Musings of a Scottish Pastor

It's breaking in!

2012-01-22T16:16:00.000-08:00

So we decided to slowly preach our way through Mark’s Gospel. We’ve called it Mark’s Gospel: To Believe Is Human.
Check out the series at http://www.redeemerschurch.com/dlgMediaPlayer.aspx?id=880

Having blogged yesterday about rereading what we already know, today was discovering new stuff.

For example – why does Mark have an evil spirit be the first one to announce who Jesus is?
Is it to do with Mark wanting us to see a deeper reality than what’s on the surface of our lives.

But the bigger learn was the way that Mark introduces us to Jesus.

Three back to back, boom boom stories in Mark 1, and each one speaks directly into the most common fears of 1st century Jews.

1. Demon possession – their explanation for any bad things that happened in their lives.
2. Fever – if you got sick in Jesus’ day you normally died from it.
3. Isolation – being moved to the margins of society, shunned, untouchable.

There’s so much in the history and the sociology in how Jesus is introduced, but one thing oozes out of the opening trilogy - Jesus immediately impacted every fear and anxiety people felt.
This is the Kingdom of God arriving!!
It is about real life, real people and their real fears.
The Kingdom of God is something very tangible.

This is why it is such Good News.
Live it rather than only believe it.
Day in day out let the Kingdom of God break through.

Countdown to Lent

2012-01-21T16:20:00.000-08:00

Runner’s World is as magazine I read every month cover to cover.
Love it.

What’s weird is its only ever saying the same thing every month!!!
But there is something about rereading articles about doing Fartleks (Google it if you’re a non-runner), to how to gain stamina, or Peter Sagal’s running column (host of NPR’s excellent show Wait, Wait …Don’t Tell Me!), the regular what to eat to recover those sore muscles pages and the constant stories of other runners.

Every month, every word – and really nothing new under the sun.

I know of someone else who gets the same magazine and probably doesn’t read every word, might not read any words ….. and only one of us runs!

Runners need constant motivation.
Motivation to pound the streets, sweat the pavement and burn off the 500 calories of chocolate you rewarded yourself with for yesterdays run.
And what motivates seems to be rereading what you already know.

In a similar way leading is like running.
To always be the guy out front; to always be the go to leader; to always be the one people turn to.
Leaders need constant motivation.
Maybe this is why Bill Hybels and others suggest leaders need to read and reread and reread again.
It’s not that many new writers are saying new things – but they are re-saying what we need to hear to keep us staying out in front of people.

Funny when you think about it more – I’m motivated by stuff I already know!
Maybe even funnier – I buy loads of books written by authors who know they aren’t really saying anything people don’t already know – and then people like me buy them!

Is there anything new under the sun?

So here’s one of my Lental practice this year – don’t buy any new books; don’t read any new magazines or articles – for the 40 days of Lent be motivated by what I already know in one of the hundreds of books I’ve already read.

And already I’m thinking about cramming in as many new books between now and the beginning of Lent!

What disillusions me about church planters .....and myself.

2011-11-16T15:21:00.000-08:00

So I spent some time surfing the websites of church planters who are starting new, exciting, bold churches.
To enter into a new community and start something from scratch is no small thing. Planters are risk takers, pioneers, faith adventurers.Most new church starts don’t make it past their first 18 months or remain so small they can barely survive much less thrive – so those that do – you have to be highly impressed with their determination, commitment and ingenuity, along with their talent and leadership.

But as I surfed the websites of the ones that survived and listened to their preaching, read what makes them the ‘church for people who don’t like church’ I became more and more disappointed in these bold adventurers. One by one they had either sold out to the values of church they seemingly were not about (that’s why they were starting a church that people who didn’t go to church would like), or they had lost their boldness.

Click on their websites and you were clicking on to lookalike websites of most large evangelical churches.
Popular pop culture was the flavor of the day.

Want to know about the staff – and their list of interests (including their favorite movie and what they have on their iPod ….seemingly this reveals things about us that would make us want to come to our church); latest reads and seminary qualifications was plain to see.
Hierarchy was the structure of the day.

As for the preaching – formulaic, propositional, ‘say-a-prayer-or-raise-a-hand-and-receive-Jesus’ was Sundays preach.

Where’s the newness, the boldness, the church for those who didn’t go to church?

There’s a big reason why people don’t go to church and very few studies indicate it is because of the old fashioned music or the dull preaching. That turned off my generation, but not the new generation. Today’s generation are turned off because of synthetic theology, shallow living, formulas and self-centered religion.
And in most of the new churches I surfed this was the smelled out flavor.

But then my surfing discovery turned nasty.

Getting myself disillusioned over bold risk taking church planters who were way too conservative, synthetic and predictable in what they had started I blinked hard and realized that I was as guilty as them!

Sure we’ve been involved in helping turnaround a traditional inward focused classic church.
Sure we have done some bold, risky things to shake complacency out and focus on being a church for people who don’t go to church.
Sure we have fought off legalism and traditionalism.But despite all the progress and newness we have birthed – much of what I was seeing in these ‘bold’ planters is apparent in me.

My earlier boldness – had turned rather predictable.My earlier freshness in theology – had become somewhat stale.
My earlier contrariness – had seen me sit too much inside a box (albeit a new box).
The one that hit home the most - I’ve shrunk the Gospel down to a message of personal salvation – when it is so much more.

In fact in all of the church planters that I surfed – their theology was rather flat and dull; a cosmetic airbrush rewording of conservative evangelicalism from the 1980’s.

If there is one thing the unchurched masses of America need the church to declare it is a compelling, stirring theology. A theology that isn't used to support the things the church has stood against; or a formula that promises you how to have the best life, the best marriage, the best children or the best job……its only a “decision” for Jesus away!
Rather it is desperate for theology that unpacks the bigness of the Gospel.

Scot McKnight suggests that this “personal salvation” Gospel is deconstructing the church.

So my idle hour surfing the website of some bold risk taking church planters has convicted me.

January 2012 will see me join the movement that is boldly declaring that our problem is not so much that our God is too small, but our Gospel is too small.

Starting January 1, 2012 ……..until the end of May we will be making sure that the Gospel this church is preaching is the same Gospel as Jesus preached.

Why Catholics Are Right - but too small.

2011-11-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

So I’m reading a book called Why Catholics Are Right.
Just wondering. Always good to check.

The author Michael Coren (somewhat controversial Canadian TV talk show host) spends most of his introduction defending his strong title. “Sounds a little proud”, some of his critics said; “it might offend people” others suggested – but he decided to stand strong on his audacious title.

And it is audacious.

It is politically incorrect.
It is insulting to all other branches of Christianity let alone other Faiths.
It is offensive to any sense of tolerance.
It is downright arrogant (even if written humbly) as it loudly tells everyone else – they are wrong.

If Coren had used other words such as “better” or “good” or even “more right” which perhaps isn’t the best English but is kinder, people’s charge against him might only have been he is wrong rather than he is insulting/proud/offensive/arrogant.

But all of the above isn’t how I feel about his title.
It’s not offensive, or arrogant sounding, or proud, or insulting to me.

It’s about time someone used the word right.

Surely believing something necessitates that you are convicted, persuaded, convinced that what you believe is right.

Is this not the very nature of truth?

Truth can’t be partially right, partly right, or maybe right.
Truth has to be right – or it’s not truth.

So, thank you Cohen for defining the nature of truth.
Right is right even when it’s politically incorrect, arrogant, offensive, or proud sounding.

As Cohen himself writes “to believe something is, self-evidently, not to believe something that is its contrary.”
Therefore to be a Catholic necessitates believing that Catholicism is right.

The remainder of Cohen’s book is him detailing the views of the Catholic Church – and he is right about these views.
BUT is truth about views, about propositional statements, about a set of beliefs?
You can be right about views – but right about views does not equal right about truth.

Enter another book I am reading as I prepare to preach through Mark’s Gospel in 2012.

The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited @ Scot McKnight.

Its early days in my reading (only page 48) but already McKnight is challenging static rightness. He redefines the Gospel to the fullness of what it is and that fullness is not defined by a list of views or the rightness of beliefs.

Jesus is not a right to be believed, he is a way to be lived. You do the Gospel rather than believe the Gospel.

Here emerges the problem with Cohen’s rightness – and everyone else’s rightness (mine included). Rightness implies we can arrive at it. We can complete it. We can hold it all in a book, a list, a box.
Rightness shrinks.

So, if Catholics are right ….. or Protestants, or Baptists, or Evangelicals, or Pentecostals, or Emergents ….. its too small being right.

There’s something bigger than right. There’s Jesus.

100 Pages A Day Diet.

2011-11-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

I only really have two hobbies.
One is watching English Premier League football (soccer for you yanks!).
With shock I read that Direct TV were about to lose all their Fox channels including my beloved Fox Soccer. Please note this is the only FOX channel I approve of! If fact my prayers were torn as I feel the world would be a better place without FOX News …..but as usual my selfishness dominated. So I prayed for it to remain - and God intervened to ensure I (whom the world revolves around) still got my weekend fix of five Premier League football games. Ah - bliss (especially when the family leave for the afternoon and I get the couch, the chocolate and the TV controls to myself).

My second hobby is buying and reading books.
But, for the past few months while my buying has not subsided, my reading had. The pile of books on my desk was growing beyond what I was reading. So I’m officially on a "100 pages a day minimum diet" – the only diet where more is better.

The only way to tackle this diet – buy some really good books to get me started.
So here’s my list of what I’m using to start my reading diet:

Peter Rollins has just written his third book Insurrection: To Believe is Human, To Doubt, Divine. Yet again he stretches you theologically with a strong philosophical bent. Aargh. Took all of Saturday afternoon (after 4 football/soccer games watched) to finish this off. A wonderful blend of orthodoxy and nearly heresy!

Jim Collins’ new leadership book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All. It’s even better than his bestseller Good to Great. Fascinating case studies of some of our best known companies and why they are still around.

1Q84 @ Haruki Murakami. Eh ……a racier novel than I thought (it should be R rated). Some have termed it the grandest work of world literature since Roberto Bolano’s 2666. Most critics loudly applaud it – the Guardian called it ‘a global event in itselff’. Its loud praise caused me to buy it ….662 pages in and counting. Intriguing. And no I am not recommending it (like when we show a clip from a TV show during our preach - doesn't mean we are recommending it! Don't blame me if all your kids are watching GLEE!). But by saying that I realize you will all now go and buy it. You sad bunch of people who respond the wrong way to the word ‘racy’.

Simply Jesus @ NT Wright. Yet again NT at his scholarly best. No wonder some call him the world’s leading New Testament scholar. Great reading as I get ready to preach Mark’s Gospel for 4 months in 2012.
Yes it is rather weird jumping from 1Q84 to Simply Jesus!!!!!

100 pages a day diet.

Easier when you are reading good stuff.

So my diet plan for the next few weeks:

Why Catholics are Right @ Michael Coren.
Steve Jobs @ Walter Isaacson
God is Red @ Liao Yiwu
Churchill @ Martin Gilbert
The Tenth Parallel @ Eliza Griswold
GK Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense @ Dale Ahlquist

Any other recommendations??

The two-second advantage

2011-10-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

I anticipate the future.
I’m not saying that arrogantly as if I have some God given special ability.
I’ve got what Vivek Ranadivé calls a “talented brain”.
Ouch – that could sound arrogant as well.

To make it sound not so arrogant but perhaps more mysterious if not just plain odd - I have “memory of the future” (as Swedish researcher David Ingvar dubbed it).
I have the ability to know what is going to happen based upon what my memory has previously stored.

It’s amazing.
I can actually anticipate the future.

Here’s what’s even more amazing – I’m not the only person with this ability.

In their fascinating book The Two-Second Advantage, Ranadivé and Kevin Maney present some neat research on the predictive ability of the human brain.
This is what made Wayne Gretzky the greatest hockey player of all time.
And it is what distinguishes a top level successful leader and others.

Enter what they term “Ones” and “Twos”. Top level leaders are one of these two types.

Think through which one you are.

Ones tend to be founders.
They are bullheaded and courageous. They tell people what they think, not what they think people want to hear. They see openings and get flashes of creativity. They can take in everything that is happening and see it from a higher level, the details blurring into instinct.
Ones have ‘feelings’ about something and if the feeling is right – they go with it.

Twos pay attention to detail; they get things done, but what they do is based upon the right data, enough data, more data.
For Twos, ‘we think this is right’ never trumps ‘we know this is right.’ They move when they know it is the right thing based upon accessing and sorting the right information.

It is this constantly returning to the mountains of data that most distinguishes Ones from Twos.
Ones frequently make decision on incomplete information. Ranadivé and Maney suggest they generally have less than 10% of the information Twos require to make decisions).
Yet with not enough time, or all the data, what the Ones have that makes them different than the Twos is this two-second advantage – otherwise called predictive capabilities. Ones have an efficient agile mental ability that can quickly predict what’s going to happen despite not having all the data available – and they can be right most of the time.
They anticipate the future.
They have memory of the future.

At the neurological level, Ones have neuron activity going on in their brains that fire together (everyone’s brain does this), but then their brains simultaneously wire that pattern together to enable them to predict what is going to happen ….and when the prediction is correct their brains get strengthened (their firing neurons connected by axons gets a neurological workout that strengthens the bond) and they grow strong in this predictive capability.

Is this a ‘hardware’ genetic ability, or a ‘software’ learned ability?
Interestingly, research is pointing to a learned ability!!

So, I’m off now to get my neurons firing on topics that are central to effective leadership – strategic analysis; contextual awareness; new research; old facts; comparative reasoning – it’s that fuel that will hopefully enable me to anticipate the future and make the right impactful decisions.

I’m off now to read Jim Collins’ new book Great by Choice……

The motion picture of slums.

2011-09-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

On the day we left to visit our good friends in the Huruma slum, Nairobi, Kenya, we heard of an oil spill in a neighbouring slum called Mukuru Sinai (rather ironic that a slum is called after a mountain filled with God's presence). With oil spilled, hundreds of the residents of Mukuru Sinai saw the chance for some free oil - but tragically the oil caught fire and over 100 people died.

Some journalists blamed the residents greed for the disaster.

On the day we left Nairobi Rasna Warah a Nairobi based writer answered the journalists accusations with an insightful article. I copy it here to help people understand the reality of 4.1 billion people living in extreme poverty:

"For people who live in the nicer parts of Nairobi, where electricity is available at the touch of a switch and bathrooms have flush toilets, the behaviour of Sinai residents may appear bizarre, if not downright stupid. Surely residents must know that petrol is dangerous? Have they not heard of the recent tragedies where people died because they were scooping oil from overturned tankers? Only an idiot would rush to get a bit of free petrol even if it meant exposing oneself to grave danger.
But imagine, for once, that you live in Sinai slum or one of the many slums that people call home in the city of Nairobi. Imagine that you share a tin or mud shack with six to eight family members, all of whom sleep on a middy floor, and who share a pit latrine with dozens of neighbors. Imagine dinner time in that shack. A highly polluting kerosene or charcoal jiko is cooking and heating increasingly scarce meals. Outside, criminals and drunkards are on their nightly prowl and girls are selling their bodies for KSH50 (70c) to buy unga for their families. Stray dogs and pigs are adding to the noise and chaos.
For people living in slums, or "urban villages" as we like to call them, daily life is like being on death row or committing a slow form of suicide. Here, one is exposed to hundreds of hazards daily. If one does not die from preventable diseases such as TB or Aids, one dies from a stray bullet from a policeman's or criminals gun.
The daily grind of living can be so soul-destroying that the only way people living in these hell holes can forget about it is by drowning themselves in illicit brews or reckless sexual encounters. And because we live in an unequal society where wealth and opportunities tend to accrue to those who are well-connected and privileged, the chances of escaping this death sentence are bleak indeed, particularly in an environment where patronage, corruption, and extremely low wages ensure that the poor will always remain poor.
Now imagine that oil from a pipe leaks right into your slum neighborhood. Would you call the chief and the police to alert them about it or would you think, "Hey, life is unpredictable, I can die any time. Why not grab some oil to light my stove tonight? I'll be saving money on kerosene and maybe it will mean that my family will sleep on a full stomach tonight."
If I lived in Sinai, I might have thought the same way. So let us not blame the poor for being stupid and ignorant; let us ask ourselves why we live in a society that forces people to grab spilt oil even if it means dying in the process."

The motion picture of slums is only available for those inspired to wander down twisted, slippery, narrow aisles, jump over open sewers, take in the smells of one-year old garbage, taste stewed chicken beaks or roasted fish gills, and share in the fear of being bulldozed in the middle of the night.

Stand with us and others to do your part in kicking extreme poverty off the face of the planet in our generation.
www.whenigrowup-global.com

9/11 ten year reflection .......borrowed.

2011-09-06T17:38:00.001-07:00

With the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 nearing, Christianity Today published the thoughts of eleven senior Christian leaders on how they have changed since 9/11.
I write below the thoughts of Will Willimon, the presiding Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.
His thoughts and reflection so resonated with me .....although the ending sentence of Philip Yancey's thoughts are also so striking.

Yancey concluded "we dare not do to Muslims what we have, to our shame, done to Jews."

But read Willimon's complete comments:

"On 9/11 thought, For the most powerful militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly.
It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States.
The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the Kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusive martial response were of one mind: that the nonviolent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross.
September 11 has changed me. I'm going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the questions of what's wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our terms by crucifying God's own Son. "

Thank you Will for your insight and poignant thoughts.

As Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference wrote "the only authentic, transformative solution to cultural challenges stems not from the donkey or the elephant but rather from the glorious intersection known as the agenda of the Lamb."

The Main Thing

2011-08-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Returning back from Australia and having coached pastors seeking church transformation it has sharpened my focus on ensuring the main thing is truly the main thing.
It is so easy to be deflected from the main thing.
No deflection more common than Christians under your charge not getting it.
I accept, as Dallas Willard writes, that "non-discipleship is the elephant in the room." But so often the correcting of that elephant leads to the main thing no longer being the main thing.

The main thing is not discipleship.

Neither is the main thing evangelism.

The main thing is the Gospel, or as Jesus defined it, the coming of the Kingdom of God.

This is bigger than discipleship, this is broader than evangelism.

Discipleship can so often be both insular and individual; evangelism can so often be formulaic and point in time oriented.

The Gospel, the coming of the Kingdom of God, is corporate and tangible, process and story.

The elephant in the room often leads to us shrinking everything, and this is the call of the Main Thing: KEEP IT GOD SIZED.

So we return from Australia and launch three emphasis:

Our biggest and boldest Alpha Course yet .....and on Sunday past Redeemer's Church people threw magnetic lights onto a huge wall each with names of people they are going to boldly, courageously, matter of factly invite to take a second look at faith and Jesus Christ. 942 names - 942 precious people.

Help guide When I Grow Up (a charity to empower children in extreme poverty - http://www.whenigrowup-global.com/) to take a huge step in seeing a High school built in the Huruma slum, Nairobi, Kenya, as well as expand our partners amazing work in Guatemala and Haiti.

Join with some incredible volunteers from redeemer's Church to see new initiatives begin in communities around Reedley - REACH out to extend the Kingdom of God.

It's the main thing ......and we are working hard in the next few months to keep the main thing the main thing.

Its big.

My farewell to Australia

2011-08-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

I’m eating my last brekkie in Australia as I prepare for my flight home.
Poached Pear and Granola washed down by an Italian Red Orange Tiro –tasty.
Not that its classic Aussie food – it’s an Italian Café in the airport.
That’s classic Australia, certainly metro Australia. It is a very global country – masses of people of immigrated to Australia in the last few decades and you sense it. Unlike the US where the masses tend to assimilate into the strong US culture – Australia has a very eclectic feel and look to it.

Initially Australia felt very English and American – I was disappointed hoping for something different. But after being in 4 of their main cities while the English/America flavor is still strong – I’m beginning to discern the other myriad of flavors in this vast country.

Interesting – first airport that I’ve been in which has announcements and adverts in English and Chinese.

Would I come back to Australia – probably.
Would I want to live here – probably not.
Unsure if that has to do with the isolation Australia has – Perth is the most isolated city in the world …but truth be told its other cities on the other side of the mass of land that Australia is are to a degree still isolated (long flights to most other places).
It could still be my British heritage – Australia does have a candidness that slides towards crudeness and/or classlessness that does not appeal.
Or it could be that the Cadbury’s is still not quite as smooth and creamy as the British Cadbury’s!!! (Yesterday I did discover Cherry Ripe Bar – cherries wrapped in coconut wrapped in dark chocolate – why did I not discover them 16 days ago!)

From a Christian perspective I thought Australia would have been more like Britain – postChristian moving towards antichristian. But I did not feel that nor was I told that. Take the Salvation Army I was working with – they are highly respected here with a known and accepted strong Christian thumbprint.
There are many large churches here and people while not attending church were not antiChristianity.

So I get ready to board my plane back to California (say that here to people and they are so impressed you live in California …..although my 72 year old woman cab driver this morning did ask me if I was taking any money back with me because CA was broke!!).

Back to sun and heat.
Back to crazy LAX – worst airport in the world.
Back to no Cadbury’s – but to good Mexican food.
Back to news shows that are all about the US with maybe a I minute world report!
Back to Christianity shrinking …..but the Christians don’t realize it.
Back to polarizing politics.
Back to a country where everyone flies a flag (only in the US – no other country in the world).
Back to a weakening dollar.
Back to a country that feels and acts tired …..more than every before in its history.

But ….back to a Church that is growing.
Back to a congregation filled with generous people (when I share how much our church of 800 raises every year people literally gasp!)
Back to a church/country where people are positive and see the glass half full (mainly a good characteristic).
Back to a church where vision is central …..and it’s a vision of Christ.
Back to a church where politics are few if any.
Back to a church where people invite others to come and explore faith.
Back to a church where leaders can lead.
Back to a church that exists for lost people.

My bag is stuffed full with Cadbury’s and I’m ready for a season of more growth and more new things happening to see as many people as possible reached with the Gospel and as many people as possible becoming poverty change agents – defending and helping some of the most vulnerable orphans and children in the world.

17 hours to go.

Two icons

2011-08-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

My last day in Australia.

Taught for 6 hours and then as my colleague Paul Borden spoke to a Chinese and Australian group I grabbed a cab and headed downtown.

Time to see the 2 iconic Sydney landmarks – Sydney Opera House and Sydney Bridge.

I was too late to climb up the outside of the Bridge (next time – looks fun), but I took a ferry and sailed out into the bay, past the Opera House, under the Bridge and up to Darling Harbor. Found a neat Malaysian Restaurant, ate well, drank a smooth China beer called Lucky and walked across the river to look at Sydney from another angle.

Sydney is a city with an impressive skyline, a beautiful location, appears very clean and modern, hugely multicultural and a very appealing city.

So I gave it a good 4 hours of visiting - mixture of tiredness and a long flight tomorrow saw my energy levels sag …..and no even Lucky or Cadbury’s could resuscitate my energy.

But maybe I’ll be back.

The Salvo’s seemed appreciative (even although the Divisional Commander in thanking me for coming called me Roger!!!! ….do I look like a ‘Roger’? Keeps you humble.).
For them the work of transformation in the Eastern Territory is at beginning stages.
Would be interesting to visit in two years to see if traction is happening.

In leadership, and especially change leadership, momentum is crucial.
Our time here has been trying to generate such momentum. Get Officers into the dialogue of growth, transformation, outward focus, missional action.
Reintroduce them to what is the main thing.
Over 2 days or 3 days of teaching and discussing bring to the fore of their thinking what it would look like to lead missional corps.

Momentum.

Mine’s is diminishing.
16 days on the road is fun but weary – especially for an introvert like me.
Space and silence has been rare.
So unlike really godly pastors I’ll not be leading the person sitting next to me on my flight home in the sinners prayer after drawing the cross diagram on a napkin during my 17 hours flight home …..instead I’ll be sitting with my headphones on, ignoring them (I will introduce myself as I slip my headphones on) and taking much needed space …in a huge Airbus 380 double decker plane with 550 people on board

Another day, another city.

2011-08-08T06:22:00.001-07:00

So today I arrived in Sydney - a short flight from Melbourne.
It's the last leg of my tour of DownUnder and its time to dig deep to maintain passion and energy.

One of the sessions I'm teaching is a called "It's All About Sunday, Stupid."
I had to ask for special permission to use the word "stupid" among the Salvo's who come out of the holiness tradition.

It's an adaptation from the successful run by Bill Clinton for the White House. He had to overcome a 90% job approval by the elder Bush - riding high due to victory in Kuwait - and his chief strategist James Carville, came up with the slogan "It's all about the economy stupid" to turn the election onto the topic most Americans put as #1 - how much money they have to spend.
Brilliant strategy and Clinton won!

My session spins the title to suggest that it's actually all about preaching (It's all about the preaching stupid!").

Within my teaching I mention that one of the biggest speakers bureau in the US have as their number 1 requirement for someone to be placed on their books - they must have passion!!

So - as I get near my 37th teach I am fighting the tendency for passion to slip away.

Cadbury's is helping me.
But of more help is another group of Salvo officers eager to learn and eager to see their Corps become healthy and growing.

The central Sydney/New South Wales division is lead by a Divisional Commander who spend time in both Papa New Guinea and Russian. They have a strong mindset that the Army exists to reach people with Jesus first .....and so they lead this Division to push outwards. They are missional.

This makes all the difference.
If a Corp or a Church can grasp that the church/corp is not existing as keepers of an aquarium but fishers of people; if they can grasp they are not custodians of the saints but missionaries to lost people - the church's passion is ignited and life enters.

So, Sydney looks like being a good place - there's more Cadbury's, cool weather and an outward focused Salvation Army Division.

Firsts

2011-08-07T05:14:00.001-07:00

So Adelaide has been a number of firsts for me.

The first place I’ve been to whose time zone is 30 minutes different from their neighbors.
The first time I’ve stayed in a swamp area ……my hotel is surrounded by water that the locals call wetlands – but that’s simply a posh term for a swamp.
The first time I’ve eaten at a restaurant called Ned Kelly’s – the closest thing Australia has to a local hero …who was a thief, murdered and criminal – Robin Hood without the good! Speaks into Australia’s criminal beginnings.
The first time I attended an Aussie Rules Football game – wow!!! 18 players on each team, a field the size of two football/soccer fields and the score was Adelaide Port 21: Collingwood 159 – yep that reads 159. A 138 differential. And it rained, and we got soaked, and we ate a meat pie, and I was cold, and you could only see a fifth of the action, and ………

Adelaide.

It was also a first being at a Salvation Army Corp that is low on the standard army rituals and bigger on being outward focused. Golden Grove Corp is a suburb of Adelaide and where Majors Paul and Bev Beeson serve. Few in uniform, no band or songsters and a corp trying hard to reach new people.

But here’s the stark reality. After 8 years of being there few guests comes through their front door of Sunday worship. It is a corp of around about 100 people.

The scale of the problem the Salvos are facing, and the scale of the problem many churches in Australia are facing is that most people do not see the need for the church. Add to that a church that seems removed from reality and you have a recipe for a weak church and a post-Christian nation.

Australia is to a degree a few years behind the UK – already a post-Christian nation where only 4% attend church.
Australia is to a degree a few years ahead of the US!!

One of the things my trip down under is doing for me is reminding me that the reality of Australia is about to become the reality of the US (already declined to 12% church attendance from 45% twenty years ago) and church leaders there (myself included) need to keep leading in ways that makes Christianity relevant and the church vibrant and living in the real world.

Goodbye Adelaide …..a 1 hr flight and I’m finishing this blog in Melbourne overlooking the airport as I sleep before catching an early flight to Sydney for the last leg of my 4 stop tour.

What firsts will I experience in Sydney?

PS …opted out of a Spanish email reply. Decided to let anonymous remain anonymous and focus my energies on the change and expansion I need to lead, rather than the people who don’t really want to be led. Been teaching Salvo leaders the principle of wasted energy which is lost energy.
Thanks for the wise blog replies sent to me.

What's 70 and what's 30.

2011-08-04T07:28:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting at Melbourne airport waiting my flight to Adelaide. Another good day with some great Salvation Army Officers eager to see church/corp transformation.

We talked many things included Sample’s 70/30 rule.
This rule states that you will spend 70% of your time doing trivial, routine tasks and only 30% of your time on the big, major, significant leadership issues.
This goes against the grain.
Most of us think we will spend 70% of our time on the big, important issues and 30% on routine, menial tasks.
Steve Sample says it’s the other way around.
To quote him “many people want to be leader but few want to do leader.”
This rule is always a reality check to leaders wanting to see growth and development. They imagine that when their church puts to bed silly arguments and specializing in trivial things they will spend all their time on the real stuff.
Not so.

Not long after teaching that rule today I received a 70% kind of email. The kind of email you want to ignore.
The kind of email you think a healthy church leaves behind.
The email was a guest who had visited our church several times telling me the things she/they did and didn’t like ……with obviously more that they didn’t like than like.

Two things bothered me.
Firstly – there’s no name. They have some weird email address and they omitted to place their name at the bottom of their essay! They didn’t care to tell me who they are.
Always sad.

Normally we immediately bin anonymous mail – but this one warrants a reply …..because of the second thing that bothered me.
They strongly disagreed with us putting our Scripture verses on the screens in both English and Spanish.
And I quote “by this time the Spanish community should be able to understand what it looks like to read the names of the books of the Bible, the reference verses and page numbers.”
We live in a community that is 70% Latino with many in our church fluent in both but eager to invite friends or family who only speak Spanish to explore faith and Jesus Christ.

I have to tell you I initially thought I had misread what they were saying and they must have been thanking us for having English and Spanish. But slowly I reread and yes – there are supposed Christians who are racist and bigoted. Simply put they are arrogant, proud and elitist. Or, to say it another way – they are not living the way of Jesus.

So I will count to 10, or maybe 10,000 or maybe I need to count to ten million and then compose an email reply that stops me from sinning in my reply.

I would count this as part of the 70% but perhaps this is more of a 30% work. This is one of the big, major issues – the Gospel is at stake, the truth of Christ is at stake, the testimony of His Name is at stake.

So ……… I sit in Melbourne Airport contemplating my words.

Tomorrow another day of teaching and another group of Salvation Army Officers.
Tomorrow I will be writing an email reply fully in Spanish!!!!!!!! LOL.

The uniform

2011-08-03T04:12:00.001-07:00

So I saw Melbourne today - through the window of a car as I was driven to my next hotel room. Although I am still about 19km from the city itself. Tomorrow at 7.15am I cross the city on a 2 hour drive to teach again a group of Salvation Army Offficers. "Melbourne through a car window" - the possible title for a very boring travel guide.

Last night I met a senior Salvation Army Major. The only one at the conference with a uniform on (until we held our final session today when several officers appeared dressed to retrun to the real world!).

I've struggled with the whole uniform thing. It seems so exclusive, so 'we are different', it seems a possible significant barrier between them and the people they/we want to reach with the love of Jesus.

Yet last night I learned something very interesting.
The Major walks most days to work (at least parking lot to office). Seemingly most days as he walks to work with his uniform on someone, a stranger, a fellow commuter, a member of the general public will stop him and say "thank you for what you do."Amazing.

Its a badge
A badge in Australia that carries credibility.
A worthy badge.

Of course I'm not advocating we all get a dark blue, rather old fashioned looking, average cut, shapeless uniform.

We have a uniform that we just need to begin to wear - the uniform of love.
Imagine if Christians took on that uniform.
Imagine if we served, washed feet, forgave, showed grace, unconditionally loved the way jesus asks us to.
Imagine if we began to wear the 'Follower of Jesus' uniform.

That one is not a barrier, nor shapeless, nor old fashioned looking.
That one has real style and fits perfectly.

Still haven't seen a kangaroo.

2011-08-02T03:53:00.000-07:00

Day 7 in Australia and no kangaroo sightings yet.
Truth be told, the last 2 days I haven't seen much at all.
I've walked from my bedroom to the conference room, to the dining room, to the laundry room and back to my bedroom.

I have heard a Kookaburra bird.
But still to see a kangaroo ...or Melbourne (where I'm staying!).

But what I have seen is so much better than seeing a Kangaroo.

I've seen pastors decide there are necessary endings they need to make when they return to their corps.
I've seen pastors face honestly their biggest fears - including the fear that perhaps they haven't got the gift of preaching and they need to rethink their role -so many brave, courageous pastors who do not want to be an obstacle in God's way.
I've seen pastors dream of what could be an no longer ask 'why?', but say 'why not!'
I've seen pastors grapple with the big stuff, ask the central questions, wrestle with important tensions.
I've seen tears of hope for what God could do in and through their leadership.

So - no Skippy yet, but I never came for that.

It's like going to Kenya.
I sit in the Nairobi airport and I see tourist after tourist buy tee-shirts with giraffes on them.
But they miss it.
Kenya is not about giraffes or elephant sightings - Kenya is about the people.

My trip down under is not about seeing the Gold Coast, a kangaroo or Mick Dundee - this trip is all about seeing church leaders grasping what God can do in and through them as they turn their churches or corps outward to be all about what God is about -reaching people who are lost.

I want more of these sightings.

Mooroolbark

2011-08-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

It wins the prize for the strangest sounding place I’ve been to in Australia – and believe me they have some strange sounding names ….. Burrumbuttock, Gooloogong and Wagga Wagga to name a few.

Mooroolbark is my destination for a 3 day conference with Salvation Army Officers.

We’ve talked before about how leaders define reality, but today we also shared that leaders move people to a preferred future. This is leadership. Moving people.

So my day began at 4am and a text from a friend - Sean Bautista – a United pilot who regularly flies into Sydney and Melbourne.
‘U in Melbourne’ his text read
‘Yes’ I managed to rouse myself to reply …..as I looked at the time and groaned….adding on that ‘I am in Mooroolbark an hour from the airport.’
‘I’m there for 2 hours enroute back to Sydney no time to meet’ was Sean’s reply.
‘You mean you woke me at 4am to tell me we can’t meet up!’ I texted back and tried to return back to sleep.

His text moved me – firstly to happiness thinking of sharing a pint with him.
But then it moved me again …..and again……and again…..and again as I struggled to sleep more.

Moving people.

Historically God’s people were nomads – moving was not hard for them.
Sadly, the Church is anything but nomadic.
Movement is painfully slow for many Christians.
We have lost our ability to move.
And in losing our ability to move we don’t stay static we die.

Scripture says – where there is no vision the people perish.

Movement leads to life, non-movement leads to death.

This is why leadership is so vital.
Leaders move people.

Pray that a bunch of Salvo’s downunder become people movers.

My first Sunday in Australia

2011-07-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

Church and Christianity in Australia are viewed by the majority as irrelevant to life. Only around 5% will attend a place of worship today.
America fairs slightly better at around 12%.
But like Australia there are a growing number of people in the US who see particularly Church as irrelevant to life.

Truth be told – often Church is irrelevant to life.
But, Christianity isn’t.
And that’s our problem.
How do we hold the most relevant hope and reality there is (life with God) in a vessel (the Church) that in so many ways is unattractive, irrelevant and misrepresentative of the Jesus who is the head of her?

So I walked into the Fortress to be the guest preacher today.
The Fortress is the central Perth, Western Australia main citadel.
A central corp of the Salvation Army and led by Majors Barry and Ros who are two neat relevant pastors.
I’d met them yesterday as we lead coaching for Army officers and leaders. They introduced me to one of their equally neat leaders a guy called Robin. He’s in PR and I teased him about his trendy hairstyle, cool clothes and slightly graying partial beard – the necessary accessories to be cool.

Two neat majors and equally neat and cool lay leader ………

So today my eyes were slightly surprised when I entered the Fortress and the Major’s were in their old-fashioned Army uniform (only slightly because they were the Major’s); but then my eyes were shocked when Mr. Cool PR dude was also in his uniform!

Truth be told often Church is irrelevant to life.

I expected a marching band – and the musicality was excellent.
I expected a choir – and the harmonizing was excellent.
But in many ways it seemed so ……irrelevant.

What surprises me is that after some Salvation Army band music the band leader led us on drums into some modern worship music.
After church we ate in a really hip gourmet burger place.
I headed to their home and enjoyed watching Aussie Rules Footie on their modern HD TV.
We were taken to the airport by one of the uniform, band playing officers listening to modern rock music on the car stereo.
And my neat cool relevant Majors are dressed hipper than me!!!!!

My point is a point of confusion. It seems there is a dichotomy, a dichotomy that seems to be unnecessary.

I know the Army has a great heritage.
I know they have been a part of magnificent ministry.
I know all their rituals and traditions stem from reasonable roots.
I know you can’t just throw away history.
I know there are molehills and mountains.
I know there are things worth fighting to keep and fighting to lose.
I know they are a group of good people.

PS …….I’m writing this in Perth Airport waiting my flight to Melbourne and this really attractive girl has just sat down next to me. There are hundreds of empty seats and she chose to sit next to me. Maybe uncool, shirt tucked in, balding, fairskinned with freckles, skinny Scotsmen ……is the new cool!!!

Sorry for the sociological distraction – back to my first Sunday in Australia.

I know uniforms, band music, and Army titles are not central theological issues or even the issues.
But it sits on the surface of the bigger issue.

Churches (mine included) can embrace dichotomist realities that reveal an inauthenticity/hypocretisim that unchurched people sniff a mile away, and keep them miles away.

There is a strong call for us to be One.
That call is to trueness.

My first Sunday in Australia has got me questioning where I am not one. Where am I a walking dichotomy?

Day 3 in the most isolated city in the world.

2011-07-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

I watched my first Aussie rules footie game today.
Geelong beat Melbourne 233 to 47.
That’s more like a cricket score than a footie score!!!
Don’t understand the game at all – but from what the commentators were saying – the score was the worst ever!!!
I only saw the game on the telly - funny how the Aussies use similar slang to the Brits!

The second day of the layered learning event in Perth was a good day. Even although I was hungry for most of it.

Last night’s dinner/supper didn’t quite work out.
My hotel has no restaurant but they contract with a company who deliver from various restaurants.
I duly ordered a tasty pizza – pineapple, chicken, fresh tomato, mozzarella cheese and avocado (when in Aussie land eat what they eat ….and I thought it was all bbq’s and Skippy meat) to eat with my rented movie – The Top 10 Chain Saw Murders.
2 ½ hours later the pizza arrived – cold.
Being true to my Scottish frugalness – I didn’t pay for it …but did eat 2 slices of a disgusting pizza.
(PS the movie I rented was The Tourist!)

So today I was hungry all day …..but obviously I am a pathetic westerner who doesn’t understand true hunger.

Check our www.whenigrowup-global.com and get involved in ensuring really hungry kids are given hope.
Come on guys ……use your money to make a difference.

Interesting day.
A room full of Aussie pastors/officers and lay leaders passionate about seeing their churches/corps reach more and more people for Jesus.
But also a room full of Christians sadly grappling with the elephant in the church.

Listen to Dallas Willard’s insight on the elephant:

“It is not the much discussed moral failures or financial abuses or the amazing similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their live in the Kingdom Among Us.
And …..it is an accepted reality!”

The elephant in the church is the acceptance of non-discipleship.
People will embrace Jesus as Savior – but will not follow him as Rabbi or Teacher.
People will take his forgiveness and grace – but will not live the way Jesus wants us to live.

But the elephant is – it’s acceptable.

It’s time for the church and its leaders to stop accepting it.
It’s time name it, confront it and kick its butt.

I’d love to write more on this ….but its supper time and they are taking me to a real restaurant tonight.
So sorry – theology comes second my own needs and greed come first.
Yep ……there’s an elephant not only on the church!!!!

Still down under in Australia

2011-07-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

So Day 2 saw me awake in Australia ready for the reason for my long travels to begin. Day 1 of teaching.

So to prepare I went a 5 mile run around Ascot Racecourse and along Swan River. My mind was cleared - partly due to being chased by a dog and the clarity running can bring.

It all begins with God, and so theology took centre stage in Session 1.
Who is this God that we have given ourselves to?
Who is this God that we preach and declare?
Who is this God that we lead our congregations to give themselves fully to?

Enter ......... trinitiarian theology.

Not the easiest beginning topic to handle, and tonight I'm rewriting some of it, but at its core stands a trinitarian God who incredibly moved with the sole purpose of human redemption.

3=1
We believe that God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is One God.

3-1=0
Each person is God only with the other two.
So, the incredible death of Christ on the cross and his cry 'my God, my God why have you forsaken me' describes not only the suffering of Christ but the suffering of God. God was 'damaged' due to the cross.
But this was all purposeful. God the Father sent the Son (at such a cost) to rescue humankind.
His purpose flows out of God being missional - a sending God.
Christ was sent to bring about God's rescue.

3+1=1
The Missio Dei accomplished, you and I are joined to God, heirs, co-heirs. We are brought into the union of the Godhead.

The Trinity was not exclusive. It moved to include you and me. God is inclusive.
Its moving was at the ultimate cost.
The Church is called to live out that cost - radically, sacrificially, selflessly give ourselves to see others included in God.

.....and there were too many blank stares hence my rewriting tonight.

But its core.
Miss who God is and all the pain and effort in trying to lead and serve in a local church becomes vain.
Grasp how far God went ....... you'll not pull back, pull up or pull away.

Session 2 was simple - lets talk leadership.

But over lunch conversations began, and what rose to the surface was here in Australia, like in America, Britain, most places - church leaders sit around and discuss how to help dysfunctional Christians grasp the scale and the urgency of reflecting the image of the God we worship and who made us.

Tonight I sit watching another storm hit Perth. Gallons of rain are falling as i eat Cadbury's chocolate and hit my netbook.

Trinitarian faith in all its depth and complexity being contemplated even outworked by a simple Scots guy slightly carnal and slightly tired trying to help a bunch of Aussie pastors lead towards health.

The key is knowing it is God working purposefully to bring about his one and only purpose - the missio dei ....in and through jars of clay.

Off to watch a movie and eat more chocolate.

Australia Day 1

2011-07-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Travelling for 19 hours on a plane to reach the first city in my tour of Australia passed as slow as you think it passed.
19 hours on a plane – add on the airport waiting time and it brings you to a total of 28 hours.
Even trying out the new A380 double decker super jumbo made it only interesting for the first hour –when they had a sky cam attached to the tail of the plane for you to watch the takeoff from! But then it was back to ordinary airplane food and cramped leg space – trying your best to sleep as you flew over nothing but water.
When I did the short 5 hour flight across Australia from Sydney to Perth the monotony was broken by the incredible golden coastline we hugged and the three bars of Cadbury chocolate I eat in place of more yuck airplane food.
Thank the Lord for Cadbury’s down under.

And while I seem to have begun my travels complaining, it is absolutely amazing that I am sitting nearly 10,000 miles from California reaching here in just over one days travel – safely.
Thank you Jesus and Qantas (which I discovered stands for Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services).

Apart from watching three pretty good movies Lincoln Lawyer, The Adjustment Bureau and the weird but funny Paul, I finished off two good reads.

Read #1 (which I finished between waiting in Fresno and reaching LAX) was a leadership book called It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy @ Captain D. Michael Abrashoff.
Fun read.
The story of turning the USS Benfold from one of the most dysfunctional ships into the go to ship in the Gulf War. Basis premise – give every sailor ownership of the ship, hence the book’s title. Revolutionary thinking in a highly pyramidical US Navy culture.

Read #2 was about Dean Karnazes called UltraMarathon: Confessions of An All-Night Runner.
This guy is incredible – he’s run the Badwater Race (Death Valley to Mount Whitney) in the summer heat where your shoes actually melt on the road surface! He’s run the Western States 100 (yep – 100 miles not 100km). He ran a marathon at the South Pole. The Relay Race is teams of relay runners running from Calistoga to Santa Cruz – 199 miles! Dean Karnazes ran it without a team ……. he ran all 199 miles himself and then ran a full marathon (26.2 miles) immediately after it!!!
Crazy.
Fanatical.
Possessed.
Or …..committed to what he can do well.

Both books stirred me as I flew to Australia.

My trip here is to work alongside the Salvation Army in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney and coach on church transformation.

It was initially a 10 day trip talking in 2 cities; it’s now 17 days, 39 talks, 4 cities!

I needed stirring for this trip - so these books, amazing scenery and Cadbury chocolate has brought me that.

So to read #3 and the most stirring:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Written over 400 years ago, the first modern novel, it is a classic and one of only 20 or so pieces of literature that have survived for more than 400 years.
Steven Sample suggests we give up reading new books and if all we read every year are the 20 or so true classics we would have done ourselves more good.
So here goes.
I’m at page 43 and its slow, different but in a strange way refreshing and intriguing.

Today (Thursday) I saw the Indian Ocean for the first time as I explored Western Australia.
Tomorrow – my main reason for being here begins.

I begin it with a 2 hour teaching on the Theology of the Trinity. Wonder if any will return for more on Saturday and Sunday.

So far I’d describe Australia as an English feeling place with an American overture. Unsure if that is a compliment.

Tomorrow I meet church leaders ……. brings purpose and the tangible to why I’m here.

Can’t come soon enough.

Heading to bed ……. still fighting the old jet lag and too much Cadbury’s!!

Warning - this blog may cause constipation.

2011-05-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome to another blog that hopes to stretch thinking and cause rethinking.

Will we poop in heaven?

Let’s start with heaven.
Let’s start with asking will Osama Bin Laden be in heaven?

Bin Laden believed so …….. being met at the gate by 72 vegans!
(Sadly there was a screw up in the paperwork and the virgins he’d hoped for didn’t show up.)

But could he be in heaven?
Some of you might think that he’s the poop.

Now in case I am misunderstood, I am not in any way minimizing the violent and hate-filled atrocities Bin Laden perpetrated over the past 15 years including the bombing in Nairobi, Kenya where 224 died and over 5000 injured; and the tragic events of 9/11 and the over 3000 killed and countless victims injured.
Bin Laden lived a life of violence and murderous hate.

But could he be in heaven?

Is he beyond God’s grace?

The difficulty with celebrating anyone death is the sense that we are celebrating someone receiving God’s punishment of hell …..as if they deserve it and we (those celebrating) don’t deserve such.
If Bin Laden had been captured and as a war criminal now faced justice being done to him that might be a more celebratory outcome. But, celebrating his death - and by all accounts people celebrating are assuming he is now in hell receiving due justice – seems to suggest he is getting what he deserves ….and we will also get what we deserve but we will get heaven.

Really?

The core of Christian teaching is that no-one deserves heaven. Heaven is an act of God’s free gift of grace. No one deserves it but all can receive it.

Now I’m not suggesting that I know Bin Laden accepted God’s grace (but he might have); and if he had he would be in heaven!

This for some is the scandal of the Gospel.

The scandal says - no one is beyond God’s grace, and God’s grace is all you need to enter heaven.

The scandal, or perhaps the surprise of heaven, is that it will be full of the unexpected, none more than who is there and who isn’t!

Will there be poop in heaven …that could be unexpected.

Sitting in an airport Chili’s last week I shared the question I was pondering and one person quickly retorted – “Of course we all know there will be, we all say it ‘holy ****!’”

But the original questioner was reflecting on a theological point. If poop is the body’s way of removing impurities, if heaven is void of impurities will we still poop!

Heaven.

Oftentimes we think of heaven as ethereal, intangible, esoteric and immaterial.
To say that an easier way – floaty, dreamy, hazy.

I grew up with the idea that it was a place above earth where we would sing hymns and worship all day long, every day, for ever and ever …like one everlasting church service.
For me that sounded more like hell!

Scriptures teaches that there is a place, a space, a realm beyond the one we currently inhabit.
Scripture teaches that just now we have a body that gets old, weary and eventually will give out on us – but there is a second kind of body one that is ‘imperishable’.
Scripture also teaches that not being here will be better.

In this new place, with a new body, in a better place will we still poop?
I truly don’t know.

BUT, Scripture doesn’t only talk of heaven as being somewhere else, sometime else.
Jesus taught, lived, that heaven had come to earth.
For Jesus heaven was not ‘someday’ but was a present reality.
Scriptures teaches that it is both here, now and yet fully to come.
Eternal life does not start when we die; it starts now.
Jesus’ prayer, our prayer was and is “thy kingdom come”.
Christians are about bringing heaven to earth ….. today.

The original questioner was wondering if in the other reality our bodies will be perfect, sinless and therefore poopless.
But the better way to look at heaven is to see it not as somewhere else, sometime else - but the focus of our attention and purpose now.

If as a Christian you pooped today, if today you have been about what God wants you to be about - bringing heaven to earth, then theologically you pooped in heaven!

Sorry if this blog causes constipation.

Rob Bell - poet, prophet or pest?

2011-03-29T10:44:00.001-07:00

There’s something about poetic language that draws me in.

Take this poetry:
“Many have these questions.
Christians,
people who aren’t Christians,
people who were Christians,
but can’t do it anymore because of questions about these very topics,
people who think Christians are delusional and profoundly misguided,
pastors,
leaders,
preachers – these questions are everywhere.”

There’s something about the way the poetic weaves together groups of people who would not normally go together.
The poetic finds way through a phrase even a word that pulls the unusual into community.

Take this poetic phrase:

“Honest business,
redemptive art,
honorable law,
sustainable living,
medicine,
education,
making a home,
tending a garden – they’re all sacred tasks to be done in partnership with God now, because they will all go on in the age to come.
In heaven,
on earth."

Poetry.

Putting together words that on earth don’t go together.
Merging what’s normally unmerged.

There’s something about poetic language that draws me in.
For some the movement of poetry appeals, for others it raises questions.
For me the rhythm evolves poetic license; for other its vagueness confuses or denies.
For me it draws me to think and consider possibilities; for others it causes them to think that the poet is considerably wrong.

Chesterton once wrote: “it’s the mathematician that goes mad not the poet”.

The mathematician is trying to get heaven, God, faith, truth into his head, the poet is just trying to get his head into heaven.

The poet can hold vagueness; the mathematician can’t.
The poet can write something unconcluded; the mathematician must see the conclusion. The poet in this case is the pastor and author Rob Bell.
The mathematicians in this case are the pastors and Christian leaders lining up to shoot the poet.
The topic is Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate Of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

The poetry written above comes from this book.

I loved the book, in all it inconclusiveness, vagueness and poetry!
Excellent.

Like everything else Rob Bell has written he weaves new thought alongside orthodox thought and invites you to be shocked and stirred and intrigued and scratched, question and disagree and agree and applaud, and want more and want less all at the same time.
As a poet he lets you swim in the sea not curtailing its vastness ignoring the ‘don’t swim here’ signs.

It’s the work of a poet not the work of a mathematician or a scholar or a theologian.

Is he really preaching universalism as some charge him with?
Is he really presenting a false God as others charge him with?
Is he really denying the atonement?
Should he really be burned at the stake for heresy?

He’s a poet.

Another poet Eugene Peterson endorsed the book indicating that while he doesn’t agree with all that Rob’s written, he’s my brother in Christ writing nothing new but continuing a worthwhile discussion.

To some extent it’s a classic modernity/postmodernity clash.
The clash of formulaic, propositional truth with narrative.

I live in the borderland between two cultures.

I can be the poet, but I can also be the mathematician.

There are times when the ‘modern’ in me wants better supporting evidence for the new definitions Rob gives.
There are times when the ‘postmodern’ in me wants him to pull back from wording that seem to be too deconstructive.

But I enjoy Rob Bell and his poetic exegesis.

For me, God is as much a poet as He is a mathematician.

The intricacy and preciseness of creation; the clarity and formulae of The Law He gave enable the mathematician to claim God as his friend.

But the mysteries left hanging; Jesus’ answers that were more questions; the both/and of His Being (three but one; fully God but fully human); the Psalms, the Revelation, the Book of Songs ……reveal a Divine Poet.

There’s room for both; and both should allow room for the other.

To a degree I need there to be a box – call it Orthodoxy.
I need there to be lines drawn and conclusions reached and The Faith handed down.
I need the Didache, the Creeds, the Confessions of Faith, the completed Canon.

But I’m nervous of a box with the lid fully closed. (In fact the only box I know of where the lid is fully closed is a coffin!)

I’m wary of theology that has systematized God into concluded theories.
I’m skeptical of faith built upon conclusions.

Does faith not require lines to sometimes bend or be dotted?
Does God not stand bigger than even the biggest box we can find?

I need perhaps not vagueness – what if we call it largeness.

I need space for more – more redefined, or more to be defined.

I need the poet.

“And to that,
that impulse,
craving,
yearning,
longing,
desire – God says yes.
Yes, there is water for that thirst,
food for that hunger,
light for that darkness.
If we want hell,
if we want heaven,
they are ours.
That’s how love works.
It can’t be forced,
manipulated,
or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,
we can have what we want,
because love wins.”

Poetry.

“Is the cross about the end of the sacrificial system
or a broken relationship that’s been reconciled
or a guilty defendant who’s been set free
or a battle that’s been won
or the redeeming of something that was lost?

Which perspective is the right one?
Which metaphor is correct?
Which explanation is true?

The answer, of course, is yes.”

To some it’s misleading, indecisive, confusing, heresy.
To me its poetic thought invites thinking, engagement, discussion.

For some, including a good friend of mine, the debate is irrelevant – God’s sovereignty answers it all.
For some, Rob Bell has struck his final nail in his own coffin.

But for others, myself included, Rob Bell has enabled us to keep largeness a big part of God; a largeness that allows us down here to discuss and disagree, but do so respecting our brothers and sisters rather than displaying both the arrogance of claiming to be right and the arrogance of stating the other is wrong.
It allows largeness in thought and worship that quickness my heartbeat, thrilled by the vastness of God and The Faith I’m a part of.

The poet never sets out to complete the box; the poet sets out to express their emotion and in that expression wonder if they’ve latched on to something divine.
If they have – the poem will deliver, it’s an outward journey.
If they haven’t - the poem is but an inward restlessness revealed.

For the poet while the former is best, the latter still holds meaning.
For the reader if they seek to critique it they will deduce one of either of the endings.
Or, if they can, they become the poet and the circle continues.
And continues.
And continues.
And continues.

Freaks some people out!
Helps some of us to breath.

Crikey, I Didn't Choose the Fish Tacos!

2011-03-05T19:26:00.000-08:00

Something strange happened to me tonight.
You may not think it very striking or of any importance.
Here it is - I didn't choose fish tacos!!

Pow! Bam! Wham! Yikes!

Everyone knows that I always, always, always choose Daniel's fish tacos. Always.
Comment away, but I do.
Tonight I didn't.
I made another choice.

Listen to this line from a stretching book I am working through:

"The burden of choice is a peculiarly modern phenomenon."

You could argue that the freedom to choose is one of the great signs of progress in modern life.
Those who live in abject poverty worry very little about which kind of food to eat precisely because there are no choices before them.

They would not see choice as a burden, but as a blessing.

My argument is, it is never a blessing, it is always a burden.

Its is our contemporary nihilism (as Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly term it in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.)
Choice, even in the most basic case, amounts to profound questions, questions that revolve around how possible it is to live a meaningful life.

To live a meaningful life always returns to the ultimate question - 'on what basis do I make a choice ....even the most basic of choices, even choosing Hearty Omelette over my regular, loved, favorite Fish Tacos?'

For Ancients and Middle Agers life was already defined. Circumstances defined it. Things were unchangeable. Additionally, there was a belief system that whether or not you believed in God or gods, there was one framework, one system, one defining reality.

For the modern world ........ nothing is defined.
Everything then is a choice.
Every choice therefore defines.
Every definition makes up the fullness of who we are.

That makes choice a burden.
Even the choice of food.

Sitting tomorrow at Daniel's restaurant choosing from the menu is an existential life defining moment.

Every choice counts.
Every choice has a basis.

Remember Hamlet's famous soliloquy "To be or not to be, that is the question."

This is your choice.

Week 8 - A Saturday dialogue.

2011-02-20T18:39:00.000-08:00

Week 8 brings me to start by quoting a passage some of the guys in our church dialogued about on Saturday morning:

Christian faith is about Christ, not about experiencing Christ. There's a difference and it matters. We put our faith in a person, not an experience........
We do experience Christ in our faith and that's a very good thing, but it's not the really important thing in Christian faith or even in Christian experience. The person in whom we have faith is the really important thing in Christian experience.

Its a great quote. Its a thinking quote.

I grew up in a tradition that seemed to worship doctrine over Jesus.
You could be a hard, difficult, angry man .... but if you were solid in your doctrine everything was good! I came across many men like that. Full of truth, but no grace.
Doctrine was everything.

For years I've been puzzled by this reality.
It's like churches called "Bible Church" or "Baptist Church"!!
Why are they not called "Jesus Church"?
Do we worship the Bible, or worship a sacrament? No. We worship Jesus Christ.

But recently I've been rethinking my attitude towards the elevation of doctrine.

Listen again to our Saturday book:

More than any other religion Christianity makes a big deal of doctrine.
Most religions are fundamentally a way of life, but Christianity is fundamentally a faith, because it's centered not on how we live but on what we believe about how Christ lives (and died, and rose again).

So today at church a girl walks up to me and thanks me for the past 2 years. She has been a part of our church while attending a nearby two year YWAM mission project. Specifically she wanted to thank me for every week teaching from the Scriptures and not trying to just be topical or relevant.

Interesting that it came a day after discussing this topic.
Interesting that most of our critics see us as anything but doctrinal!

Here's the kind of church we have worked hard at being for the past 7 years - a church that elevates orthodox doctrine heard in fresh and creative ways, leading people to Christ, and from that knowledge of Christ come to a vibrant, life changing experience with Christ .... from the outside in.

Maybe our presentation of doctrine has not been wrapped in the same wineskins as a previous generation or other churches, but we are a solid doctrine teaching church.

Final quote from our book [Good News For Anxious Christians @ Phillip Cary]:

The work of the church is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit, which forms hearts by the word of God, so that Christ may dwell there and make a lasting change in people's lives. This has been the work of the church from the beginning, since our Lord poured out his Spirit upon his Body at Pentecost. We need not worry that the Holy Spirit will cease to accomplish the work for which he has been sent, no matter how many falsehoods and failures we see in the life of the church.

I got robbed in Nairobi!

2011-02-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

Week 6 and I've just returned from a quick trip to Nairobi, Kenya.
Again I return because too easily I forget how the majority of our world brothers and sisters live.

Seems rather ironic that we have to spend nearly $2K on trip costs to remember that over 70% of the world live on less than $2 a day.
Ask the four young guys who lead the Furaha Community Foundation that we partner with in the Huruma slum or any of their 23 employees and they will tell you that for "mzungus" (white people) to care enough about them to visit them ...... is better than sending more money to them. In a culture where relationships are more precious than money somethings truly are priceless.

As I return from another trip it is too easy for me to ignore how far away we were.
Eerily we flew over Cairo, Egypt as the country below us was sitting on the edge of a revolution. Just hours earlier we had flown at 36,000ft over Darfur seeing its sprawling sand hills - unable to see the pain on a people who had and are experiencing modern day genocide ..... sadly the world flies over it too with politicians ignoring the reality. We watched as Vienna lit up in the early evening and its huge cartwheel shaped road pattern distinguished it from the other European cities we passed. With nightfall on us we landed in the cosmopolitan capital of the world - London with its 9 million people representing over 270 nationalities.

The sad thing is I'd seen it all before and the awe of how far we were from home and what we were seeing no longer gave me chills.

Some say familiarity breeds contempt. For me, it just breeds ordinariness.
Maybe that's sadder.
When the sense of wonder, awe and excitement get diluted, life shrinks down to your size.
When life becomes your size - ordinary is too grand a word to describe the pettiness of your existence.

Of course, where ordinariness is the norm, faith is extinct.
Faith only exists in the world of extraordinary. Ordinary has no need of faith - it is content to remain where it is.

That is always the challenge of Kenya.
How do you prevent the regularity of visiting robbing you of the faith needed to visit?

Same is true in your life, in your context.

The challenge is to prevent the theft.
The need is to be wise to the thief.
The technique is to protect your soul.

Where the Gospel is lived.

2011-01-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

Week 4 brings new perspective.

Sunday's preach was on the topic of immigration. Speaking into a very real issue, at a very real time for a very real reason - the Gospel.
The Gospel is about real life, not really about heaven in the future.
The Gospel is about transformation and God's rule and reign now.
His rule and reign in a world that rejects it.

The Gospel is all about real issues in real time.

So, the Scripture's teach that Christ followers are "strangers in a strange land" (1 Peter 1 & 2).
To understand this brings new perspective on how Christians engage with the issue of immigration - both documented and undocumented.

Scripture is teaching that because of the distinct and different lifestyles of Christ followers, a lifestyle that is different that the majority of people - the society in which they live will view them as strangers.

Now here's the twist. In our country, if Christians lived as Christ expects us to we would be living at the margins of our society .......and who would we meet there - the immigrant!!

This is the charge, or should I say the opportunity.
If Christians lived as Christ expects us to live, a mass of people who politicians have turned to to help win the past three elections and bring them to the White House, would have to engage justly and fairly with the immigration issue.

As long as Christians - who should be the loudest voice standing with the migrant - stay silent; politicians can ignore it.

Ours is the Christian generation that can accomplish historic things.
This is the generation that could abolish world famine; this is the generation that could eradicate malaria as a killing disease; and ours is the generation that could create an equitable and fair immigration policy for the US.

What an opportunity!
It comes with the challenge for Christians to live on the margins as Christ expects us to.
To live the Gospel!

Week 2 or 3 ...spirituality is living more than lessons.

2011-01-18T18:59:00.000-08:00

Week 2 or is it week 3?

Begun running some bigger distances than I have for a couple of years. Wondering/testing if this is the year I try for another marathon.
So I pulled out a new type of marathon training plan - the Hansen plan.
In my 14 weeks training plan I will cover a total distance of 622 miles.

The last time I did a marathon I ran 3 days a week and covered a total of 380 miles.
The short of the Hansen - kill you before the race date so you'll never actually run a marathon!

Or .....run 622 miles so that when you run a 26.2 mile marathon it will feel a mere walk in the park.

So I've begun.
I'll give it a few weeks trial and see how my body holds out. Then decide.

But interesting methodology.
Run double what I've run in training before - and yet - while my other training plans had four runs that were either 18 miles or 20 miles in total the Hansen plan only sees me reach 16 miles (still 10.2 short of marathon distance)!

The philosophy includes you may not do a big 20 miler, but when you do your 16 miler, the runs you've put in the days before and the days after will make the 16 miler feel like a 26 miler without the actual pounding of the concrete and the wear and tear on your body.

So now, as a church pastor, I have to now try and link this methodology and my attempt to train with it, to something to do with Jesus!!!

Here's the best I can come up with:

......nope, got nothing.

But then maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this constant need to try to spiritualize everything, misses it.
Maybe its the doing itself that is spiritual not a lesson you can learn from it.
Maybe its not about finding a spiritual parallel but living spiritual in whatever parallel you are in.

Maybe my marathon training can be spiritual.

What I won't now do is list a whole number of ways it can be. That misses it as well.
What I will do is take on the challenge of this training wanting to know God in the midst of it.

Spirituality is living more than lessons.

Week 1 Non Violence: A Dangerous Idea!

2011-01-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

I know its only the first week of 2011, but here's my best book so far in the new year:

Non-Violence:The History of a Dangerous Idea @ Mark Kurlansky.

Maybe as we start a new year we need to revisit how we live in a world that annually is growing more violent than the years/centuries before.

Kurlansky is not writing from a Christian perspective but he does quote a powerful divine decree "those who take the sword shall perish with the sword."

Does it not seem ironic that a nation that purports to hold to Christian heritage holds the most powerful military force in the history of humankind!

The classic pamphlet on this subject was written in 1815 by David Low Dodge, the man who is considered the first American peace activist. A devout Christian, who at the end of the 1812 war formed the New York Peace Society. Risking the accusation of being disloyal and unpatriotic (how things never seem to change) he postponed his publication until the war was over. It's title was "War Inconsistent With The Religion of Jesus Christ."

Here's a most thought provoking quote from his writing:

"The professed object of war generally is to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace; but war never did and never will preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace, for it is a divine decree that all nations who take the sword shall perish with the sword. War is no more adapted to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace than midnight darkness is to produce noonday light."

Perhaps the most fascinating and disturbing insight that Kurlansky reveals is that throughout history though most religions shun warfare and hold nonviolence as the only moral route toward political change - governing people have always shunned nonviolence and co-opted religion and its language into their violent campaigns.

"If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. The first and most prominent example was a Jew named Jesus!"

Ouch!!!

Gets you thinking about what it means to be a follower of the rebel Jesus.

Day 364 Disequilibrium

2010-12-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

Day 364.
So my Executive Minister had a listen to my controversial Christmas preach (the one where I talked about how Jesus failed) and he told me that I did well at creating disequilibrium.

Disequilibrium [noun] - the loss of equilibrium attributable to an unstable situation in which some forces outweigh others.

Was he telling me that my thesis was 'unstable'?
Or, was he telling me that the forces of insightful new truth outweighed the forces of suggestive heresy...... or vice versus?

But I've found that disequilibrium is an ideal state for re-creation.

I wonder if this was the reality in Genesis 1 - the formless and empty of verse 2
The tōhû wābōhû, a state of disequilibrium (wasteness, emptiness and darkness) was primal conditions for God to move and bring design and shape to. This is precisely the territory that God's creative power manifests itself in.
Sunday's.

Ever entered a Sunday service and everything from the past week is sticking to you. All the junk you picked up as you tried, but could have tried harder, to not conform to the world. Ever entered a Sunday service just desperate to reorient your life back to God and his ways.

I often enter a Sunday feeling formless and empty. drained and bruised by a week of real life living.

Primal conditions for God to move and re-create.

Maybe a state of disequilibrium is the best way to enter, but not leave Sunday.

Day 360 My soul needs me to write.

2010-12-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

Day 360 and I'm only 5 days away from finishing my 2010 blog.

Doubt I'll attempt a daily blog in 2011. I'll keep it going .....but watch for something more and something new coming in social networking.

Writing.
It's interesting that in the digital age the most popular website is a site that sells books - Amazon.
Social networking might be pushing us to short grammatically flawed sentences for our texting or Twitter pages - but real books with real English and real sentences aren't about to go out of fashion.

Recently I came across an good article on writing in the ODE Magazine. It highlighted three rules for writing as a spiritual practice:

1. Don't write what you know.
2. You can't write what you don't know.
3. You must write.

Over this past year I've come to appreciate these three frustrating yet inspiring rules, and come to appreciate that like meditation and prayer no one can do it for you.
This is what makes writing such a spiritual practise.

So, my blog writing this past year was actually more for my soul than anybody else's. Difficult to tell whether the frustrating times did more for my soul than the inspiring times.

I'll keep writing in 2011.
My soul needs it.

Day 358 The Day After Christmas

2010-12-26T17:32:00.000-08:00

Day 358 and I managed to carve out a 78th Christmas preach!!!

It's the day after Christmas (Boxing Day in many parts of the world) - did Christmas fulfill your expectations?

Its the day after the first Christmas and Jesus is fleeing for his life, a refugee heading to Egypt. Herod the Great was after him.

A hugely crazy king.

Killed everybody in his way.
Married 10/11 wives.
Killed the only one he really loved as he got suspicious of her.
Killed her two sons.
Killed his barber who stood up for his two sons.
Killed his predecessors.
Taxed the people into massive poverty.
On the day he died he wanted people to mourn, so he rounded up some of the most eminent men of Israel and gave orders that on the day he died they should be executed to ensure there was
weeping in Israel on the day he died.

A crazed, despot.
Now - the day after the first Christmas Jesus is wanted dead by Herod the Great.

You would have thought the Godhead would have planned the incarnation at the time of a better king!

But they didn't.

In fact Scripture elsewhere tells us that "when the time was fully come" - the exact, right, precise time ...even if it was slap bang in the middle of one of the craziest, violent kings of history.

What's the point?

If Jesus could enter the world of evil and tyranny under Herod ....maybe he can enter our world of evil and tyranny with the genocide happening and multiple wars raging.
If Jesus could enter the world of Herod's day when most people were held in poverty and oppression .... maybe he can enter our world where so many remain in poverty, where millions earn less than a $1 a day, where millions of children can't gain education.
If Jesus could enter the world of pain and disappointment in Herod's day .... then maybe he can enter our world filled with its disappointment and pain.

Jesus entered the world at the time of the meanest Herod ...... giving hope to all of us as we face our Herod's .....because in every day and every age there are Herod's.

So ....who's causing you to flee?
Who's your Herod?

Jesus entered this world right at the time of Herod!!!

Day 353 - what if He hadn't come?

2010-12-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

Day 353.
So, what if Jesus hadn't come.
It's maybe my Christmas theme for 2011 .....got a year to craft 4 preaches out of that title.

We would still have had the Son of God. Eternally was and is.
But we would not have had the Son of Man.

Here's 3 to mull over that I'm thinking about:
No Son of Man - no new humanity.
No Son of Man - no High Priest who empathizes with us.
No Son of Man - no substitutionary atonement.

We'd be up the creek without a paddle.

But, these three are the obvious .....334 days to figure out some more and make a Christmas series our of it.

Suggestions welcome.

Day 352 Did I really say Jesus failed??

2010-12-20T19:18:00.000-08:00

Day 352 and despite my best attempts I'm not getting these blogs in on a daily basis.
Sorry folks. I've failed at doing a daily blog for 365 days.
I've failed ....but ..... I'm not a failure.

If you were at Redeemer's Church on Sunday you would be familiar with this phrase.
It will come online [www.redeemerschurch.com and hit Sunday messages].

It was me one of the newest Christmas thoughts I'd had for a few years. We can learn how to be fully human from the fully human Son of Man.
The Son of Man (the title Jesus most went by) teaches us how to fail gracefully.

Yep...... read that again.....I did use the word "fail" with regards to Jesus.

And, at present I'm still employed and not fired due to heresy.

Listen to the message .....maybe even listen to it twice and then blog comments welcome.

Day 345 A Chalcedon Christmas

2010-12-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

Day 345 and theology takes centre stage of this advent season.
Chalcedonian theology in particular.
Jesus Christ is one person, two natures, fully God and fully man.
BOOM!

Christmas is just loaded with rich, profound theology.

One person, two natures, fully God and fully man.

Not half a man; not two persons; not a modified form of God or man.
Fully God, fully man, two natures but one person.

No wonder Walter Wink wrote "If Jesus had not been born we would not have been able to invent him."

This is more incredible than fantastic fiction.

Listen in to today's preach on this topic: http://www.redeemerschurch.com/dlgMediaPlayer.aspx?id=880

This is the Jesus of the Christian faith.
This is the Jesus you are invited to experience.
Hear the word about him and then by faith receive Him. All of Him. fully Go - a secure and powerful salvation; fully human - the truest, fullest way to live.

Christmas truly is magical.

Day 338 - It's OK to be weak.

2010-12-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

Day 338 ...... and as everyone left Redeemer's Church this morning lunch was on us!
Thanks Juanito's for serving over 600 people great food.
Too bad folks if this was a Sunday you chose shopping or skiing over church!!

So one of our pastors this morning, Ann Hudson, guided our thinking to Isaiah 9 and the well known words "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders."

As Ann commented, this context of these words are decades of bloody tyrants, of warriors boots and garments rolled in blood .....and then boom - inappropriately and disconcertingly comes the words "For to us a child is born!"

You would expect that following the striking images of bloody warfare the prophet would have given us the image of a Messiah as a righteous warrior, or a judge, or like an Achilles or Ben Hur. But instead he describes the hope of Israel as first a child!

This pushes us.
As confident, educated, sophisticated people accepting weakness and need is perhaps more difficult for us moderns that more most people in the history of the world. Being weak in our culture is shameful.

But in how God reveals Christ, he reveals something necessary to embrace God's revelation. Listen to the words I read a few weeks ago:

"We are, in short, created with limited ways and abilities to know the world, so that we may enjoy needing God and each other."

Needing God - necessitates weakness.

God gave them a baby, a child ....in their greatest moment of need.

Wow!

Day 337 - Thank God for Bethlehem.

2010-12-04T19:29:00.000-08:00

Day 337 and I'm just back from cold Minneapolis .....strangely, cold and snow put you more in the Christmas mood. Spend all day today Christmas decorating (yuck I loathe Christmas lights and contrarian wives!). Tomorrow Redeemer's Church Christmas stage design will dazzle and draw us into an Incarnational worship experience.

Day 2 of advent thoughts:

In our world, as in world's past, a persons geography so often defines their destiny.
Live in Africa and you will be poor.
Live in the US and you will be educated.
Live in North Korea and you will be isolated.
Live in France and you will loathe English cooking, etc, etc.

The Christmas story reminds us that the Scripture's will have none of this geographical fatalism that dismisses individuals, families, towns or entire ethnic groups.

People then, like today try to insist on this geographical fatalism.
In Jesus' day they said "what good thing can come out of Bethlehem?"

Christmas and Jesus kick geographical fatalism in the butt!

Now, God's goodness and God's good people can be found anyplace where people accept His grace.

Thank God for Bethlehem - it changes the reality of people living in the Huruma slum, Kenya; the poor village of Jocotillo Guatemala; the earthquake ruin of Haiti; the red light zone of Tijuana and the heat, flatness, bad air, 15.7% unemployment Central Valley, CA.

Day 324 and a little taste of how I hope to finish the year!

2010-11-21T20:44:00.000-08:00

Day 324 and yes ........I have miserably failed at doing this daily as I hoped I would do back in January ...like 324 days ago!

So, here's what I'm thinking. Starting December 5 I preach a Christmas series called It's Not Your Birthday DUH! Great title eh!!!

For the days of advent I will try and blog a daily blog that explores aspects of the incarnation.

Here's a taste:

"When Jesus was born, Mary, Joseph, and a handful of others knew that this child was the hope for Israel and the world. Against common sense and ruthless opposition they trusted God's leading and protection with that hope in mind. Just as Jesus grew in knowledge and wisdom, he must have grown in hope. From the cradle he learned to hope that crying would bring his mother to feed him and that his neediness would cause Joseph to protect and provide for him. For hope is that deep assurance that more is yet to come, in physical growth and sustenance, in knowledge and wisdom, and in love."
Taken from Flesh & Blood Jesus: Learning To Be Fully Human From The Son of Man @ Dan Russ.

See you in a few days.

Day 284 and I found some new inspiration.

2010-10-12T20:02:00.001-07:00

Day 284 and sorry for the less than regular blogging going on just now ......something to do with a writers block thing going on.

Seeking inspiration I hunted down some new writers. Ended up with a book called Good News for Anxious Christians @ Phillip Cary.

This book delivered. in fact it delivered so well I had to have one of my orthodox, reformed theological anchors read the book. Naturally I'm drawn to thinking that is outside of the box, on the edge, left of center and tending towards heresy! When you grow up in the faith and for decades have read and heard the teachings of the Scriptures - it needs a new sound to inspire you.
Obviously here the secret is to be inspired without becoming a heretic. Hence my anchors, as well as a solid theological education and constant reading in the field of orthodoxy.

Phillip Cary successfully delivers a new sound and new inspiration. Watch for this book appearing on our church resource shelves in the coming weeks.

Here's an excerpt from his chapter on "Why You Don't Have to 'Let God Take Control'":

Where did we get the idea that the Lord doesn't allow us to make ordinary human mistakes?We are not supposed to sin, of course, but there are many kinds of mistakes that are not sin, such as the mistakes we make when we're just learning how to use our talents well. Being fallible creatures, we have to make some mistakes in order to learn. But it will be difficult for us to learn from our mistakes if we don't admit to ourselves that we're the ones making them. This is one of the most important ways that the new evangelical theology has the effect of preventing people from becoming responsible adults.

And then here's the line, the inspiring line:

It's often put this way: God can't work in your life unless you let him. This is an astonishing piece of fantasy. Where in the Bible or anywhere else in God's creation did people get the idea that God was so helpless? If God can't do anything unless we let him, then God is not really God, and indeed he is less real than any person we know.

WOW!!
Cary writes on 10 topics that so often plague modern Christians causing anxiousness and fear. Teaching from seemingly good pulpits by well intended pastors - but sadly error that hurts and harms Christian health.

Wise Christians are becoming smarter at discerning that the truth is often stranger than it's been made to sound over the past many years.

At Redeemer's Church we're working hard at preaching the Gospel not just to people who've never heard it before, but also to Christians.

Day 275 and what I really think about visiting Africa.

2010-10-03T18:12:00.000-07:00

Day 275 .....and I borrow my leadership blog from Week 40.

It's time to be honest.
Not that I'm dishonest at other times. But, sometimes I choose not to share my more personal or vulnerable thoughts. This blog is me going to a more personal level than other times - and hence, more honest.

Here's my honesty - I don't really like going to Kenya, Africa.
I love the guys we partner with; I love our driver/agent Ben; I love all that's happening in the Furaha Community Huruma Centre, part of the Furaha Community Foundation; I love the first thing in the morning and the smells, aroma and sunrise of Kenya. But, i don;t really like going to Africa.

It's a hard journey - two major long flights.
It's a hard place to stay - my guy hurts for the entire time I'm there.
It's a hard place to lead - as team leader you are constantly aware that you are in a desperate city, a city that saw a terrorist attack against Americans; a city filled with desperate people seeing white people as targets; it's a place where the word police does not always equal justice but more often equal corruption.
It's a hard place to relax - travel through 10 time zones, hit the ground running, force yourself to sleep at the wrong times, swallow malaria meds, avoid the bad bacteria you are surrounded by; travel in a matatu with dust pouring into your lungs ...as well as hitting potholes, enduring near misses, sit in pollution clogged air, constantly watch over your shoulder.
Entering Kenya, Africa is hard and I don't really like doing it.

But during the past three years I've lead a team into a large slum in Nairobi twice a year.

This visit one of our team asked me why I keep going on the trips?

My answer - I have to, for my sake!

Not that I want to appear selfish, but, I have to find a way to keep myself exposed to some of the worst poverty on the face of the globe.
I have to find a way to keep myself aware of the reality of 60% of the world's population.
I have to find a way to be among the poorest of the poor and be where Jesus would be.

My spiritual leadership is dependent upon understanding true reality, and that reality has to involve the reality of what's happening in our globe and with the majority of humanity.

If I don't go, and go regularly (we so easily forget or switch off) I will move towards a self focused existence and a skewed view of reality.

But it does more.
It pushes me to maintain spiritual leadership as a faith exercise.

Let's be honest. Sometimes in the leading of a local church autopilot can kick in.
I've been doing this for over 10 years. Putting together a preach, leading staff, leading a congregation can too easily be done out of experience and not out of faith.
But when you enter Huruma slum and you see the chaos, hopelessness, desperateness of daily life, the though about seeing transformation come through the presence of Christ - the only way such could happen is through a moving of God. that is a act of faith, not an act of experience or professional pastoring.
Going to Kenya, Africa and the hardness of going ......renews the call of faith, the cry for more faith, the reliance upon faith and faith alone.

Going - is a spiritual necessity for effective spiritual leading.

Anyone want to join me?
Anyone want a shot of renewed, invigorated, desperate faith?

Day 260 Elder Brotherism.

2010-09-18T19:13:00.000-07:00

Day 260.
So I'm writing my fourth preach on the Prodigal God.
Strange thing happened. An angry lady left an angry message on my phone demanding that we take down our banner that promotes our series "The Prodigal God". She was mad that we would call God a prodigal. She indicated her Christian faith was insulted by our heresy.

Last week we defined Prodigal as "recklessly extravagant".
We explained that everything in the Prodigal Son story Jesus told points to the reckless extravagance of the Father. He runs to his son who wanted him dead; he kisses him and gives him the robe of honor, he throws a party to celebrate the return of the son who broke his heart, stole his money and spent it all.

......and God runs to us in the incarnation; God takes on human flesh; God hangs on a cross; God allows us to slap him, nail him, spear him, kill him.

Recklessly extravagant.

What a prodigal God.

What grace.

But the irony of the phone call was ...... I was penning thoughts about the Elder Brother.

Here's a line I preach tomorrow:

"When you become a Christian, either you will start becoming more like the Father or you will start becoming more like the elder brother. "

Listen in tomorrow to find out more.

This elder brotherism is so subtle and yet so destructive.

Day 257 - big smaller things.

2010-09-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

Day 257 and I continue to read the autobiography of Tony Blair.
Fascinating read.
Fascinating leader.
Among the things that have impressed me is the determination to make his time as Prime Minister focused on things of importance and not trivia.
It was while at university that a Ugandan friend, Olara Otunnu, impressed upon him that the world was not debating the trivial debates of the Labor Party. Instead, the world's population was focused on issues of life, hope, health versus death due to the ravages of poverty, conflict and disease.

Of course we are all experts at assuring ourselves that our trivia is not trivia but of world changing significance. We are experts are shrinking the world down to our context.
But in our sane, honest moments we know we are pretty small with regards to the whole.
But those sane, honest moments should not reduce us to viewing ourselves with disdain or disregard. Rather, they should propel us to involve our lives in the bigger, substantial questions of today.

I'm having this thought percolate around in my head for the past few weeks.
What would my life look like if I really took serious the bigger issues?
How could I involve myself in them?
How do I avoid spending a day, a week, a month, a life specialising in trivia that truly makes no or little difference in the global scope, the eternal scope of life.

Jesus obviously did this. Yet whilst literally saving the world, he still had an amazing propensity to do little things.
He had this uncanny capacity to touch the eyes of a blind guy, visit the home of a sick little girl, take his disciples fishing, go for a mountain walk .......and make all this connect to the biggest purpose possible.

Being about the bigger things is not sitting in rooms debating philosophical issues, or making grand speeches about them. Being about the bigger things is as much about making the little things bigger than they appear and making the bigger things more tangible than people think.

Jesus was brilliantly local, while global, while eternal.

Makes you rethink how you're doing most things.

Day 253 all about sons.

2010-09-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

Day 253 and I'm sorry I missed the last 6 days. Not a lot of Internet access at 8561ft. I scraped ice off my car on Thursday .....not even double figures in September. Imagine how cold it will be in January .....they say 40 below!

I was in Colorado taking our oldest son to Timberline Bible School nestled in a beautiful valley not far from one of the best ski resorts in Colorado. He's there for a year.

As for me leaving him alone in a new place surrounded by new people miles and miles from home - he coped with it much better than his dad! [You see I do have a heart!!]

As I drove away fighting back the tears, my first thought was - imagine if I was a single parent dropping off my only child. I couldn't imagine that emotion. I know he's doing a great thing, he knows it too. Its going to be life changing, life shaping - but we're going to miss him like crazy. Just as your son reaches the stage where conversation with him is good and meaningful; your his parent but also his friend; and he keeps his room clean and is bothered about personal hygiene - just then he leaves you (with you picking up the tab for it!).
My first thought was imagine how a single parent would cope with this.

That night, alone in my condo waiting my return flight, I began writing a funeral preach for the 22 year old son who tragically was killed in a road accident on Labor Day morning. I imagined his mother and sisters emotions. How do you cope with that? My tears moved from leaving my son in a good place for a good reason for a short time to tears for that family, and few tears of regret over my lack of perspective.

Quite a week.
A week with significant thinking about sons leaving.
Working on two preaches about the leaving of the prodigal son.
Understanding even more the leaving of God's only Son.
Wondering about how God feels when I, his son, leave.

A good, difficult, deepening week.

Day 248 - an insulting Jesus!

2010-09-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

Day 248 (otherwise known as Labor Day; otherwise known as last day of summer vacation mood; otherwise known as the day I set the barbecue on fire; otherwise known as our oldest sons last day in Reedley before flying to CO!)

So I'm chewing over yesterdays preach, the first in our new Prodigal God series. The insulting Jesus. Let's start by calling everybody listening to me "stupid sheep".
Jesus at his blunt best.

Normally I applaud Jesus' subtleness. He always was the 'come in the back door' communicator, the stealth bomber.
(I learned much from that tactic, especially spending much of my time communicating to people who've heard it all before. But come in the back door and you catch them unaware, off-guard and it forces a response - either emotion to reject or emotion to change. If I was teacher of homiletics I'd shout loudly about the need to preach this way 80% of the time.)

But this time - Jesus went front door, blunt, offensive, maybe slightly crude.

Why?

His bluntness, insult in calling people stupid sheep .....was within a series of three parables (Luke 15) that shout GRACE.

Interesting.

His bluntest insult matched His greatest presentation on GRACE.

Maybe the answer lies in the nature of grace.
Is grace not blunt?
Does grace not look every blunder, mistake, failure and yuck we're ever done and say - grace!
There is incredible boldness in grace.
Incredible audacity.

There's also incredible stupidity in grace.
Grace can be badly abused.
Grace can be trampled all over.

The bigger insult is not Jesus calling us stupid sheep; the bigger insult is what we do with grace.

It's got me really nervous, excitedly nervous about next Sunday's preach.

There is something deeply curious and perhaps confusing/conflicting about this Prodigal God.
Going to be quite a week working on Part II.

Day 244 - peccator or justus.

2010-09-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

Day 244 and I'm loving my reading for Sunday's preach.
In particular Martin Luther's line simul justus et peccator.

Now this is a brilliant line.
In some ways it explains exactly me.
It means - "simultaneously justified and sinful."

Luther knew that although he had been saved from sin's penalty he was in daily need of salvation from sin's power.

This means that scholars, pastors, esteemed Christian leaders need the gospel just as much as hardened pagans.

And this brings us to Sundays preach.

I thought I was going to give a gospel presentation, so that anyone attending who had been with us over the summer would be very clear on what it is at the core of Redeemer's Church and themselves enter a new relationship with Christ.
But what I'm learning and enjoying ....and getting exciting about preaching ....is that the gospel is not just for non-Christians but for Christians!

As Tim Keller says the gospel is not just the ABCs of Christianity but the A through Z.
It is everything.
It needs to be everything because many days I'm more peccator than justus.

Day 243 - back from vacation ...maybe.

2010-09-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

Day 243 and I'm back!
Yep 2 months off ...one for vacation as we travelled Scotland and Spain; one for catching up having been gone for four weeks!
Glad to be back - a good discipline.
So, we are on this daily blog of how deliberately I am following Christ.
Just read today that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is going to slow down now he's at the age of 79. Yesterday I finished the final book written by Dr John Stott ...at the age of 88.
Makes me feel a bit of a wimp for taking a two month break.
Of course, you might be saying 'well you only took a break from blogging about your christian living, you didn't actually stop doing it.'
Right?!?!

Existentially I was always doing it. Honestly.
But do you ever wonder how much of it you are actually doing.

We've just finished another August pierce the heart message series. Week after week I pounded myself with what following Christ, being part of His Church should look like.and every Sunday afternoon I lazed on my sofa watching the new English Premier League football game while munching on the remnants of my leftover Scottish chocolates.

Yep .....existentially, but honestly?

65 days away from blogging and I wondered how deliberate was I?
Not that I was deliberately not following Christ. Of course I continued my spiritual disciplines - maybe even sharper away from my desk.
But maybe I'm rethinking a bit what deliberate following is.
If I haven't helped a neighbor, or cared for an orphans, or shared my faith, fought for justice, or been humiliated for Him ....am I deliberately following.

I'm nicely following.
I could be contently following.
Maybe I could say I'm willingly following.
But deliberate?

Deliberate has intensity and action implicit in it; it's also connected to obedience, else what's the deliberate defining!

Now I sat in a Spanish cafe at midnight supping a San Miguel and counselling a friend on his spiritual journey.
I attended 4 different churches, of 4 different traditions on 4 different Sundays and enjoyed each worship experience.
I read 7 books - mostly on theological matters.
I had quality time with my boys talking life and faith.
I prayed.
I journalled.
I felt His presence.

But the core of what Jesus seems to indicate is following Him ......I didn't really do (except my giving to the poor continued courtesy of direct deposit!).

So Day 243.
What today have I done to deliberately follow Christ?
2:17pm .....still hoping it will happen.
This vacation mindset has to change.

Day 177 - summer reading

2010-06-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Day 177 and I'm selecting my reading for the next couple of weeks.
Take a look at my choices:

Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race & Class Divisions in a Consumer Church @ Paul Louis Metzger.
Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate @ Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang.
Leading Outside the Lines @ Jon Katzenbach & Zia Khan.
America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story @Bruce Feiler.
What the Dog Saw @ Malcolm Gladwell.
The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World @ Alan Roxburgh.

Eclectic and yet all speaking into my search for some new answers.

Truth be told I've been asking new questions these days. Questions I've never asked before.
Questions that other 'growth pastors' don't tend to ask.
Questions that point to new answers that both excite and freak me out.

My July reading is part of my hunt to hear God speak into these new questions and point me towards answers.

I think following Jesus very much involves being a learner. The model of rabbi and student doesn't pass when you reach 40 or 50 or 60. I want to remain a learner. But I want to remain a learner of new questions, not failing to grasp the answers to earlier, elementary, previous questions.

So this summer .... I'm learning.

Humbly.
Hungrily.
Intriguingly.
Broadly.
Curiously.

So ....I'm making sure that to me book list I add my The Book time.

Read of a church that recommends for all the 10/10 plan. Everyday everyone ensures they have 10 minutes in the Bible and 10 minutes in prayer.

Learning.
Following.
Being a student.

Some how I feel that this is going to be a good, exciting and defining summer.

Did you read my list of books ........see any common threads.

Watch out for some bold moves.

Hey ....my blog might not be too regular in the next few weeks ...busy reading, busy learning, busy gone!

Day 173 Humbly hold a humble Christ

2010-06-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

Day 173
As I begin reading for the final preach on The Star, The Cross & The Crescent I want to handle the topic of how you hold Jesus as unique yet without the arrogance of truth.
Been reading Hunter's book "To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility Of Christianity In The Late Modern World" (referenced it on my leadership blog as the must read of the summer).

Hunter writes these words:

"The significance of every person before God irrespective of worldly stature or accomplishment and the care for the least are the ethical hallmarks of Christianity, for they mark every human being and every human life in the most practical ways with God's image and therefore worthy of respect and love. Without these, Christianity is a brutalizing ideology........So far as I can tell, elitism for believers is despicable and utterly anathema to the gospel they cherish."

WOW!

The disturbing profoundness and thorough practicalness of this statement stirs me, shakes me.

This series has only more reaffirmed my belief in the church being the hope of the world - but when it gets it wrong ....being the scourge of the world.

Our church staff have been reiterating among ourselves the core characteristic of humility.
If we can humbly hold a humble Christ -what possibilities.

Today's intentional follow .....humble surrender to anothers diagnosis.

Day 172 - rest.

2010-06-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

Day 172
Rest.
I’m not talking about the long lie in or the lazy Sunday afternoon rest – do nothing, read the paper, enjoy the couch - I’m talking about something deeper.
Hebrews 4 talks about entering into God’s rest.
I’m needing/wanting to experience that afresh.
God’s rest is Christ.
To rest is to experience Christ.
It’s that kind of rest that my soul really needs.
It’s a rest that reminds you everything you are and have is sourced in Him.

Why we need rest is because we get too busy working. We would seldom if ever say it, but truth be told, we work as a means of our salvation.
It’s not that we aren’t trusting Jesus for our salvation …it’s just that we prefer to make sure of it ourselves.
Subtle.
Into the core of our being comes this need to work – and it robs us of the rest that is Christ. It robs us of what Christ’s salvation is.

Rest.

Yancey put it this way “there’s nothing you can do to make God love you more; there's nothing you can do to make God love you less.”

I cannot get my brain around that.

Maybe if I rest …then I’ll get it.
Maybe if I get it, I'll rest.

Day 170 - I missed blogging, but God didn't miss me!

2010-06-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Day 170 - and oops for missing last week.
Doesn't mean I wasn't intentionally following Jesus ....I just wasn't doing it as well as I should have been.

Busyness and its sister 'tiredness' can most times spur me on to better things and focused living - but occasionally it can really distract me.
Occasionally was last week.
Not my best week.
Thankfully I listened into a teach from my 'go to guy to get kicked in the butt spiritually every time', Bill Hybels.
Maybe its because we lived in Chicago and enjoyed our time at Willowcreek Community Church where Bill is the Senior Pastor.
Maybe its because in Cardiff, Wales many years ago God used Bill to ignite the passion I have for the local church being the hope of the world.
Maybe its because Bill's own vulnerability helped others, myself included, be honest about leadership and daily leading a local church.
Maybe its because his candid but dignified leading and teaching is something I seek to emulate.

Whatever the maybe ......on my way home from a road trip to Martinez,CA a CD of Bill just spoke powerfully to me on the topic of soul replenishment.
He hit the nail on the head.
Ouch.

Bill tied it in to the main thing a Senior Pastor is required to bring - deep spiritual connectivity to Christ.

Double ouch!

Every Senior Pastor knows this ...but sometimes the pile of leadership stuff on my desk takes priority over the main spiritual leadership stuff I'm charged to bring.

So .....while my last week wasn't my best week .....it was a week when God used a key leader to hit me over the head, stab me in the stomach and point me in the direction I need to go these summer months.

Soul replenishment.

I know this will be hard for me to do.
Leaders are so often task oriented and vision focused. When I have new vision to write, new budgets to write, new recruiting to do, new plans to set, new teams to form, new messages to write, new ideas to craft ......these things sit at the fore of my mind.
Replenishment means - these things have to sit beneath both Christ and my enjoyment just of Him.

I know I am going to have to force myself to stop planning, envisioning, strategizing - and listen, be still, - the three r's "rest, relax, rejoice" as someone called it today.

So .......this week is me figuring out how to do what isn't natural to me.

Ideas welcome.

Seems weird even suggesting my intentional follow is going to be resting, relaxing and rejoicing!

Could however, be fun.

Day 163 - Wash Over Me .....excuse the focus on me!

2010-06-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Day 163 and yesterday we saw 52 people baptized.
It was our first Wash Over Me Baptism Ceremony and a great Saturday afternoon.

There was one other baptism not in that 52, a 53rd - my own.

Strange.

When I was 13 years old I was baptized. With a mixture of 'the right thing to do', being obedient and wanting people to know that I was a Christian.
All good, all real to where I was and what I was feeling.

But over the past few years my views on baptism have begun to shift.
It's more centrally become sacramental.
But this year something bigger happened - its moved from being a fidecentric emblem to a Christocentric emblem.
This is for me a significant movement, and a movement that required me to do more than appropriate this into the baptism I had many years ago, to do the whole thing again.

Probably best that I speak into this odd site of the church's Senior Pastor being baptised by the church's staff.......

For years I've held to the idea that baptism is a result of my faith. I've come to believe in who Christ is; I've received by faith His salvation and I then take this further step in demonstrating my faith for others to see.
This is the classic believers' (converts) baptism.

Of course Christianity is divided between two types of baptism - believers' baptism or infant baptism. The more theological terms are credobaptism or paedobaptism.

I grew up credobaptist.

But in the past few years I've been restless with not so much with what is attached to credobaptism, more I've been restless with what's missing from credobaptism.
Initially I felt it minimized the Divine movement as a sacrament. Everything seemed to revolve around my movement. It was me who was moving to show my faith; it was me who was stepping in the waters and displaying my devotion; it was me identifying with Christ.
This seemed to wrestle baptism away from being sacramental. As a sacrament the movement is always from God. This is the case in every sacrament. God descends to meet us in the sacrament.

But in the past few months my restless has intensified.

Is it really all about my faith?
Is it not all about Christ?

And this began me re-reading the paedobaptist position.
[Thank you Sinclair Ferguson and your excellent defense/summary of infant baptism in Baptism: Three Views edited by David F. Wright.]

For me the issue I'm revising is not whether it is believers' or infants that get baptised - for me it is what movement is happening and where does it start.

Is it a "fidecentric" emblem or a "Christocentric" emblem?

Fidoecentric says it is my faith that is being outworked in baptism.
Christocentric does not minimize the role of faith but stressed that what is symbolized in baptism is not faith but the Christ in whom faith rests.

This is a defining difference.
This pushes it to being a sign and a seal rather than a symbol or testimony.
This pushes it away from faith towards grace......towards what God does, not what I'm doing.

This is a major part of the paedobaptist argument.
Maybe I'm exploring a third way, a way that takes the truth of believers' baptism but embraces some of the excellent theology behind the paedobaptist position.

Who says there's only two views.
Maybe its bigger than we've previously known.

Yesterday .....quietly at the end of the ceremony as people headed for food.... staff and one pastor decided to experiment with a third way.

Day 159 it wasn't a boring day.

2010-06-09T21:39:00.001-07:00

Day 159 - great day.
Spent 3 hours with two guys from Kansas talking church transformation. Hopefully they learned some new stuff, I know I did.
Then ......spent nearly four hours with Jake from Guatemala. Neat.
We ate, we laughed, we nearly cried (hey we are men, we 'nearly' cried), we dreamed, we strategized and at the end we knew that God had showed up and something new, bigger is being birthed.

Life with the Holy Spirit is so unpredictable.
There are always the constants of everything pointing to Christ, God being glorified, the Kingdom of God being expanded. But within that there is the unpredictable.
Who would have thought I'd every be in Reedley. Who'd have thought I'd still be here!
Jake certainly never imagined he'd be in Guatemala with a wife and two kids!
But both of us, all of us, are trying to do life with God and for God.
That life is unpredictable.

Maybe this is why Scripture is always emphasising faith.
Unpredictability can only be lived in and through faith.
Maybe this is why Scripture says anything not of faith is sin!
Maybe living predictable lives is sinful.
It's certainly boring.

Today wasn't a boring day!

Day 158 - here's the truth.

2010-06-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Day 158 and its been hard to blog the last few days. Sorry folks.

Partly a lack of inspiration ...always happens in June as you begin to run out of steam.
Really looking forward to my summer reading and getting refreshed.

Partly, way to busy for June as well.
Been traveling with some staff to do training for a church in Tacoma, WA (one day was 68F and blue skies, next day was 54F and lashing rain!).
Today, I'm just back from Tujunga, CA and training with another church.

Both these churches are getting ready for their first Alpha launch after the summer ....and we are praying with them for many people to come to faith in Christ.

As I sit here blogging, I'm searching for some inspirational thought.
There's one line that today I shared with a Senior Pastor that just resonated with everyone around the table. It's Jack Welch's (former GE boss) leadership and management mantra: "Truth is the kindest form of management."

Why do we often think softening the truth is kinder?

There is something about the 'truth' that is greater than we imagine.
There is something about living in truth, operating in truth that does something more than we think.
This is not just at the leadership level, its also at our personal level.
Can you imagine if tomorrow you operated always from the truth position.
Truthful with others, truthful to others.

I spoke last week to a friend of mine Keith Getty (modern hymn writer and sad Liverpool fan). We spoke about Dr Tim Keller and his approach to ministry, especially worship in New York city. Surrounded by world class art and artists Keller knows that his worship team and his oration on Sunday mornings cannot compete with the class acts people have enjoyed on Saturday nights in New York ....so he doesn't try and compete with mediocre music or drama or speaking; rather, he gives them Jesus.

To the couple who's marriage is falling apart; to the guy racked with guilt; to the lonely women, the drained mother, the estranged father .....mediocre music in church does nothing for them. The one thing the church can give them is Jesus. Jesus is the answer to failing marriages, guilt, loneliness, weariness, pain, disappointment.
Jesus is the truth.

The truth is - the church should stop trying to compete with what the world does very well, and give the world what it hasn't got .....the truth....Jesus.

Day 152 - teaching our staff.

2010-06-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

Day 152 and I spent the day educating our staff.
Being a global church is at the core of Redeemer's Church - but how can we be global if even our staff are ignorant to the biggest global event happening.
Three billion people will watch this global event.
It is not beyond exaggeration that the world will nearly stop for four weeks as this global event takes place .....except the US!

This global event, even global history is the FIFA World Cup being held in South Africa.

But our staff, most of our church, most of our country are absent (except Tom Cruise interestingly ....something to do with a friendship with David Beckham!).

So .....alongside blogging nearly every day about how I intentionally followed Jesus today, I will try to help those who read my blog become global people by updating you on what everyone else in the world has been a part of over the next four weeks.
here's the video of England team leaving London to fly to South Africa - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8717146.stm

My intentional follow of Jesus today was to help our staff be global.

It also involved praying for our friends Jake & Renee in Guatemala as they help people left homeless due to the recent volcano.
It also involved beginning to write the first preach in our new series The Star, The Cross and The Crescent. Trying to speak into the global conflict of our world ....a clash of three religions.
We need to learn what's happening on our globe - misunderstanding is causing more conflict.
We need to learn how to handle truth without falling into the arrogance of truth.
we need to be in relationship with our neighbors in a very small, village globe.

Following Christ is now, as it always was, a life that is to bless every nation.

Day 151, day 43 in the gulf.

2010-06-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

Day 151 and its Day 43 of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill.

Its hard for us to comprehend how catastrophic this oil spill is.
Its hard to understand how the people in Louisiana are feeling about their state again being hit hard.
Its hard to understand how it will eventually get sealed off.
It's hard to comprehend the long term environmental impact of this disaster.

It's also difficult to think that we'll learn from this.
They drill because we are thirsty for oil.

We, me included, have lifestyles that depend on oil.

Someone today told me it takes somewhere between 20-50 years for a culture to change its transportation habits.

There is a direct correlation between our thirst for oil and what's happening in the Gulf.

This is a truth we don't like.
It's not a new truth.

The Jews didn't kill Jesus .....I did, you did, we did.
There's a direct correlation between me and what happened on the cross.

I'm amazed that in all the reports I've read, watched or listened to ....this is never mentioned.

My intentional follow of Jesus today was to confess my guilt in the oil disaster, and to confess my role in the death of Jesus.

Its strange how one thought leads to another!

Day 149 OUCH!

2010-05-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Day 149 and its the first time since Christmas that on Sunday night I can look forward to a slow Monday morning. Memorial Weekend - sweet.

We finished our Consumed: What's Sucking The Life Out Of You series. 6 weeks of looking at the other 'American Idols'. Been a great series. Many people thanked us for it, but in the same breath also thanked us that it was over! Been a stabbing, punching kind of series. The kind of series that took a mirror to our souls and we didn't like what we saw.

How many days have we woken up with Leah wishing it was Rachel?
How many days - even as followers of Christ - have we wished for more and we never turned to Jesus to find the more?

The honest truth - most Christians in the US are disappointed with their lives and Jesus isn't enough.

Ouch!

But true.

Join in the journey of falling in love with Jesus all over again.

Day 146 - those dang vuvuzelas!

2010-05-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

Day 146 sees me guiding you to the leadership blog I wrote this today:

Week 22 and as we get ready for the greatest show on earth (come on you yanks, the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa!!) - one British TV reporter went to see what all the fuss was over the vuvuzelas!
Ever heard of them?
They are like plastic trumpets that loads of fans play during the game.
Watch Gabby's report and listen to the noise: http://bit.ly/bn11uU

It's Africa, and with the World Cup being held in Africa for the first time - let it be an African World Cup.
I say that (with truth and desire), but i know if i was attending the world cup (sadly I tried unsuccessfully to arrange a vital missions trip to South Africa in June!!!) after 20 minutes of enjoying the vuvuzelas noise and the African feel ...I'd want them to shut up!!

This is our tension, and its a tension we don't always do well at living within - to the decrement of the Gospel.
It's hard to live out true diversity, we tend more towards uniformity at worst or similarity at best.

For decades the missiological push has been for homogeneous mission. Think of a book like Unchurched Harry & Sally; or the definition of Saddleback Sam. The phrase 'people like us' was a missiological phrase to help churches achieve maximum growth.
We avoided the tension by pulling towards similarity, homogeneity.

But today's church in today's America can no longer bypass the tension.
Homogeneity is not the way of the 21st century, nor the call of the postmodern, emerging society, of even greater significance - nor is it the Gospel.
Leaders must learn to live with the noise of the vuvuzelas. In truth, leaders must learn to enjoy the noise of the vuvuzelas.

Watch this blog as over the next few months we engage further on this topic. For more reading try this very helpful webblog: http://djchuang.com/multi/

Day 145 ...keep reading to the advert link!

2010-05-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

Day 145 - that's what happens when staff take a trip away with you ..... you forget to blog.
The last few days have been very good days.
We've talked, talked, laughed, laughed, eaten, eaten and still we returned to sunny old Reedley.
Something is stirring in Reedley that is keeping us all here; something bigger than each of us and all of us; something that has us both excited and petrified.
Intentionally following Jesus is about figuring out where He wants you and making sure you are there.
Intentionally following Jesus is about taking the next step no matter how big that step it.
Intentionally following Jesus is about figuring it out before you blurb out a vision that has no substance nor strategy.
So .....forgive the abstract, suggestive blog .....trust me something is brewing.

Day 145 - so if 6 days got lost on a staff trip to San Francisco ....imagine how many days might get lost when the greatest show on earth begin in 17 days.

Know what it is?

Watch this brilliant advert and guess: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE

Day 139 Finding the guts to preach.

2010-05-20T20:37:00.001-07:00

Day 139 and I've been working on my preach.

We've been teaching a series called Consumed: What's Sucking The Life Out Of You? Every week we unpack an idol that we bow down to that wrecks our life - bowing down to the idol of busyness; bowing down to the idols of comparison and pretense; bowing down to idol of family.

This week we unpack perhaps the most dangerous idol to bow down to.
The trouble with this idol is its inside our churches!

Ouch!

No doubt we're heading to another stirring Sunday.

My intentional follow today ......have the guts to write this preach!

Day 137 Too busy to stay awake - duh!

2010-05-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

Day 137 and for the first time in two days I'm catching my breath with my Netbook open. What a last two days.
Yesterday was a great trip to Tacoma, WA and good time with my friend John Sims. We are waiting for things to explode (there's been enough imploding over the past few years) in the church he pastors. Great trip - but it is an 18 hour day.
Today .....boom urologist visit. New guy, younger guy - hopefully got some newer, fresher thinking on whatever has been going on in that area for 2 years! Nothing sinister, but really annoying. Then back to back to back to back meetings .....and then .......2 hours of High School Scholarship awards (aaargh!!!!!).
So now, 9.30pm, open the blog and try to write.

Flying gives you time to think, to read, to focus (especially with Horizon Air and their complimentary microbrews! ). Read Gregory Boyd's new book Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now. Very simple book and there was nothing particularly theologically stirring unlike Boyd's others books.
Taking the teaching of two ancients (well older than most of us) and one modern contemplater, Boyd urges us to see that right now, this very second God is present. But ....we so often miss him.
Why???
DUH!!!

Gave the book away today to a guy who so needs to find the Divine Presence at a very difficult time in his life.

Boyd's simplicity was somewhat refreshing. God is right now with us. But are we AWAKE to His presence.

So maybe for the past two days I've run at 100mph and not had time to blog ....but even at my fast pace God can keep up and He remains totally present.

My intentional follow is to stay AWAKE to His presence ...nothing less, but maybe nothing more.

Day 135 - a little more on entropy.

2010-05-16T17:48:00.001-07:00

Day 135 and I'm coming back to last nights blog and "Scott's" comments.

Last night we commented that Redeemer's Church sitting around 800 people has to watch out because often churches of this size plateau and then decline.
Not always, but often - sadly too often.
Church guru's and consultants and have written on this stuff significantly over the last decade. from examining hundreds of churches of this size (perhaps not having reached this size in the short time Redeemer's have), and repeatedly something happens that stops the growth.

Why?

I'm not big into always looking to general management literature to examine the church. Although Augustine reportedly said "all truth is God's truth", and if there's something in that, listen to the 'truth' written by two management guru's :

"The entropic process is a universal law of nature in which all forms of organization move toward disorganization or death." [written by R.L. Kahn & D. Katz]

A leaders role is to lead a church/an organization away from this lurking entropy.

Now probably this topic is better explored under the other weekly leadership blog I write [www.clanofissachar.blogspot.com] but for me, as a leader, this is about my daily intentional following of Christ.

I grew up with a theology that preached 'small things', especially small things in these the last of the last days. It was a branch of pretty firm dispensationalism. I found that this 'small things' philosophy sometimes excused poor leadership and/or discipleship. Old fashioned and ineffective methodology was covered over by a theology that said 'we're not called to be fruitful but faithful and in the end days most will turn from God and only a remnant, a few will hold on.'
Subtly underneath this theology lay an excuse for no church growth, in fact, underneath it lay an excuse for entropy and decline.
The local church I grew up in reached a peak of 200 back when I was a teenager, and today that local church sits around about 40 people, and the group of churches they belonged to which at their peak had 25,000 participants today has around 10,000 participants.

Was their theology correct, and yet/or, was it cover for poor leadership.

God does call us to be faithful, but God also calls us to be fruitful.

So where am I going?

A leaders job is to define reality. As I read, reflect, watch other local churches and follow the journey of Western Christianity from the 19th, 20th into 21st century - decline is the constant.
Rather than turn to a theology that could be seen to justify such, I turn to philosophy if not anthropology to explain what's happening.

Entropy is universal.
We naturally move towards decline.
Death behooves us.

But God specialises in taking death and through death bringing life.
While entropy may be natural, resurrection is biblical.
while entropy sits within the laws of a fallen world, dying to self to bring forth new life sits within the law of the Spirit.

therefore, if a church, a christian, a Christian leader walks the way of the Spirit - that church, that Christian that leadership can lead something away from entropy towards life - renewed life, but still life.

My intentional following as a local church pastor is to be aware of the natural law of entropy and lead away from it through resurrection and renewal.
This implies if not signifies change ...change of vision, change of method.

Does this help?

Day 134 - 998 pages later.

2010-05-15T20:44:00.000-07:00

Day 134 and sorry its been a few days been plowing my way through Organization Change: A Comprehensive Reader.....and believe me its comprehensive - all 998 pages.

Real interesting story:
The artillery division of the British Army in the First World War determined that an artillery unit was to consist of loaders, an aimer, discarders and three persons to hold the horses because of noise.
At the start of the Second World War the guns were now all mechanized - but you guessed it - the three horse holders were still part of the artillery unit!

Change.

Been thinking a lot about change and change leadership as Redeemer's Church and I have been together for 7 years.
Seen great changes in the past 7 years.
But ......more's coming.
It's the 7 year cycle.
Good things happening, much growth, new ideas, new things, new people.
But now's the time we need to take bigger steps of bigger change.

Normally churches plateau at the 800 number.
Things are good, people around, a buzz.
But entropy lurks and subtly you wake up 3 years later and its too late.

So ...998 pages of reading, much prayer and rethinking all adds up to a fun Saturday and an intentional follow of Jesus Christ for an assistant kingdom builder based in Reedley, CA!

Day 130 No comparison.

2010-05-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

Day 130
As I work on this Sunday's preach a quote from Henri Nouwen has stirred me: "Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be."

Good isn't it.

It is so counter cultural to the way things operate in our American society. We live in a comparison culture. At every level from the school yard to the corporate jungle, we are pushed to measure ourselves from the standard of others.

I had a professor in seminary who graded on the dreaded curve. He would only give one A, and student's grades were calculated in comparison to every other students. Forget how well you did to the actual test, it was about how you did compared to your fellow students!

In steps spirituality and unlike sports, Greek exams, or corporate success it has nothing whatsoever to do with the person sitting next to you, it has everything and only to do with you.

Thanks Henri for removing the stink of comparison for the sweetness of unadulterated simple devotion.

Intentional follow Day 130 ......a quiet time of prayer and Scripture reading with no need to perform for the applause of others!

Day 128 finally got my pc back!

2010-05-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

Day 128 and wasn't that I was still sick, it was that our other pc got sick and so my wife stole my little Netbook and therefore my means of blogging.

Today was Mother's Day. Well done boys on getting your mum a great gift.

It also was a day we preached about not bowing down to the idol of family.

I have been reading Tim Keller's book Counterfeit Gods and his handling of the story of Abraham was masterful. my reading and discussing of this book with some guys in my leadership group caused me to turn to this story to examine the danger of bowing down to the idol of family.

Idol's normally come from a good thing that we elevate to a supreme thing.
It's not something bad that kills us it is something good.

Idolatry for us is also subtle.
slowly and subtly something moves from a good healthy position to a supreme bad position.
Perhaps family is one of the biggest threats to our spiritual allegiance in the 21st century.

This was Abraham's situation.
His deepest desire for an heir, a good desire for a son, ended up in that son replacing God.
And - it was God who gave him that son.

How often does God risk being demoted by the very things he decides to give or grant us?
Why would God grant us something that in turn could led us to idolatry and away from Him?

I guess its the accusation Satan has constantly used against God. 'People will only follow/serve God if they don't have a choice! Give them a choice and they'll choose not to follow God!'

The amazing thing is, God is up for that challenge, and repeatedly God provides the alternative for us to follow.
Amazing grace; amazing love.

Maybe this is the bones of next week preach beginning. God needs idols!!

Going to be an interesting week of study.

Day 123 - my guts churning.

2010-05-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

Day 123 and the flu still has me down and out.
Hey - lost 6lbs in the past 4 days, so back to my optimal running weight.

Been trying to read away the hours.
Saturday had me reading 2 very helpful books, today's 2 books equally helpful.

Book #1
The Myth of a Christian Religion: Losing Your Religion for the Beauty of a Revolution @ Gregory Boyd.
Gregory Boyd stands in a camp of the Evangelical church that I best associate with - skeptical if not cynical. Not in a sinful/sarcastic way, but in a valuing critiquing way. Boyd doesn't cynically deconstruct leaving everything demolished, he attempts to build something new, better, truer.
This book takes his earlier controversy - The Myth of a Christian Nation - and veers it to radical questions of personal living.
Good read ....and despite people assuming his position is left rather than right - his position is centrally Christ and being authentic to His Kingdom.

Book #2
Becoming a Contagious Church @ Mark Mittelberg.
This revised edition with still too strongly a modernistic/formulaic/propositional approach to evangelism than I'm comfortable with still stabs and stirs in many ways. Mark starts by pulling no punches - contagious Christianity is only contagious as you are.
Am I living an evangelistic lifestyle?
When I shop, eat or run am I contagious?

Today I am ....this flu is highly contagious!!!
Sit around me and boom ....you'll have an instant weight loss gift!

But what about my faith, my belief, my Christianity ....sit around me and would you catch that also?

Mark's book might be too linear for me ....but his punch has me troubled.
Take them both together - Gregory's revolutionary lifestyle and Mark's call to being contagious - take them beyond books and reading to action and priorities ......yep ....being stuck in reading, has got my gut churning more.

And ...because I'm home more not only is my gut churning, my head hurts ....Carolyn has recorded back to back episodes of "7th Heaven" (aargh) .....whats worse sore gut or hurting head!!

Day 120 and my flu has me pasting!

2010-05-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

Day 120.
Posted this over on my leadership blog.
Maybe you'll enjoy it; maybe you'll be intrigued:

Week 18 and leadership never slows or stops.
Ever found that.
Even on off days - the leadership gift that you have been entrusted with doesn't switch off.
Is this a curse, or just a burden.
Sometimes in some settings you just want to be led, not a leader.
Even today.
Flu day number 2, no chores, no yard, no work ....but the leadership antenna remains on.
For me - today became a reading day, a vital part of leading.

Two books:
James White's A Brief History of Christian Worship. Helpful and insightful. Pushing me further down the path of being baptized again as I read early church and first six century's understanding of baptism.
Second book was Bill George's 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis.

George has delivered another good book.
It's in the Warren Bennis Signature Series - should be good.

My major learning from George comes from him citing Kevin Sharer (CEO of Amgen). Sharer leads from his favorite biology analogy: "What species survives? The biggest? The strongest? The fastest? No, it's the most adaptive."

There's insight.

After the week I've had where a new vision has impaled itself in my imagination, perhaps even my soul, a vision that has radical and revolutionary components in it; boundary breaking angles to it ....this quote brought amazing affirmation.

Adaptive leadership.
George's take on adaptive leadership is that the penalty for non-adaptive leading is severe.
We live in a changing, moving culture - adapt or perish.

This all sits within George's 1st lesson for leading in crisis - "Face Reality" (borrowing Max DePree's mantra).

It was this core leadership task that had spurred me on to rethink, re-envision, re-engineer the next many years. Look around, see what's around, feel what's around and then adapt vision and direction to that reality.

As I read today even more affirmation came ....as well as a grasping of the size of the mountain ahead of us.

It's been a good day.
It's been an adapting day.
It's been a leading day.

Day 119 - sickness.

2010-04-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

Day 119 - and I've got flu.
Some call it stomach flu, of course its not really stomach flu its really gastroenteritis.
So it hit.
4am in the morning and growing.
Thought it was the broccoli I ate last night. I think its right to blame the broccoli ...it deserves it.

Hey hopefully 48 hours.

Huge weekend.
Was meant to run my first half-marathon since my forced lay off ....but tendonitis hit me two weeks ago.
Was meant to eat out tonight with two good friends ....sorry friends.
Was meant to fix sprinklers tomorrow - yep, something good is coming out of this!
But the size of this weekend was bigger than any of these things.
Penultimate weekend of the Premier League.
36 games played in the league and there is a 1 point difference!
Chelsea lead Manchester Utd.
Chelsea play at Liverpool; Man U play Sunderland at home.
Need Chelsea to slip up and Man U to win.
Huge weekend.

Is my gastroenteritis symptomatic of what this weekend is going to be like?
But hey, hopefully 48 hours will see the world sorted!
At least my world.

I know there's a bigger world. But sometimes we live in shrunken worlds - our own.
I know that gastroenteritis isn't that major.
I know Premier League results isn't world peace.
But sometimes we allow our world to shrink to the things that only bother us.

Doing this series Consumed:What's Sucking the Life Out of You?
Really a series about the idols we bow down to.
Was just thinking today that one of those idols is bowing down to our own little worlds.

Weird.

Here I am thinking about preaching on the very things I'm doing as of Friday evening!

Is my sickness really my gastroenteritis or is my sickness deeper.

But its 9:10pm and I need to sleep.

Ponderings, musings, thoughts......blame my sickness.
I guess the question is what sickness?

Day 118 Living by mending.

2010-04-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

Day 118.
I read today these words "Man was born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue."
It's from Mark DeYmaz's blog and he attributes it to Eugene O'Neil.
Interesting line.

I guess theologically its espousing the theology of original sin.
Interesting theology - maybe more Greek in origin than Hebrew - but that's a debate for another day.
The grace of God is glue - so true. Excellent truth.
But its the line "he lives by mending."
That's an intriguing line.

Everyday is a mending day. Something of my brokenness can get fixed. Day in day out.
So maybe my intentional follow today was undergoing some mending.
But do we always know the mending?

Maybe it happened during lunch as I talked with a friend and learned more about another culture.
Maybe it happened as I sat and listened to a pastor speak about why we should love the church?
Maybe it happened as I had physio and with ice wrapped around my ankles I reflected and meditated.
Maybe it happened as I read Scripture.
Maybe it happened as I wrote.
Maybe it happened tonight as I sit with my family.
Maybe it happened ........

Spiritual soul mending isn't logical or rational.
The mending is a work of grace - and grace is bigger, broader, un-relentless, unorthodox. You maybe don't know where or when it seeps into a broken part of your soul. But it does. Wonderful.

The thing I can be sure of is that the mending wasn't maybe.
Maybe I don't always know when it happens.
but there's no maybe that it does.
God's grace.

A surrendered life is a mending life - even on the days you don't act very surrendered.

Day 117 Em.........

2010-04-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

Day 117 and I'm just home from teaching the first part in a two part Alpha Course teaching on the Holy Spirit.
Remember last nights blog on a normal day and why would you want a normal day when you can have an inspired, God present day. Well, tonight's teaching more or less told us that the inspired, God present day can be the normal when you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit.

Em .......does that mean that my previous blog reveals than I'm not always indwelt with the Holy Spirit?

You could say yes.
You could say 'I leak!'

But after tonight's talk wow ...I wish I didn't leak as much.
Here is the life of God - His presence, His salvation waiting to saturate, soak us ...wow.

Jesus said people who drink of him would never thirst again, but would have God's life bursting up within them.

So after another night of teaching on salvation, water, baptism .....I'm back wondering about being baptised again in June?!

Em.........

Day 116 - a wake up call.

2010-04-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Day 116
Tired.
Monday was an 18 hour day.
Tuesday yuck.
Found myself awake at 3am on Monday.
At 3.45am still awake and felt a stirring in my soul. Began writing at 4am what I was feeling. 5.30am thought about a couple of hours of sleep, but ended up out running and the day just kept going.
Monday evening had the chance to share with church leadership what I had written.
Slept deep on Monday night.

So what was Tuesday about?
Tired or something else?

Mick McCarthy the manager of Premier League Wolves football team celebrated on Saturday his team staying up in the Premier league for another season - amazing achievement. But today at a news conference he talked about how the rest of the week he's been depressed.

Could relate to that.

Monday was huge.
Inspiration, a sense of God, His nearness, vision, things clicked.
Tuesday ........normal returned.
But who wants normal when you can have inspired, hearing God, holy stirrings.
Normal is dull. Normal is tiring. Normal is depressing.

But most days we live in normal.

Here's the point:
Easy to be intentional in following when you have a 3am Divine wake up call, much harder to be intentional on a normal day.
That's the point.

Day 114 - what really happened?

2010-04-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

Day 114 and today's preach spoke loudly that the Christian faith believes in a Redeemer. His redemption can change your circumstances or change you in the midst of your circumstances.
Maybe I was challenging Bart's comments from last week (although I agree with loads of Bart's thinking) - but core to the Christian faith is solid hope and a solid Redeemer who does change destiny's.

My intentional follow was to represent Christ well. Yes, our choices can thwart his redemptive changes, but Christ is a Redeemer.

Preachers sit and ponder what people will do with your message after they hear it:
Will they walk out, go for lunch and forget it?
Will they leave feeling good but untransformed?
Will they leave and talk about what they heard over lunch and on into the next week (certainly Bart achieved that)?
Will they take action?

To represent Christ well is not to simply teach truth, but teach inspired truth. To have heard the Holy Spirit correctly during the week, crafted your insights correctly and been a vessel that God uses to flow through to bring change not just information.

We applaud many preachers, but truly only eternity will reveal good preaching.

So my intentional follow - maybe I won't know if it truly did until eternity.

Day 113 - reality.

2010-04-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

Day 113 - yard work again...aaargh.

But tonight I'm sitting watching the movie The Informant.

Interesting.

What's interesting is the central character Mark Whittaker who can be in the most important discussion involving major issues but his mind has wandered to the biggest load of trivia you could think of ....like how do Polar Bears know their noses are black which they hide when they hunt for penguins!

The best parts of the movie are the comments he's thinking inside his mind that distract him from reality. Fascinating.

Or, is the trivia reality.

Where does reality sit?

Who determines what's reality?

It's real to Mark Whittaker.

Here's my intentional follow ........ try to match my reality to God's, He is ultimate reality.
Today I've tried to live in the truest reality there is - I've tried to focus my thoughts through prayer on what God is doing.
Today, more than many days, I've tried to line my reality up to His.

Yard work was easier, being Mark Whittaker is easier.D

Day 111 - should I get baptized again?

2010-04-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

Day 111.
Drove with two staff up to Pine Flat Dam .....it's that time of the year again to film a video about baptism.
It's a bit like Christmas and Easter - every year you've got to find a new fresh way to talk about something that you've preached or taught every year.

Fortunately the incarnation, the resurrection and baptism are loaded with layer upon layer of truth and theology.

Is baptism simply declaration or is it a sign and a seal?
Is baptism just telling others you are a follower of Christ or is something sacramental happening in the mystery of how God comes to us?
Is it demonstrating salvation or is it forming the union with Christ that expresses salvation

It is all of these.
Baptism is a layered truth .....the deeper you peel the more there is.

Today was unpeeling another layer to help people .....but it was also an act of worship for me.
as i taught on film another layer of baptism, my heart at more and more for the wonder and the amazing grace of our amazing God.

You'll need to wait and see the film in May - but even although it is over 30 years since I was baptized ...I'm thinking about doing it again!

Day 110 - sorry for the lapses.

2010-04-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

Day 110 and its looking more and more like a 'every second day' blog. Hey, unless you blog every single day quit complaining!

The sad thing that it has got me reflecting on is "could his mean that I'm only intentionally following Jesus every other day?"

The truth ........maybe!!

Every day i wake up I mean to blog. So could it be that every day I wake up I plan to follow Jesus - but .... stuff happens, things come in, other things take over.

Its the truth.
(So I guess that's my intentional follow of Jesus today ...major on truth!)

Now this doesn't mean that every day I don't hold to a Christian world view.
It doesn't mean that I go out and commit some cardinal sin.
It doesn't mean that I deny Jesus.
But it does mean that some days slip by and really, my life is no different than the people around me who don't claim to follow Jesus. Nothing is distinct.

Makes you wonder if the more weird/extreme forms of following Jesus that some Christians portray might be better .....even on off days either by how you dress, attending yet another church service, speaking some King James language and/or clearly being "not of this world" at least you remain distinct.

My problem - because I believe following Christ is not done with the extremes of clothes, language and being oddly different, but from being "in the world" while not being of it my distinctions require intentionality. This authentic following cannot happen at the surface level. It is deeper. Christ's transformation happens within the soul and when we live it out it is with substance and meaning, not trivia or surface.

So on a day when I get cluttered up with junk, when I spin too busy, when I feel sucked dry or just crappy ........I don't look any different than people who don't follow Jesus.....and while I may hold still to my faith in Christ ......my lack of intentionality means I do a lousy job at representing Him.

So maybe my lapses in blogging reveal unintentional lapses in authentic following.

Excuse me if I remain sometimes lapsing in blogging, but don't excuse me if I fail to follow intentionally every day.

Day 108 - Sigh.

2010-04-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

Day 108 and it could seem that my daily blog has turned into a every other day blog. Sorry folks. So wanted to blog last night, but my Stockton hotel room didn't have wifi! Yep another reason not to visit Stockton!
I had just dropped Bart off at the airport for his red-eye flight back to Cincinnati, for the first time since 6pm on Friday I was alone for the 2 hour drive to Stockton. When I dropped my 3rd cousin off and heading to the I-99 I took some deep breathes. I was good to breath freely, because for the last 48 hours I hadn't. Bart just has this knack of getting me agitated.
but very quickly after taking some deep, silent breathes (Bart also can talk solid for 48 hours!) very quickly the silent breathes turned into sighs.

Sighs of exasperation that sometimes my own radicalness gets tempered. Bart appears somewhat free in expressing his radicalness.
Sighs of tiredness at what could be required to get the revolutionary flames burning brighter again in my leadership.
Sighs of fear. slight fear, but still fear that to truly live out some of the theology I hold will see me more misunderstood and yet again misinterpreted and accused of being a heretic.

Maybe it was just the tiredness of a busy constant 48 hours, but my first response to Bart's visit was to sigh.

Gladly it wasn't my lasting response.

By my stop at Turlock and some processing, my response turned to vigour and enthusiasm to take a hard look at so much of what happens in my own life and in the life of Redeemer's Church and how it represents Jesus.
Thanks 'Jovial Cynic' for your encouragement.

So ....that was Day 107....Day 108 I'm at a meeting with a bunch of pastors in Stockton - SIGH!

Day 106 and Bart Campolo stirs me again.

2010-04-17T14:55:00.000-07:00

Day 106 and Bart Campolo is staying with us and as usual its a theological stirring.
The topic is incarnational Christianity.
Others would place Bart in the new monasticism movement. Bart would avoid any categorization.
He lives with his family in the ghetto of Walnut Hills, Cincinnati (yep, it doesn't sound too ghetto'ish, but it is!).
The conversation revolved around his inability to truly incarnate himself into that culture and context.
Christ did.
But Bart can't.
He remains a privileged white guy in a black urban sprawl.

That forces some interesting incarnational ministry rethinking.
Even more Christological amazement.

Other stirring rethinking to date on this visit is the idea that some people won't ever get fixed.
It wasn't a throw away comment by Bart, Bart works with some majorly broken people. He spoke this carefully and deliberately.
His experience is that some people will never be fixed.
The church language of transformation, of come to Jesus and everything will be fixed ....is not the reality of people attending the Walnut Hills Fellowship.
OUCH!

But really, if you think about it, we see untransformed lives in all our churches. We see untransformed lives by people claiming to have been Christians for 40 years.
Think of people in your church that are angry, short fused, lazy, jealous, selfish ......and have been for all the years of being Christians.

Transformation?
The bad stuff gone and new stuff showing?

Bart's bold comment resonates with every pastor's reflection of some of the people in their churches.

So what does this mean?

Does it mean transformation never happens? No.
Does it mean it rarely happens? I don't think.

Maybe it means that transformation is a miracle. But as miracles go, common and/or always is not vocabulary you can use.

It's got me thinking. Wondering. Disagreeing, but now perhaps agreeing.
Certainly processing.

Thanks Bart for stirring again.
Intentional following needs critical thinking.

Still got a supper, a Sunday preach, a Sunday lunch and a ride to the airport to be stirred even more by the guy always carrying a spoon to stir it with.

Day 104, a thankful day on the I-5.

2010-04-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

Day 104 and I spent half of it on the I-5 heading south to Tujunga, S.Cal. Redeemer's Church is working with a church in Tujunga CA and another church in Tacoma WS to help them turnaround. Every month I get to visit these churches and aside from bringing come coaching I get to hear stories of pastors, staff and leaders getting 'it'.

Today was no exception. When asked the biggest challenge the pastor was facing, without a blink or pause he told me 'Christians!' He then preceded to tell me that after many years of going the extra mile with Christians, of giving them priority even over his own kids etc ...he was drawing a line and for ungrateful, complaining, 'not getting it supposed Christ followers', he was showing them the door.

Wow!

This pastor had been pushed around, complained at, criticised and wrongly accused for years - but no longer. Christ, His vision and His mission, reaching lost people, extending God's kingdom, introducing people to grace - all this, rather than being pushed around and used by self absorbed seeming Christians who want everything and everyone to revolve around them, this - Christ and His mission (the Missio Dei) was finally getting his talent, time and calling.

Today made me even more grateful for Redeemer's Church and the people who own its vision and purpose. People who have ditched inward focused, selfish Christianity for getting behind a leadership that is all about reaching as many people as possible, and Redeemer's Church outworking it full redemptive potential.

Thank you Redeemer's!

My intentional follow of Jesus was to listen, to help and then on the I-5 journey back home to thank God for the community of Redeemer's Church and the thousands of people we're going to reach for Christ in the coming years.

Day 102 and I've been thinking.......

2010-04-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

Day 102 finds me in a reflective mood.
Been thinking about the difference between compassion and justice. We have several global partnerships (Kenya, Tijuana, Guatemala and perhaps something new in Haiti emerging), in each partnership we act with compassion but been reflecting on where our justice is. We treat the wound but not the cause of the wound.

Been thinking about what we do every Sunday on our campus. Is it incredibly easy to invite people to church on Sundays? Who am I inviting in? Are we filled with Christians who invite?
The new Reveal publication "Focus" reminds us again that to be missiological is to understand the culture and the culture wants to be wowed on Sundays. For right or for wrong we need to live in our culture, while being counter cultural. There is a difficult line to hold to where you are cultural enough to be attracting, but counter cultural enough to not be selling out.

But my biggest reflection these past few days comes from a thought in the book by David Olson The American Church in Crisis. Here's what he writes "On any given Sunday, the vast majority of Americans are absent from church and if trends continue, by 2050, the percentage of Americans attending church will be half of what it is today."

He then goes on to suggest to avoid this dismal future the American church needs to engage with three critical transitions:

1. The transition from a Christian to a post-Christian society.
2. The transition from a modern to a post-modern society.
3. The transition from a mono-ethnic to a multi-ethnic society.

The first transition was the reason the INS accepted me to work in the US. I come from a post-Christian society (the UK). In my lifetime it has shrunk from 25% church attending to 4% attending. For years the church did not waken up to this reality. Not waking up costs it dearly.
Sadly, I see mirrored in most US churches and denominations a stubborn but ignorant refusal to accept reality. We are moving fast to a post-Christian society with secular overtones. Been heading this way for the past 20 years .....we are only a few years away from full arrival.

The second transition from modern to post-modern freaks the life out of most Christian leaders. For years I've been reading and studying in this arena and while I cannot claim full knowledge I can agree that a seismic shift is happening at the philosphical level and we actually have already moved somewhere. To too many church leaders this shift is a threat to truth and orthodoxy. Not so. But this fear is causing us to react too slowly and too abstractly. In many ways we are in danger of remaining holding onto the flannel graph in the digital age.

As for the third transition - this is huge. Possibly only 8-9% of Evangelical churches are multi-ethnic or multi-cultural. WOW!! We have been amazed that Redeemer's Church is 50% white, 45% brown and 5% other! Amazing. But my reflection is to realise that we are not too sure how this has happened (not great leadership) and, we are guilty of putting on the cruise control and not digging deeper and being passionate about truly outworking what God has been doing. This one needs more fuel added to it and needs my leadership placed fully on it. Watch out Redeemer's!!!!!

Intentional follow of Jesus ...reflective consideration of where we are, where we are going, and what needs to be done.
A`Sabbath' activity.

Day 100 and sitting in the pew.

2010-04-11T18:49:00.001-07:00

Day 100.
Wow!
100 days gone of 2010.
100 days of trying to intentionally follow Jesus Christ.
Day 100.
Fitting it was a Sunday.
Not so fitting it was a Sunday I wasn't preaching.
Preaching makes it so much easier to follow Jesus.
I preach the truth; point people to Jesus; lift Him up - boom a successful follow.
But what about when I'm not preaching.
What then?
I guess this puts me in the same spot as the other hundreds of people who don't preach every Sunday.

How do you intentionally follow Jesus as a member of the audience?

Place your tithe in the offering basket as it passes?
Follow along the reading of Scripture?
Quietly line up and take communion?
Sing the worship songs?
Greet the people around you with a smile and a warm hand shake?

As I mulled this over I realised the major mistake I fell in to. Sure I get to preach the amazing truth of Christ and that is followership; but that takes 40 minutes, twice a Sunday - 20 minutes more than an hour.
There are 24 hours a day.
If all the following I do on a Sunday is 80 minutes of a script ....ouch!
If all I do is listen for 40 minutes on a Sunday - that's not the best following either.

Sunday needs to be more than that, at least for me.

So I bought lunch for people.

Forgive me telling you what my right hand did (sorry left hand you're not meant to have found that out).
I just needed to do something.
Something more.
Having listened to a Sunday morning all on the topic of friendship - it was time to be a friend.
buying lunch wasn't trying to buy friends, it was trying to express friendship to a group of guys who are my friends.

Something small.
Something quite simple.
But it felt like more than simply listening to a message i was trying to put some flesh on to what we sat and listened to.

But ...imagine if I did that every Sunday, imagine the other 799 people at Redeemer's Church did every Sunday.
Imagine what that could lead to.

It's been good not to preach, but still to intentionally follow.

Day 99 Gardening.

2010-04-10T21:58:00.001-07:00

Day 99 was spent tackling Satan.

Gardening.

This was my intentional follow of Jesus.

Damn you Satan!

Blisters.
Sweat.
Back-ache.

Don't even mention Eve.

Tomorrow can't come quick enough and a more gentle following of Jesus.

Day 98 and thanks to a fly I get it.

2010-04-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Day 98 and as I headed out to the car tonight I sniffed and a fly went up my nose!
Didn't see that coming, neither did the fly.
I de-sniffed and the fly came back out.
Intentional follow of Jesus Day 98 .....practise sniff resurrecting.

Seriously, I was walking innocuously to my car, my thoughts elsewhere, my work for the weekend under my arms, and from nowhere I get a new experience.

When last did my faith in a miraculous supernatural God grant me such an newness?

My fly encounter has given me food for thought.

Not that I'm a sensationalist, or a theologically woolly charismatic. (I am a third-way believer for anyone interested.)
But a new experience, more than yesterday would sometimes be appreciated in this faith walk.

The sad thing is every day Christ invites me into new experiences but I miss them.
Every time I share my faith with someone - the Holy Spirit hovers around me and something eternal and supernatural takes place.
Every time I help the poor .....the presence of God is there in all his supernatural presence.
Every time I pray ......boom how supernatural an experience is that!

So the list could go on.

One innocuous fly moment and my spirit is thumped into taking hold of the supernatural experiences Christ invites me into everyday.

Thanks fly ....or was it God?

Day 97 - I'm British!

2010-04-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

Day 97 and excuse the gap in my blog. Things happen. Only the thing that happened was unexpected and threw a pretty big curve ball our way. Just three weeks after Carolyn's mother passed away, Carolyn received news on Easter Sunday that her father passed away as well.
So ....another 12,000 mile round trip and another funeral service.

Easter Sunday saw us talk about death in a very blunt way. Easter Sunday afternoon saw us deal with deal in a very real way.

Powerfully poignant. Death has a way of being like that.

So, the past few days, instead of reflecting on Easter services and the great time we had with so many people attending and our Arts Team pulling off an incredible portrayal of the Passion, has seen us be more introspective than usual.

It's amazing what Lent prepares you for!

Just today I was walking into our new Fresh & Easy store to be accosted by a protester telling me not to shop there as they are British!!! Wait for it ............I smiled, told them I was British and loved having something British in town!
It was funny (to me).
Hello ...free market!
Hello ... global marketplace!
Hello ....everywhere you go in the UK there are American stores!!

However, leave aside the rather weak, if not somewhat ironic, certainly hypocritical union issue at stake ...it was fun to say "hello I'm British!"

So, what would it be like if I walked into stores or shops and announced I was a Christ-follower.
Strange idea.
But, I wonder if by announcing that statement before I ate or shopped ....would I eat and shop differently.

Part of the joy of Fresh & Easy are the British products they sell. Small reminders of our culture.
What sort of impact would my Christian claim make if I wore it proudly as I entered a store?

Would I buy junk?
Would I buy cheap?
Would I buy only the essentials?
Would I buy green?
Would I buy healthy?

So today .....I used cash (thank you Dave Ramsey .....not quite Jesus!! for keeping me on the cash course - no more credit or debits cards); I bought a simple loaf of bread; and I bought the cheapest laundry stuff (yep, gotta do that for a week!).
I ignored the candy aisle, and got only the thing I needed to do dad's cooking tonight boys, and 'here's a help with the laundry'.

I walked out of the store and I'm sure I heard the protester whisper to her colleague "he's British"...or did she see my self-control and my simple shopping bag and say "he's a Christ follower?"

Day 91 - a very Good Friday.

2010-04-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

Day 91 and what a day.
Good Friday.
A memorial service where we taught about heaven.
Finishing writing Easter weekend preach about death.
Watched final dress rehearsal of Easter services dramatic presentation - a reworking of the crucifixion of Jesus.
An amazing end to Good Friday.
Seeing Jesus, suspended between heaven and earth and breathe his last - wow!

Easter services (Saturday & Sunday) @ Redeemer's Church ....make sure you come and invite, invite, invite.

What a Good Friday.

Everything forced me today to reflect on Christ's death.
Made intentionally following Jesus deeply moving today.

What a day ....what a tomorrow and Sunday a comin'!

Day 90 - just trying.

2010-04-01T19:34:00.001-07:00

Day 90. April 1, 2010.
Holiday isn't finished even although vacation is.

Getting set for Easter weekend. For past 2 months been reading about death. Here's the logic - only to the level you understand death can you ever understand resurrection.
Easter Sunday is all about resurrection, but that journey requires grasping death.

Hard reading.....and you'll need to to wait until our three Easter services are ended to hear what I've been learning (sorry).

All I can say. ........ my over 40 phobia is perhaps more spiritual than you think!

So, another day of studying and writing, and hopefully intentional follow of Jesus.
Was it in my writing - Saturday and Sunday will tell.
Was it foregoing a much wanted private lunch to sitting with a church member and listening - maybe?

Or, was it just getting up and trying to do my best.

Take your pick.

Day 87 - the difference between vacation and holiday!

2010-03-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

Day 87 and Holy Week has started. We have 2 guys in Haiti (what an incredible way to engage with Holy Week); we have 27 people rehearsing every night this week - nightly reenactments of Good Friday; we have some staff camped out with 350 young people trying to bring the Kingdom of God to Fresno ...... and I'm at Carmel by the Sea!!
It's becoming a Holy Week tradition - prepare to preach Easter services with family somewhere nice and away from Reedley (it seems to also
involve golf courses!)

You might call it vacation - but the British call it holiday. Much greater than vacation (which seems very similar to 'vacant') it is "holy" day.
Makes you rethink holy.
There is something sacred about bring with family, resting, recharging and preparing by reading, reflecting and rethinking.

I guess Easter weekend will tell if it's been vacation or holiday!

But for me it's my intentional follow for the next few days.

Day 86 - death.

2010-03-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

Day 86 and its Sunday evening and I've just found out my favorite TV series The Amazing Race has been going on for 6 weeks and I've been missing it!!!
Aargh!
I could have seen Rusty (my old friend) and me doing it ....would be a blast. Can also see my friends Tod & Traci doing this someday. And maybe .....one day when I'm old I could do it as father and son and have show these young pups up!
So today the competitors are in the Seychelles - yep 50% of the couples couldn't pronounce it yet alone know where these fabulous islands are!!! Classic Americans!! Duh!!!

Been doing a lot of reading on death these days. Partly getting ready for Easter weekend preaching, partly for a funeral and memorial service I need to lead.
Death.

I was greatly encouraged to read C S Lewis' reflections on death written not long after his second wife died of cancer.
For years I've viewed death with anger and hatred. Other pastors I know talk about death as simply a shadow (quoting Ps 23) or the way to the better life ....but for me I'd always viewed death as the enemy.
Lewis confirmed my theology (see ....I truly am orthodox!)
Lewis raged against it.
False comforters with quaint words - made him angry.
Death is not natural ....it is an invader into what God made.

This makes Easter all the more profound.
So ......on Day 86 I had my theology confirmed and I had my heart inspired and energized to focus this week on listening to the Holy Spirit as I get ready to preach resurrection and victory over the enemy death next Saturday and Sunday.
Going to be a great week being stirred by God to preach the incredible truth of Christ and his victory!!!

Day 85 and what I learned from a missed flight!

2010-03-26T21:19:00.001-07:00

Day 85 and you may think I've been quiet because I've been on my United flight to Minneapolis and back.
The last you heard from me (Day 82 blog) was that a United operator was now talking to me and you would assume he was fixing it!
Not so.
After 3 hours on the phone, United could not get me another flight to MN ....even although they did get two of my colleagues.
But then .....it was only a flight and a meeting!

So I slept in my own bed the last 2 nights .....and ....what I thought were two extra days, became two really busy days. here were two days I was going to be gone and I had set my work for such, but I found multiple things to do in those two days.
How does that happen?

......and as I thought about that I spent tonight reading a chapter a leaders group is discussion tomorrow over breakfast: "The Seduction of Success"

Boom - there's my answer to why two extra days became two busy days!

Like so many leaders, much of my identity is tied up to not resting but being busy on the next
project, the next initiative, the next thing. The subtlety of how the idol of success grabs you. Keller calls it an "achievement addict."

To some degrees I have this.
I try to justify it as the next project is for the kingdom of god, the extending of the Gospel, the Church. But when you scratch where it itches - sometimes its more to do with my own sense of achievement than the greater cause.

So, my intentional follow of Jesus day 85 - learn from what my change of plans for Days 83 and 84 have revealed of my own heart and work it through to a healthier place.

Day 82 - intentional following on a phone!

2010-03-23T22:20:00.000-07:00

Day 82 and at this very minute United Airlines are not my favorite company. Been on hold for 1 hour 10 minutes on one phone and 19 minutes on my other phone, and their website is not helping me. Seems they have cancelled my flight for tomorrow, but they won't answer their phones to let me rebook!
Don't you love automated answering machines!

So ....as I wait on both phones, how's my intentional following of Jesus going?

Patience ...that's a fruit of the Spirit. Being tested and beginning to crumble.
Kindness ...that's a fruit of the Spirit. Nope, that one is going as well.
Gentleness ..another fruit of the Spirit. And as I rehearse what I'm going to say to the operator when he or she finally answers me ....gentleness is slipping badly!!

Help!!

I mean, when placed alongside the important and big things of life, this is minor.
Today, I sat with a new widow planning her husbands funeral; I emailed a friend about a Muslim who I can't contact for fear of his life; I heard from a friend who is going for unexpected surgery next week.......to this add, world poverty, AIDS, and world peace ....but I'm losing it waiting a phone call being answered.

Help!

Why do I become so engrossed in my own tiny world so easily?

Help!

And here's the recent update .......one of my phones reached a United operator and after they didn't want to help me - they hung up!!!

But still.....the world is spinning and why do I let my own little spinning world make the bigger spinning world spin more!

Surely intentional following of Jesus is resting in Him and not spinning.
Surely intentional following is not losing it over cancelled flights.
Whatever it might be.......it must involve letting the big things be big and the little things be what they are little.

Now talking to nice United agent.......but hey its a little thing anyway!!

Day 81 - waiting another flight.

2010-03-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

Day 81 and I'm sitting at the huge glass front of Seattle Tacoma International Airport watching a beautiful sunset. Spent the day with a pastor and his staff talking about how to reach people with the Gospel.
It's amazing how many times the same issues surface. A few stubborn untheological members restrict the Kingdom of God.

Why does God restrict himself to the church.
If it was me I'd bypass it. The job of saving the world is too important to leave to Christians.

Now I agree. There nothing like the local church when the local church is working right.
But when it's not working right - yuck!!

I guess however He can quit on us.
Think Revelation 2 & 3 and is there any church today in Smyrna or Ephesus, or.....
He can and does snuff out the candlestick!!

So today was all about pushing on and getting things working right.
Intentional follow of Jesus ..... encourage them not to quit, not to see all the dark days. But keep on as this generation and the next are counting on us - as is God!!!

It's a long flight home (thankfully there's free beer on Horizon flights!)
Another flight Wednesday - all worth it

Day 80 - skubalon!

2010-03-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

Day 80 and no, this is not meant to be an 'every second day' blog. It's daily ....hopefully!

Today is Sunday.
Preach day.
Second last preach in the series called Holy Hilarity (check it out): http://www.redeemerschurch.com/dlgMediaPlayer.aspx?id=880

Skubalon.

There's something about preaching just one word.

My grandfather did this brilliantly. He could read the text (in Greek), pick out one word, and then for 50 minutes preach that one word - without a single note! Brilliant.

Skubalon.

Unsure if he ever preached this word. Normally he preached words of complexity, words of intrigue. This word is as near a profanity in the Bible as you can get. But Paul uses it very deliberately.
He uses it to shock us, to wake us up, to get our attention.
He uses it to help us see how magnificent God's salvation is.
And his salvation is Jesus.

Read Philippians 3.
It's Jesus, only Jesus, all Jesus.

Everything else is skubalon!

That's Paul's point.

And that's the point you have to get.

Intentional follow of Jesus #80 ......only Jesus. Nothing else.

Sweet!

Worship!!

Day 78 - parking lot spirituality

2010-03-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

Day 78, yep sorry still a little sporadic. Next week will be better.

Been reading today about John Knox. A Scottish hero.
He was the leader of the Scottish protestant movement. an ex-catholic priest. He witnessed the death of George Wishart (burned at the stake in St Andrews). But rather than run away he returned to Scotland to lead the protestant movement and risked also being martyred.
After an incredible ministry he passed away and was buried.
Here's the thing. Today, if you want to see his burial spot ...its parking space #23 in a government parking lot.
That's all you'll find of Knox!

But then - that's all Knox would have wanted!

Everything I counted gain I view now as rubbish ....wrote the Apostle Paul.
Knox's burial spot becoming a parking space .....holds to Paul's epitaph.

Intentional follow of Jesus - refuse any acclaim, seek no title, make sure you've got no designated parking place...unless its a basic number built on top of your grave!

Day 76 Who is Jesus?

2010-03-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

Day 76 and the first night of another Alpha Course, which is the 16th Alpha Course to date.
I love teaching the Alpha Course, and I love this first talk.
In some ways this is strange. In fact, one guy tonight talked to me about this.
I am centrally a postmodern in my thinking. Linear, logical and evidential teaching is not how my mind thinks. It doesn't mean I can't think this way, but its not how it best operates. In fact, some of he writers I admire would question the effectiveness of an Alpha type apologetic.
But, 16 times in doing this, and I have as much energy for this round of talks as earlier.
Every time, I get energized (inspired) to give what are clearly 'modern' style talks.

Tonight "Who Is Jesus?"

CS Lewis nails it. You can't believe Jesus was a good man or even a good teacher but not God - Jesus did not leave this route open to us. In saying he was a good teacher you are saying that the things he said and taught were good. But he taught he was more than a man. Therefore, you have to say he was/is who he said he was, or else he was a lunatic, mad man or an evil imposter.

It's such a cutting talk.
It forces you off of a fence, or to really re-examine what you think about Jesus.

It might be linear, it might be evidential - but it forces the most postmodern of seekers to take a real serious look at who He is.

As for me, my Alpha talk #1 2010 pushed me yet again to remain loyal and steadfast in my belief that Jesus Christ truly is God Incarnate. Day 76 was a day of worship.

Day 74 - Lent, a jetlagged way to keep following!

2010-03-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

Day 74
A quick 12,000 miles, 8 time zones and sadly no air-miles all within four days.....just a regular weekend!
Add in our Guatemalan church planter preaching at Redeemer's Church; receiving an email from our Kenyan partners while I was in Scotland, and the flatness of our globe is only even more reinforced.
We, like several churches, are trying to hold tightly the global baton that 21st century churches have been handed.
I even spent time tonight Skyping ........a brilliant global communication technology (although it was with my wife who at the time was upstairs!!.....but you can use it to reach around the globe!).

Day 74's intentional following of Jesus:

I kept to my Lenten fast of no soda.

With 12,000 miles in four days, that's about all my jet-lagged brain could muster up.
But it was something.
Thank God for Lent.
Thank God for a simple way to keep following Jesus when you're knackered!

Day 70 and more jetlag, again.

2010-03-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry folks I missed days 68 and 69! Flying to the UK for my mother-in-laws funeral service. This makes it Day 70.
This might happen again folks - so asking for grace in advance.
One reason - do you know San Francisco International Airport don't have free wifi!! And I'm Scottish and not paying for it.

Now at my brothers and using his for free!!

Travel is not as glamorous and people tell you. Lots of waiting, lots of strangers, lots of public restrooms, lots of hurrying between Gates.

I hear stories of incredible pastors who sit next to strangers on airplanes and by the time they land in Cincinnati the pastor has led someone to faith in Christ - often involving a napkin drawing!
But for me - the strangers on the flights I take - want their space, want their silence and the last thing they want is some nutter talking to them while they fly red-eye to London!

So ....possibly I'm a failure.

However, I did walk the corridors of SFO from 6.30 to 7.00 on Wednesday evening praying out loud for our Alpha launch taking place in Reedley. People did look at me oddly. But, God answered and people are returning next week to begin some new steps in their faith journey.

Flying, strangers, planes.

It is a very surreal world. You read your seat screen and discover that you are flying at 590mph, 39,000 feet in the air and it is -74F outside. But as you read that all you hear is a low hum and everything is silent. The most surreal moment ...when you begin to descend and you enter a fluffy bank of brilliant white clouds...and you have to then totally trust that the pilot and his equipment are sure there is somewhere down there we are heading to.

Its an analogy of so many churches - they are flying along at a crazy pace above the clouds and somewhere beneath them, where you cant' see, there is a real world below.

Healthy churches crash through the clouds. Everything is about bringing heaven to earth, not heaven staying up there. but when you crash through the clouds - you have to trust there is something down there were you can land.

More to write ....but gotta go.
Think about it some more. Just now Redeemer's Church is thinking about crashing through another cloud bank to land our plane on a new runway. This is faith. It has to be faith.

Day 67 - puff, its vanished!

2010-03-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

Day 67 ...unsure how to write this day.
It just went.
Vanished.
Finished.
Yet, everything that happened was of the 'major' category.
The funeral service of Reedley Police Officer Behar, killed in the line of duty. Thousands attend a memorial service.
Major event #1.

Lunch meeting with a Christian leader who has started to belong at Redeemer's Church and two hours talking vision and some next steps we are considering.
Major moment #2.

Recording of Alpha Launch talk for Wednesday night (I fly home with my wife to attend her mother's funeral). Many people expected to attend and many of our church have gone out on an invitational risk.
Major event, major recording #3.

Three major things.

But its nearly 8pm .....and the day simply vanished, despite the major-ness of all that happened today.

Did I do everything knowing it would vanish, but that each part of it was loaded with eternal impact?
Do I live with an eternal perspective?
I need to.
Can you live fast and still live eternal?

Beginning to work on a talk entitled "Bowing down to the idol of busyness."
Ouch!

Sabbath .....God's invention (or gift) for fast live-rs who need to make sure we remain connected to an eternal perspective.

I think I'm learning this. I take deliberate steps to slow down on Sat & Sun. In fact I can slow down to the point that my Monday morning room is ........painful.

So ...my intentional follow of Jesus today?

A struggling, painful Monday morning run - confirming I did indeed have a sabbath, and my fastness today was still OK.

Day 66 - Sunday

2010-03-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Day 66
Sunday.
A truth so much bigger than yourself.
A community much bigger than yourself.
A Jesus so much bigger.

Philippians 2:6-11 WOW a christocentric profound hymn.

Makes Christian radio............... yep lets not go there in this blog about intentionally following Jesus - swearing not allowed!

Jesus:
Did not considered equality with God something to be grasped.

WOW.

You've just got to soak that one line in.
Here's the one person who could grab it - officially.
But he didn't.

I would have.

I mean it would of have been legal, even godly - according to most of today's preaching. It's just living up to who you are; its your destiny; be the real you; be who God made you to be!

The Gospel I often preach would have legalised grabbing your heritage.

But I guess I've been getting the Gospel slightly wrong, slightly off balance.

Jesus didn't grab it.
He made himself nothing.

Much to learn, much to copy, much to re-preach

Sunday, Day 66 - good day.

Day 65 - friends.

2010-03-07T18:14:00.000-08:00

Day 65 saw us hang with friends as we coped with Carolyn's mum's passing.
That's an intentional follow.
Real simple - God made us to be community. It's some core theology. God - three but one; marriage - two but one; life - one but many.
Do life with others - friends, or even better Christian brothers and sisters.

Thanks brothers and sisters.

Day 64 - surreal.

2010-03-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

Day 64 - and the day we received the sad news that Carolyn's mother quickly passed away. To make matters worse, Carolyn had just been home visiting her mother and was flying back to the US from Scotland as I received the news. It was left to me to break the news to her when she landed in Fresno after 28 hours of travel.

It was rather surreal.

Carolyn appeared at arrivals all happy to be home, glad she'd had a good visit with her mother, eager to see the boys joking as to them not being with me to welcome her home, talking about her flight and the fun things that happened on it, even laughing when yet again our luggage did not make the connection from LAX to FAT (yep avoid LAX if you possibly can!).

And while all this is happening I am carrying news she does not want to hear, I do not want to tell her, but most definitely, I was not going to tell her in the lobby of Fresno airport.

Surreal.

Do you enjoy her jokes; do you talk the usual trivia about what's happened in little 'ol Reedley since she left 6 days earlier; do you mention 'hey we had frost this morning!'

I'm standing there knowing the news, but not yet able to share it.

In some ways, in the relatively few minutes this all took until we were alone, I was thinking of Solomon's wise words "there is a time to laugh and a time to cry" - and we were experiencing that all in the space of a few short moments.

Surreal.

To know something, but to live in the tension of it needing to be told, but you can't tell it just yet, and the person you're with has no idea about what they need to know.

For me there was no option, I just had to wait.

But it's got me wondering of how too often I create a tension like that. Got information people
need to know, they don't know they need it but they do, but I don't (not so much can't) share it with them.
Sometimes its the full truth (blog of a few days ago), but often its the amazing essential news of Jesus Christ .....people need to know it, and I have it, but I don't tell them it.

Is that not also surreal?

"Lord, may I never hold the information of you quiet; may you inspire and embolden me to always tell people the news of Jesus Christ."

Day 63 - values are trump.

2010-03-04T21:03:00.000-08:00

Day 63 and there's something neat about a really productive day, but there's something ever neater (is that another made up word) of a really productive evening.

Spent the evening working on some papers about values.

During two conversations this week I've been asked if our vision/mission is written down any where.
My answer is slightly surprising to some - especially fellow GHC pastors........

NO, and never will be.

Redeemer's Church is only the sum total of what we do - our values.
Aubrey Malphurs says it this way "You won't do ministry that really matters until you define what matters".

In the real world, everyone will know what your church is about not by a statement written but by seeing what it is you are actually doing, and you do what you value.

I'm not saying that at Redeemer's Church we haven't spent time thinking through our vision, even writing it down in staff and leadership settings, but it is meaningless, if not sinful, if you aren't doing it.

[Excuse me if I seem slightly distracted I am actually watching a really funny episode of The Office as I try to write this ........some distraction before heading to the sack.]

Values.

No matter what you write or say - you are only doing what you're doing!

This is my bottom line,.

So, at Redeemer's we focus on modeling our values, talking about them - formally and informally, we try to make sure our values are actionable ...they can be done, not just said.

I think part of this conviction is driven by the emerging culture where genuineness is core. To some degree vision/mission statements are from modernity - linear thinking. Today's generation do not seek linear paths, they seek authenticity - "are they doing what they say they are supposed to be doing?"

It's a bit like a church name. Do we do inside what the label says outside; are we making false promises; are we misrepresenting ourselves?

So many vision and mission statements do just this. Grand statements that have no bearing on current reality.

If you want to go this way, don't call it a mission or vision statement - call it an "aspiration statement."

Or better ...... don't print one, instead major on values.

Day 62 - a walk in the park!

2010-03-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Day 62 found me trying to "love thy neighbor!"
It was my day for a really fast walk - cross training and catch your breath morning. But I'm pedantic about how I exercise. I always run with my watch; I pace every mile; I know every distance down to the parts of a mile: and I know what I need to do to reach the goals I've set.
Yep - pedantic.
On my cross training walk day (which I reluctantly do but I know is good to do) a slow walk isn't helpful, a medium walk won't cut it either - especially as after my walk I was heading out for breakfast and massive calorie intake - this walk needed to be fast to accomplish what was required according to the schedule.
Only 10 minutes in I bump into a neighbor. A good neighbor; a growing older neighbor; a not so well neighbor AND....a really slow walking neighbour.
I've blown past him multiple times ....filled with guilt later that I haven't taken the time to stop and ask how life is.
Today ...my schedule was tight, real tight, and with the breakfast deal happening later I really needed fast calorie burning pace.

But I slowed.

For the next 20 minutes I walked slowly as he and I shared life, caught up and I listened. Real slowly.

For the first few minutes it hurt ......could I leave him having said hello and crank it back up to the required pace? But my spirit slowed and while a run a day gets me off to a great start with energy and momentum ....this was an even better start to the day.

Yep ...loving your neighbor and loving it going slow.

This was my intentional follow of Jesus.