Tuesdays are for Heaven Ramblings…

Posted November 10, 2009 by Greg
Categories: My Church, My Life, Religion Fail, The Church
Tags: , , , , , ,

Irish Jesus Fail

I love nativity sets, I have a collection of them. They make me happy. This one just made me laugh. Did you know that Jesus and his parents were Irish? I am just going by the hair color.

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One Step Closer to Heaven….

What if heaven is nothing like we picture it? I am increasingly convinced this will be true for most of us. How well do you understand heaven? As I ask people in my church and Christians I come in contact with, surprisingly, most people have said, “I don’t know much.” Talking to people who have been in the church for four, five, and six decades I still hear them say that they don’t have a very clear picture of heaven. I am in the middle of a preaching series looking at eternity and this week and last week the focus is on what happens when we die, the new heaven and earth, and hell.

I am a little surprised myself by how difficult a subject these are to preach on. What is fascinating, however, is how little Jesus points to heaven. He talks about it, certainly, but he spends far more time trying to give people hope by pointing to the Kingdom of God, rather than pointing towards a heavenly reward. Hell is even more fun to try to make sense of. When Jesus continually spoke of Gehenna, a real place that everyone knew about the second he spoke about it, did they picture some eternal destination or their political and social plans going up in smoke in a crumbling pile of refuse that was burning outside of Jerusalem?

These are really interesting questions. I have benefited greatly from Surprised by Hope by Bishop NT Wright. If you want a great resource to examine the hope of our faith, especially in regards to eternal life, this book is the place to start.

Anybody have a good resource on our theology of hell? I am working through my library, but aside from reference works I am not finding as much as I would like.

 

Good day for Religious Liberty in DC

Thankfully the DC Council is rewriting its new bill legalizing same sex marriage. In the original bill the language made it sound like religious leaders had no discretion as to whether or not they could perform same sex marriage ceremonies or rent out their facilities for same sex marriage receptions. The original language didn’t provide for religious freedom in these decisions. There is no way such a law would stand up to legal review but at least they realize that not changing the law would  be a serious encroachment on religious freedom. This isn’t even an issue of homosexuality or same sex marriage, this is an issue of basic religious freedoms. If clergy cannot make choices as to who they sanction in marriage it destroys the very fabric of their faith. That goes for pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams a like.

 

 

 

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LOST meets the Missional Church

Posted November 5, 2009 by Greg
Categories: Missional Church, The Church
Tags: , , , ,

David Fitch has a great post on the idea of how moving from an attractional church to a missional church. He suggests that one of the most difficult aspects is that when we shift from bringing others in to our church we give up the power inherent in doing so. We maintain power over outsiders by controlling the environment we engage them in, by knowing the language, and by having a set of customs and behaviors that define the environment which are foreign to our visitors. All of this keeps us in a position of power and keeps everyone outside of our community as an “other”. I couldn’t read his post without thinking of the Others on Lost. But that is actually a helpful analogy.

On Lost there has been a major change over the seasons as the Others have moved from being a faceless enemy to people whose stories we know. Some of the Others have even become part of the group, and while many of them remained enemies, the lines between the survivors of the plane crash and those already on the island have blurred considerably. Even the worst of them, Ben, moves from hero to villain to sympathetic figure back to psycho path. It is a big shift moving from thinking about the Others to thinking about real people.

How can we be effective in meeting the needs and effectively sharing the Gospel with people who are simply the Others? So many churches and pastors (myself included) fall into the trap of talking about the lost or the broken or the people outside of our doors without ever attaching faces to this identity. Effective kingdom living doesn’t take place while we hold a faceless identity out there that we are trying to reach. It happens when we are engaging with those around us in such a way as to know who it is specifically we are trying to love.

Laying down the power in evangelism is difficult, but necessary. Increasingly those outside of our doors will feel less and less compelled to ever enter our doors. If we don’t abandon the power in our relationship with those we are trying to reach we will simply stop reaching them.

This shouldn’t really be a surprise for us should it? After all isn’t the point of the incarnation that Jesus gave up the power in order for us to relate to and understand his good news? It is just hard for us to emulate that kind of incarnational love because holding the power is just too comfortable.

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What do we value?

Posted November 3, 2009 by Greg
Categories: My Church, The Church
Tags: , ,

In the midst of our visioning process, we have now reached the stage where we are affirming our values as a church. This is truly one of the things that sets churches apart from each other. I think if you go to a church you will clearly and quickly find out the things that they value.

For example. I once attended a church that really valued the production value of Sunday morning worship. They not only taped the service for their tape ministry, but also broadcast the service on TV. Because of this value things were done with lighting and how the service was conducted that did not necessarily have a good affect on those actually in attendance. I can remember one particular service where there were these powerful flood lights shining into the congregation that really made it hard to see. I talked to the lights guy afterward and he said the camera guys were loving those lights because they could get such a better recording, but that they wouldn’t be able to continue it because too many people complained. This also affected where you could stand when you preached, how you interacted with the congregation and various other parts of the service. The church valued its outreach through video (not casting judgment on this value, just using it for illustrative purposes) and this was clear when you attended worship there.

The last church I served, Christ UMC, really valued excellence in worship. I was extraordinarily shaped by leading four worship services a week in a place where each part of the service was done with theological intent, careful planning, and striving for excellence. This was a church that had three distinct types of worship service and a lot of staff devoted to producing them. Worship is a clear value at Christ Church.

All churches share in common values (hopefully) that include things like hospitality, worship, serving others, Scripture, prayer, and community. This list can go on and on. But what are the unique values of your church, things that are emphasized above others because of your DNA, location, staff and history? I would love to hear some examples and how they are demonstrated as we determine what we value most here at Duneland Community Church.

 

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Mondays are for Anniversary Ramblings

Posted November 2, 2009 by Greg
Categories: My Church, My Life, Ramblings, Sports and Fanciful Pursuits
Tags: , , ,

Ramblings

Wonder what Manu Ginobli will be doing when he retires? How about exterminator?

 

At the behest of my children I dressed up for Halloween. I found the best clergy costume money could buy for 60% off at K-Mart and dressed as a monk. Me as a monk is actually kind of creepy. Who knew? I will post a picture later to confirm the creepiness.

I am abandoning football season to watch two teams that make my heart have joy. Here is a big salute to the Capitals who are awesome right now and to the new look Wizards that are the most complete team I have ever seen as a Wizards/Bullets fan.

PIC-0135I am using a whiteboard for my new preaching series called from Here to Eternity. I am quite the artist, here is what it looked like by the end of my sermon. See if you can decipher the hieroglyphics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Anniversary DCC!

Yesterday marked one year of being the pastor at Duneland Community Church. It is hard to believe a year has passed by already. So much has happened in a year. On a personal level, it has been a year of transitioning our lives from NC to IN, which has been difficult but rewarding. Looking back I can see that leaving our family and close friends behind has had a positive effect on our family dynamic from the standpoint of learning how to more fully enjoy our time together. This is especially good since there has been a lot of it. I can honestly say that the decisions we have had to make throughout this transition and the reliance we have had to discover on God and each other has put Gretchen and I’s marriage in a better place than we have ever known.

From a church standpoint I just don’t know where to begin. Someone asked me about a week ago, “Looking back over the past year, what would you have done differently?” My only response was, “I have no idea because I never thought we would come this far in a year.” I have thought about that question quite a bit the last couple of weeks and all I can think is that I would pray even more. I have no question that I have made decisions that I would go back and change, or sermons that could be better, or forgot to do things that I should have, but God has done such extraordinary work in our church this past year that I wouldn’t want to change a thing. Much of the work has been so amazing as to render any doubt I have about my ability to bring about absolutely moot. God has simply breathed new life into this lump of clay we call DCC and into my own understanding of being a pastor.

In many ways I think about it like losing weight. When you first start dieting, just changing up your routines and trying to be healthier yields great results. You haven’t figured it all out yet, but you are losing weight and feeling good about yourself and just thankful to be doing so well. But there comes a wall ahead of you when your body adjusts and you begin to understand how hard it is to bring about real lasting change. I think that in the next year we will hit that wall. We will have gone through the hard work of finding a vision, but then we will be faced with the much harder task of implementing that vision. That is when we will find out who we are as a church.

We have proven we are a church that can survive, but we have yet to demonstrate, in ten years of existence, that we are a church that can thrive for an extended period of time. Here is a prayer that next year I will be marveling at our ability to stp into this even bigger challenge.

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NBA Season Predictions

Posted October 27, 2009 by Greg
Categories: Sports and Fanciful Pursuits
Tags: , , , , ,

Tonight the NBA season kicks off and while I am aware that I am one of 15 remaining NBA fans I have to make some predictions for the season that are bound to be wrong. Just because, here are 37 predictions for the season.

1) The Curse of the Clippers will hit Blake Griffin. (This one is cheating, before the season even begins they announced he is out with a broken knee cap today)

2) The Magic will take a step back to start the season before they gel and become more formidable than last year’s squad.

3) Ron Artest will be on his best behavior in LA, but they will miss Ariza because Artest is ill suited for their offense.

4) Allen Iverson and Zach Randolph will have such a detrimental effect on OJ Mayo that he become the next JR Rider

5) Antione Walker will ask someone you know for a pay day loan (How do you spend $100 million in a decade?)

6) The Celtics will be the most annoying team in the league between Sheed’s outburts, KG maiming people in celebration and Big Baby punching out friends

7) The Wizards will finish with 45 wins, a nice improvement from 19 last year, and will make the 2nd round of the playoffs

8) Gilbert will play in over 70 games, learn to be a real leader, have smaller numbers and be a better player

9) This is the year we realize that Joe Dumars isn’t the GM he has been cracked up to be. He is as hit and miss as the rest of them.

10) It will take about 15 games for the Raptors to rue their signing of Hedo

11) The Blazers will be better and it will have little to with the signing of Andre Miller and a lot to do with the surprising effectiveness of Greg Oden and Brandon Roy

12) The Net’s and their freakish new Billionaire Russian owner will prove to be highly entertaining. (Off the court that is)

13) If Shaq tries to mess with the Cavs, Lebron will have him shipped out of town faster than Braylon Edwards

14) The Knicks will be high scoring, terrible defensively, and even worse next season when Lee and Robinson leave, Lebron blows them off, they have no 1st round pick and no one wants to play there.

15) The Houston Rockets, playing with half a salary cap will make the playoffs. They will also trade away Tracy McGrady during the season.

16) The Heat will be about the same as last year, all Dwayne Wade all the time, no one else any of the time

17) The Chicago Bulls will have a real hard time scoring

18) Derrick Rose will continue to be awesome and may even make Joakim Noah a respectable player

19) The Suns will have a game when they score over 150 points

20) The Suns may very well lose that game

21) The Lakers will be the clear dominating team out west all season so long as their PG’s are at least average

22) The OKC Thunder will be highly entertaining and may push for the 8th spot in the West

23) Kevin Durant will be a top three scorer this year and for the next 6 years

24) The best rookie this season (depending on Griffin’s return from his knee injury) will be Johnny Flynn in Minnesota, dude is for real

25) The following teams will prove to be completely irrelevant: Bucks, Nets, Raptors, Kings, Grizzlies, Pacers, Bobcats, Warriors

26) The Nuggets will take a step back this season but they will find that they had the steal of the draft in Ty Lawson. In two years he will supplant Billups as the starter

27) No one will care about the Utah Jazz and they will still be plenty good

28) New Orleans will stay competitive, Chris Paul will stay legendary, and none of it will matter

29) Every other team in the league will regret not drafting DeJuan Blair (Seriously Wiz, what were you thinking, with him you would be good for 50 wins this year)

30) The Atlanta Hawks will continue to give teams problems, but without a super star there is no way they become an elite team

31) All season long there will be 5 teams that dominate the league: Celtics, Lakers, Cavaliers, Magic, Spurs

32) The Dallas Mavericks will be the best of the rest and they may have the firepower to upset someone in the playoffs

33) Cleveland will not approach last years win total but they will win the East

34) The Lakers will surpass last years win total but they won’t win the West

35) The Magic will lose in the second round of the playoffs

36) The Celtics will make the East finals again, but for the last time in a while

37) The San Antonio Spurs will put together one of their best teams ever, surprise the Lakers and knock of Lebron James in the Finals again

 

Here’s to a great season everyone

 

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Mondays are for Hog Roast and Mission Statement Ramblings

Posted October 26, 2009 by Greg
Categories: My Church, The Church
Tags: , ,

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was our churches 10th Anniversary or 10th Birthday, I can’t figure out which one is more appropriate. But regardless we had a wonderful celebration of all that God has done at DCC in the past ten years. We had a wonderful worship service followed by a Hog Roast. The Hog Roast is a yearly tradition for us and it was nice to line it up with the celebration yesterday. Bill, our resident and lifetime appointed Hog Czar did a mean job cooking up porky and Chris busted out some awesome deep friend turkey. The food spread was something to behold.

Beyond the food, however, it was good to see some old friends that hadn’t been to the church in quite a while. There were numerous comments from our guests and our old friends that it is really exciting to see the church moving forward and to witness the excitement and sense of purpose that is growing among our people. We are moving forward together and into God’s vision for us.

Speaking of Vision

Yesterday as part of my sermon I unveiled our new church mission statement. Here it is.

Cultivating God’s Wholeness in a Broken World.

It was a painstaking process coming up with our mission statement, but it brought such clarity to us as the leadership of the church. We worked hard to connect our vision with the heart God has given us for the lost and to capture the fullness of the Gospel. Here is how we ended up with our statement.

Cultivating – We wanted a singe verb that captured the entire process of working to bring God’s truth and grace to the world. Cultivating was by far the best word we came up with. As you think about cultivating, you think about the whole process of bringing forth a harvest. You have to understand the seasons, you have to know the soil. You have to work the soil, tilling it and fertilizing it. You have to know when and how to plant the seed. You have to water the seed and protect it. You have to know when and how to harvest the crop and over the years how to rotate the crops and keep the soil from growing barren. I can’t think of a better word that captures all of these roles of the church in our world than cultivating.

God’s Wholeness – As a Nazarene people, we talk a lot about holiness. God’s Wholeness is really just another way of saying holiness but we wanted to say it this way because we think this is language that people can grab hold of and understand better than holiness. God wants us to be whole. He wants us to not only be forgiven, but working towards his perfection. He wants us to be whole physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. We don’t want to be a church that merely focuses on one part of wholeness, we want to do what we can to help everyone we can find wholeness in Christ.

In a Broken World – We had some talk about whether or not this phrase was too negative in our mission statement, but in the end, especially after looking at all the mission statements that Jesus made, we wanted to make sure our mission had motivation tied to it. We are working so hard to cultivate God’s wholeness because our world is desperate for it. Our world is full of shattered people, torn apart families, fractured communities, and incomplete lives. We want to be reminded each day that we have the opportunity to offer the people we encounter something different than the brokenness around them.

So no we have a mission statement and I love it. We feel really excited about it as the leaders of the church, and now we get to figure out how we live in to it as a church. We have figured out the what, now we need to figure out the how.

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Double Church Fail

Posted October 21, 2009 by Greg
Categories: Religion Fail
Tags: , ,

I had to point you towards two good ones today.

First is this article about a church in NC (thankfully not my old one) that is burning books and Bibles, if they aren’t the King James Version.

Second is this picture from fail blog, the humor in it is beautiful. Have a good one.

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Tuesdays are for Honor Ramblings

Posted October 20, 2009 by Greg
Categories: My Church, My Life, Ramblings, Sports and Fanciful Pursuits
Tags: , , , , ,

Honor Indeed

My father in law lead a group of over 130, including 90+ WW2 veterans, on an honor flight this past Saturday. Honor Flight is an organization honors veterans by taking them to Washington DC to see the various war memorials and to thank them for their service to our country. I don’t know of anyone who loves his country more than my father in law and as a veteran, the son of a veteran and a pilot this is something close to his heart. So Bill is now coordinating Honor Flights in NW Arkansas. My father, who is also a veteran and my brother in law also went on the trip and worked as chaperons for the veterans. My father said that everywhere they went people took time to stop and thank each of the veterans for their service and there were little touches at the airports and with police escorts and bands that just really honored this generation that sacrificed so much in the name of love of country.

I wanted to share this with you because I think it is really beautiful and because 30 years from now I can’t imagine an organization like Honor Flight. Does anyone in our generation have this sense of honor or love of country? I am sure there are some, but they are certainly few and far between. Such great efforts to honor others and their service of country makes you stop and take notice these days.

So I sang some AC/DC in my sermon

I definitely had several surprised comments from people on Sunday after I busted out my best Bon Scott and sang part of  Highway to Hell by AC/DC in my sermon. Why did this particular song make it in to my sermon? Well I was focusing on our central motivation for doing what we do as a church and I reflected on a pastor one of my seminary professors told us about. This pastor would listen to this AC/DC song before he preached because he wanted to remind himself that for many in church that day this song would be their story. They were lost and he wanted to make sure that stayed in the forefront of his mind.

As Christians our purpose is to bring God joy and praise in all we do. Jesus demonstrates that nothing gives God more joy than when his lost children come home. And so this must be our motivation for all we do as a church. It must define us. It needs to permeate all that we do. We must passionately pursue the lost and orient our missions around finding the lost sheep and bringing them home. I don’t know if AC/DC will help remind you of that reality, but I like the idea of having some regular part of our lives that keeps that reminder in front of us.

Where did it all go wrong?

Thanks for the person who suggested this video, it is awesome.

I have to stop and ponder for a minute on the most dreadful Redskins team I have ever seen. Somehow a season that at least help some sense of promise has turned into a colossal disaster. Where did it all go wrong? Well the easy answer is that it all went wrong when Dan Snyder bought the team. Snyder is extraordinarily gifted in making money. He is also good at thrown it around in really ineffective ways. What he is not good at is acknowledging his own weaknesses and getting out of his own way so the franchise can succeed.

This is a franchise that desperately needs a team president and general manager. They need football people making football decisions. They need a first class coach and they need a new organizational philosophy that relies on discipline, hard choices, solid football principles, and homegrown talent.

So how would I fix it? I wouldn’t start with a coach, I would start by finding one of the best football minds out there in some other front office and pay them whatever it takes to come over and fix this mess. Get someone from the Colts front office or someone who is out of football but would come back for the right price. I would even welcome Jimmy Johnson and his hair at this stage.

Then let that person bring in someone who can win. If Bill Cowher or Mike Shanahan don’t want the job then go get someone who does and who will invest the ridiculous hours necessary into rebuilding this team. Then start getting rid of the baggage. Goodbye Clinton Portis, you have been a workhorse, but you were always miss cast on this team. Goodbye aging defensive players. Hello brand new offensive line. Hello new quarterback. Goodbye Jason Campbell, I always liked you, but you don’t win and that is a problem.

That is only a start, but something has to be drastically done to change this franchise. I wish the next thing they would do is move back to RFK, the tiny cramped ultimate home field advantage. Things have never been the same since the move to Fed Ex Field. Oh Redskins, you make me so sad.

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Sell the Vatican Feed the World?

Posted October 16, 2009 by Greg
Categories: The Church
Tags: , , , ,

Sarah Silverman, she of the potty mouth and comedy specials, may be on to something Jesus suggested. In a profane comedy clip that is making the youtube rounds, (no way I am posting it here and I am not recommending you watch it just for the record), Silverman suggests that if the Catholic Church sold the Vatican it could go about the business of feeding the world’s hungry. This of course is a ridiculous idea, or is it?

If the Catholic church actually knew that selling its treasures and buildings, not everywhere, but say just the City State of the Vatican, could provide historic levels of relief to the neediest out there, isn’t this the kind of action Jesus might suggest they take? The realities of the proposal are pretty ridiculous, after all how can you sell a country? But the idea is intriguing, especially with the countless treasures stored up over years of archiving and excess in the Vatican. The Catholic Church does more to provide healing and food for the needy than any other private organization in the world, but is there a willingness to give where it hurts?

Of course the same could be said about many churches whose finances are so locked into property and valuables and perhaps it should be a question that more churches should ask. I think especially about historic churches in urban areas where they are barely sustainable but are sitting on absolutely huge property values. If a church of 50 people is meeting in a building worth millions of dollars wouldn’t the more Christian thing be to sell the property, use it to start churches around the globe or give it to relief organizations and rent a space to gather?

I don’t want to give Sarah Silverman, who is no fan of religion at all, more credit than she deserves, but there is some truth in her question.

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Deep Church: Reflection #1 – Emergents Like to Protest

Posted October 14, 2009 by Greg
Categories: Books, Emerging Church
Tags: , , , , ,

Are those in the emergent church simply true Protestants, protesting against failures in the church and seeking to rebuild and reboot the traditional church? That is the first question that Jim Belcher looks at in his efforts to define the emerging church. Belcher tries to nail down some specific areas of protest that have defined the emerging church movement. Many of the emerging churches critics have focused on protests and changes related to epistemology (the study of how we know truth) and hermeneutics (the theory of how we interpret scripture). But Belcher gives 7 areas he finds consistent voices of protest within emergent circles.Here are the protests he identifies with a very brief and limited clarifying comment below each.

1) Captivity to Enlightenment Rationalism

This boils down to a belief that the church has been imprisoned by rationalist philosophies that essential removes revelation from the way we know truth. This has found itself rooted in how we try to defend the church, defend scripture, and explain our faith.

2) A narrow view of salvation

Essentially emergents believe that the church has focused too much on justification and not enough on sanctification. There has been an over emphasis on becoming a Christian and not enough on living like a Christian.

3) Belief before belonging

This is a criticism of a traditional practice requiring people to have right doctrine before they are accepted into the body of the church. Doctrine is the gatekeeper for community.

4) Uncontextualized Worship

Worship has been too far removed from the culture of the people who are worshiping and instead it is preserving a culture of a different day and age that is increasingly irrelevant. This is a critique of using worship music, prayers, and liturgy that was all birthed from a one time relevant cultural place, but that time has long since passed.

5) Ineffective Preaching

The pastor as the fount of all knowledge has reduced spiritual formation to head knowledge and has removed people from lending their voice and their experience to the proclamation of scripture

6) Weak ecclesiology

Ecclesiology is the study of how church is structured and how church functions. Traditional church top down structures and unadapting methodology has effected its missional effectiveness.

7) Tribalism

The traditional church has has shied away from its responsibility to go out and to engage the world and to truly bring the Gospel to the world. This engagement with culture has resulted in the church being known more for what it is against that what it is for. We have lost the ability to be countercultural and to create better culture.

So this is where our conversation will begin with Deep Church. Are these fair assessments of the Emerging Church? Are these fair critiques of the Traditional Church? Does any of them resonate with your own protesters heart?

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