evening. This morning Mandy came into my office and told me that I needed to see what Adam was doing. As I walked into the kitchen I heard our Hillsong United CD playing. Adam, dressed in only a diaper, was walking around his room waving a Memphis Grizzlies Flag. It reminded me of the story of David dancing before the Lord (2 Samuel 6). What a great picture of worship!

Things Break

By Tobin Marsh

This side of the resurrection
In the brokenness, defeat and sorrow
Is where lie all the deep lessons of my life.

Nothing wants to be broken,
And yet everything must be broken.
To never break is to lie stagnant and eventually die.

Things break.

I break now and again.
Picking up the pieces can be an act
Of profound faith.

Source: Servant Stories

Church & Culture Pt. 4

I'm learning more and more about the church's role in shaping culture. Mark Batterson, a pastor in Washington, DC, has a good post on this subject. He gives four ways that the church engages culture.

1. Ignore it
   The more we ignore culture the more irrelevant we’ll become. And if the church ignores the culture, the culture will ignore the church.
2. Imitate it
   We can imitate culture, but imitation is a form of suicide. Originality is sacrificed on the altar of cultural conformity. If we don’t shape the culture, the culture will shape us.
3. Condemn it
   We’ve got to stop pointing the finger and start offering better alternatives. If the church condemns the culture, the culture will condemn the church.
4. Create it
   We can compete for culture by creating culture. In the immortal words of the Italian artist and poet, Michelangelo: criticize by creating. At the end of the day, the culture will treat the church the way the church treats the culture.

We've all seen these first three ways of engagement, and have come away wanting something more, something different. You can read his entire post here.

Jim Collins on the Best Advice He Ever Received

I read this article last week, and have been thinking about it ever since. Jim Collins, author of Built to Last and Good to Great, shares about a conversation he had with Peter Drucker shortly after Built to Last came out. Here are a couple of excerpts from the article:

“The huge thing he said to me was, ‘Do you want to build ideas to last, or do you want to build an organization to last?’

“I said I wanted to build ideas to last.

“He said, ‘Then you must not build an organization.’

“His point was, the moment you have an organization, you have a beast to feed–this army of people. If you ever start developing ideas to feed the beast rather than having ideas that the beast feeds, your influence will go down, even if your commercial success goes up. Because there’s a huge difference between teaching an idea and selling an idea. In the end, what are you in a battle for? You’re battling to influence the thinking of powerful, discerning people. If you ever abuse that trust, you can lose them. So the moment that arrow changes direction, you’re dead.

“He said something else important: ‘The real discipline comes in saying no to the wrong opportunities.’ Growth is easy. Saying no is hard.

Prayers for Virginia Tech

What can one say? Thirty-three people lost their lives for a reason unknown.

I saw the headlines yesterday but just couldn't summon the courage to enter into that pain. I wanted to do it justice and have it be more than just information. I think we suffer from info-glut. This situation calls for empathy and compassion and not just more facts, at least where I sit. God help them.

To hear the first hand accounts of students, twenty-year-olds, jumping out of windows because the gunmen had just entered their classroom, it is too much. The professor of the German class who stayed as his students jumped out of the windows in order to give them more time to escape. The unknowing dormitory dwellers who never woke up. The parents who still do not know if their child is alive or dead. The parents who do know. God help them.

A professor in college, Dr. Bain, repeatedly told us, "Sin fragments. Grace and forgiveness brings us back together. Knowing God's profound love and allowing him to love us brings us wholeness." It is evident this is sin for it has torn families apart. It dis-integrates. This is not God's creation intentions. This is not his plans for us. This is not the kingdom to come.

Help us see, God, that Christ on the cross is the hope of the world and that we, your sinful, broken-but-forgiven people, are the ones who deliver it. Please help us enter into the dark, messy gruesomeness of our own souls so that we might find the courage of forgiveness and the power of redemption as you meet us there. Please pour out grace, mercy, and healing tears as these families offer you their lamentations. We pray that their tears would be healing, their grief not disappointed, and their friendships unbroken. Amen.

Thanks for letting me be in this church

So, I must say that being a dad borders the joy of that first Christmas, not the very first one, the first and best one you can remember. And I must also add that we are surrounded by such great, generous people in Cooper Young. On Sunday afternoon the door bell rang and on the front porch was standing a person we had met once holding within her hand the goodness that is Southern comfort. No, not whiskey, though our church did have a talk about alcohol (see post below). I mean chicken. But the point is that this person has probably spent less than 2 hours with me. We met them at the Easter Egg Hunt just the weekend prior. Life is amazing sometimes.

Last night friends brought over fish tacos from Cafe Ole. This coming Wednesday night friends are coming over and are bringing their grill and are going to cook turkey burgers, aka turkburgs. We are overwhelmed with kindness and generosity. Not to mention the baby showers at Robert and Mandy's, my Mom's, and the virtual baby shower that our friends participated in through the work of Mandy.

I grew up in a church that often sang a hymn entitled "Count Your Blessings." Count your many blessings and see what God has done. He has done immeasurably more than I could hope or dream. Thanks to all, especially this great church I get to be a part of!

Alcohol & the Bible

Last night our church had a great discussion on what the Bible has to say about alcohol. For those of you who want to read more, I'm posting links to some of the papers and articles I've read over the past few weeks.

Alcohol, Abstention & Redemption

Alcohol, Acts 29, & the SBC

Beer and the Bible

Christianity & Alcohol (wikipedia)

Christians & Alcohol - Four Myths (pdf link)

Good Wine and Glad Hearts

Link to Southern Seminary's audio on this (along with some commentary)

SBC Resolution on Alcohol

The Bible and Intoxicating Beverages

Wine in the Bible

What Does the Bible Say about Alcohol - A Systematic Study

New friends

This weekend we got to spend a little time with Lindsay's church planting friends from Vancouver, Kyle and Anna Martin. Here's a link to the new church they've started.

Easter Egg Hunt

Our first annual Easter Egg Hunt turned out to be a success, despite having to move it to our house because of the cold weather. We had around 30 people, including some new neighbors who we had not met yet. We had the actual hunt outside, but everything else was inside. We had games, food, lots of eggs, and even a surprise visit from the Easter Bunny!

Not a Chance Event

By John Howard Yoder

The cross of Christ was not an inexplicable or chance event, which happened to strike him, like illness or accident. To accept the cross as his destiny, to move toward it and even to provoke it, when he could well have done otherwise, was Jesus' constantly reiterated free choice; and he warns his disciples lest their embarking on the same path be less conscious of its costs.

Source: The Politics of Jesus

More on Global Warming

Here are some recent links on the issue of the church's role in global warming...

Jerry Falwell's sermon, "The Myth of Global Warming"

James Dobson calls for Richard Cizik to resign as vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals


I read this and shudder. There's a part of me that just wants to ignore these guys and hope they go away. On the other hand, though, I do believe that this is an issue that the church needs to be informed on.

If you're interested, you can read an earlier post on Cizik from a Fast Company article.

The role of prayer in our church

This past Sunday night Jason taught from 2 Corinthians 3 & 4. It seemed to me that the crux of the passage, and the evening, came with verse 4 of chapter 4: “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” I think that God wanted us to camp out on that verse for a little while. Do we believe this verse? If so, what do we do?

First and foremost, it heightens our awareness that we are totally and completely dependent on God for salvation. Verse 14 of chapter 3 says that only Christ can remove the veil. There was a sudden realization within our group that we don't really pray, or at least we don't pray as we should. How desperate are we to see the veil lifted so that our friends can see "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ?" The good news is that God wants this desire to grow in us. I thank God for reminding us of this.

The second thing I came away with was that though darkness is all around us, God has created us to be light in the darkness: "For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ". A room can be completely dark, but one small light can penetrate this darkness. This again is God's grace. We may not be much, but we are light. We may not be many, but we are light.

In Matthew 5:14-16, Jesus said, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."


If you want to read more on this passage, here is a great sermon by John Piper called "What Makes the Good News Good?"

Marks of a Missional Church

This guy is a prof at Fuller Seminary. This appeared in his blog over a year ago, but I just now stumbled upon it this morning (at about 4:30 - I couldn't sleep!)

1. What are the marks of churches (people) who live missionally?
They no longer see the church service as the primary connecting point with those outside the community. Connecting with those outside happens within the culture, by insiders to that culture who express the gospel through how they live.

If that question and response got you thinking, check out the rest of the post.

Omni-Gracious

The Bible says that God is omni-present, that is to say, that God is everywhere at once. This to me is astounding in and of itself, but when I think about the graciousness of God it makes it even more so. For if God is gracious and God is omni-present then that means that God is with us not matter the circumstances. God is with us when we worship, when we work, when we need consoling, when we need encouragement or even when we do wrong. God is there, waiting, patiently waiting.

That is not to say that God is not disturbed by our wrong doing. The Bible clearly states that our wrong doing, our sin interrupts our relationship with him. Just as I can't be with my wife in the closest sense relationally and at the same time be rude, arrogant or condescending to her, so it is with our relationship with God. But God doesn't walk away. He doesn't hide. We do that. We do that just like Adam and Eve did. We are afraid of someone knowing us completely, sin/warts and all. We hide out of fear, shame and/or guilt. Yet God habitually comes to Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, even after he knows they have sinned, to converse with them.

Could it be that we could actually take such a risk and be known, utterly known by someone, even God, and still not be weighed down by guilt? But we put on the veil and mask ourselves. We maintain the veil that separates us from God like the Old Testament picture of the Temple, that gigantic curtain separating us from the holiest of places? Interesting that at the substitutionary, atoning, reconciling death of Jesus, Scripture states that the curtain was ripped from top to bottom to signify that God himself was stepping out from the veil to be with us. Hebrews says that we have an anchor behind the veil/curtain and that it is Jesus. No hands are big enough to remove that curtain except the benevolent hands of God. God wants to be known. He is in his nature one who reveals. The Apostle Paul calls Jesus the "mustarion," the "open secret." And God wants to know us.

That's so profound. Some people want to be free. Some want to be known. I think that all want to be both to some degree--to be known and free. That to me is the beauty of it: it can be, it should be, it is.

The Guts and the Gutters

By Edwina Gateley

We cannot know the God of the guts and the gutters unless we have traveled deep enough within ourselves to touch and experience our own guts - where God lives, and unless we have reached out far enough beyond ourselves to smell and sit in the gutters - where God squats.

Source: I Hear a Seed Growing