Month: June 2006

  • Mormon Series: There is One God

    Missionarycomp
    Tonight we are beginning our series on Mormonism. I’m pretty excited about it as this is a very relevant topic to our community. To read the transcripts of the talk, just click that "read more" button.

    (more…)

  • 9 Years

    Wedding1It was a windy and warm day 9 years ago that Kristen and I got married. We seemed old enough, so mature, and so ready to handle anything that came our way.

    I guess we weren’t wrong. It was the right time with the right person and the last 9 years have been fantastic.

    So many people talk about the "difficulties of marriage" and I can only nod my head to try to empathize because I’ve really never felt marriage to Kristen has ever been difficult. It’s just been joy.

    Highlights? How do you narrow down 9 years to a highlight real? Things that jump out immediately about Kristen are her sense of adventure. One of us will come up with a crazy idea and she’ll be the one saying, "Come on, let’s do it!" I like that about Kristen.

    Kristen always suprises me with the impractical. Maybe that’s her sense of adventure. But every couple of weeks Kristen will have this perfectly impractical idea we should chase after. Maybe it’s driving 60 miles to go out to eat "just because I read a good review." Maybe buying a massive piece of furniture for our first apartment that measured less than 600 square feet. The list goes on and on. I like that about my wife.

    Kristen is brave. Over the years I think I’ve made some wild decisions. We’ve lived some weird places. We’ve gone on some crazy trips. We’ve quit our "safe jobs" and jumped into working for churches. We’ve moved 3000 miles to California and bravely admitted our mistake, just to move further east than we started one year later. I remember driving from Chicago to the Upper Penisula of Michigan and Kristen talked the whole way about "I hope we see a bear." While she was brave, I was terrified that we’d see a bear!

    Of course, five years ago Kristen stopped being just my wife and became a mom. I am sure that she probably defines herself more as mommy now than as Adam’s wife… but I really just think of her as my wife. I adore the way the children flock to her after church. I can’t wait to come home and see what type of adventure she’s gotten Megan and Paul into while I was at work. I have no idea how she’s managed to hold down the fort while I’m off doing "something for God." While we both foundly remember those pre-kid years as "the single life" I can’t imagine making a better decision than choosing to have kids. In fact, let’s look back at a journal entry from November 13, 2000 so we can all enjoy what was going through my mind.

    So, now I am a daddy in waiting. There are
    thousands of questions floating through my mind that will take the next several
    months to sort out. Right now you are barely 4 inches long in mom’s tummy. She
    is just starting to show that she is pregnant. All the morning sickness has
    gone away and she is starting to act like my wife again. Will she ever be the
    same carefree girl that I met back at Moody? I’ll just have to wait to find
    out. Yet mostly I am anxious to meet you. If you didn’t know, we have been
    talking a lot about you while you grow in there. Are you a girl or a boy? Are
    you healthy? What’s it like to swim around in there? Can you hear us? Who will
    you look like? What color eyes will you have? Will you have curly brown hair
    like mom? Will you be as stubborn as mom or as sensible as me? How will we take
    care of you? I guess I’ll just have to suffer and wait. There are bigger
    questions too. Like, will you want to follow the Lord Jesus when you grow up?
    Will you be incredibly smart and charming like your parents? Will you play
    sports or sing in the choir or play an instrument or WHAT? But the most
    important thing is first. Mom and I want to raise you to be a lover of God. We
    would love to pass along our love for God to you, but it is ultimately your
    decision to make. Well, like you can tell, I have a lot of things going on in my
    mind. But as I sit in the Moody library and type all the incessant questions I
    am comforted by God’s Spirit. Everything
    is going to be just fine? You are going to be perfect.

    Nine years ago was the best day of my life. As we’ve joked, nine years and no one has killed anyone, must be pretty good.

  • Religious Tourism?

    OK, the Detroit Free Press ran an article today that kind of annoyed me. It’s about something the author calls "religious tourism." This isn’t the $3000 trips to Israel or a Bible lands trip to Greece and Turkey.

    No, he’s talking about short term missions. I’ll be the first to say that many foreign mission trips aren’t all that effective ministry-wise, but to label missions as some sort of tourist industry is a bit odd. Read the whole article here.

    For thought:     Isn’t this a short sighted view of travel since missionaries of all shapes and sizes really opened up a lot of areas of the world to Western people?

  • Is God Bound by Rationalism?

    For the past several weeks I’ve been involved in a discussion about the DaVinci Code. This has been intruiging but what’s been even better for me is the intellectual discussions that it tends to bring out.

    Here’s what I mean. Often someone will say "Because the Bible says this and the Bible also says that, it is confusing." Generally, they are pointing out some sort of contradiction. Such as, "How can God exist in three forms and not be polytheistic?" (Many gods as opposed to a Judaic Christian view of monotheism) On the surface, and by deductive reasoning… it seems like a contradiction because it IS a contradiction. Another example. "How is it that Jesus was both fully God and fully man?" This seems like a contradiction because it IS a contradiction. In Bible school we were always taught that these weren’t contradictions… they were difficulties. As if acknowledging something as "weird in our eyes" somehow lessoned the truths of Scripture?

    See, this is my frustration point. Thinking rationally we know that 2+2=4. No one would argue that this isn’t true. So, the same type of thinking is applied to something like the doctrine of the trinity. 1+1+1=3 gods, right? Wrong! 1+1+1= 1 God. But that makes no sense, right? Wrong. It makes perfect sense if you see that God exists outside of the realms of rationalism. Eh? The Westminster Shorter Cathecism says, God is Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, goodness, justice, and truth.

    Inside rationalism is a basic "rule" that contradictions, or apparent contradictions, are bad. A contradiction proves that something is broken. If gravity is a constant and something doesn’t over gravity… there must be some sort of aberration causing gravity to not work at a constant. While that may be perfectly acceptable within Science, this isn’t fair to attribute to all areas of the Bible.

    Why? First off… the Bible pre-dates the existence of rationalism as a school of thought. Even Paul said, in a very rationalistic way… At least 15 times the Apostle Paul talked about "the mystery" of our relationship with Christ. Why? Because it makes no logical sense! Think of Acts 2… people saw the Resurrection as such a mystery that they thought Peter must be drunk.

    The fatal flaw in many people’s faith is that their rationalistic epistemology will not allow God to be infinitely smarter than they are. Continental rationalism teaches that ALL truth can be known to man. This simply flies against the very nature of God and improperly espouses infinite understanding on finite man.

    This is no excuse for us to stop searching for understanding. But, now check this out, it should comfort us to know that even if we understood every single thing God reveals about Himself to us in His word… we still wouldn’t know all there is to know about God.

    What? That’s right, God is infinite. The Bible isn’t. There are things that God knows that we don’t need to know that He chose not to tell us about. So, the Bible itself is limited to what God chose to allow us to understand.

    But as for the Bible. Yeah, James makes it clear we are called to understand, obey, and live up to all that we know from God’s Word.

    Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But
    the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and
    continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he
    will be blessed in what he does.

  • David Crowder Concert

    Crowder_band_david_2Last night I went to see the David Crowder Band over at Woodside. It had been about 4 years since I last saw the band. They were much better than the last time I saw them. Since this wasn’t part of their tour the kind of just played what they wanted.

    Some things I really liked about Crowder. He clearly doesn’t like applause or accolades. The crowd would cheer when he finished a song and you could see he was uncomfortable with it, so he would just launch a new song. I loved that he didn’t talk much. When he did, it was not introducing a song or telling a story, it was just something like, "Really, we’re enjoying ourselves. Thank you." I also liked his playful spirit as he’d stop a song to give the audience instructions. I also liked the "dorkiness" of some of his stuff. The key-tar was memorable. Stuff like that is clearly why he is popular with college kids.

    It was my first time in the infamous Woodside Bible. It’s a nice place. A lot smaller than I had imagined. I felt like the hosts did a good job, though they tried way too hard to be a Woodside event instead of allowing the place to be a venue for a concert. They shouldn’t have plugged their stuff and putting their staff people on stage for a giveaway was really awkward for non-Woodside types. (Though giveaways are always nice.) I left feeling like I had visited a Woodside event instead of feeling as though I’d gone to something open to the public. Two "worst parts" as far as I could tell… and Woodside will work this out as they do more concerts.

    First, the person who got up about 10 minutes before the concert started and "laid down the law." This, while memorable, made it clear that the church was nervous about the concert. I have no doubt that that part was the result of a staff meeting. I can just hear it, "Now you tell those young people we don’t want any monkey business. Make sure they don’t break anything." Blech! I thought I was at a fundamentalist concert there for a minute. "Young people, this is a church, act appropriately." Next time, just have your security guys be present and trust the people at the front.

    Second, the intermission was terribly timed. Josh and the worship band from Lighthouse did a great job "warming the crowd up" for Crowder. I’ve just never seen or noticed a 15 minute intermission after a warm-up band. It was like, get pumped up… get excited…. now wait for 15 minutes. There just has to be a better way to do that.

    OK, bonus "worst part." The radio personality they put on stage was terrible! He was like all smart and inspiring… then he plugged his radio station. That just all kinds of sucks.

    Boy, hope no one thinks I didn’t like this show. Those "worst parts" would be number 8, 9, and 10 of the top 10 list for the night. Overall, I’d give the night a B.

  • Softball fun continues

    Shatter_softballThis may seems sarcastic, but even in our 4th loss of the year I had a good time last night. It’s not that we’re a terrible team or anything… it’s just that we’re in a good league and we’re not a great team. I’m still optimistic that we may break through and actually win a game this year.

    Part of the fun from yesterday was the attitude of the other team. The guys from the Perfecting Church were gracious and kind and displayed excellent sportsmanship. They were clearly better than us, but we kept it competitive, and they were very complimentary and received compliments well.

    I had a "good night" in that I got on base a lot. I’ve still not mastered the old "golf swing versus softball swing" dilemma as I can always make solid contact… it’s just right up the middle instead of over the infields head. But I went 3-3 all with infield hits. Of course, everyone is going to talk about my in-field, 2 error triple for a long time.

    This is what happened. In the 5th inning we needed 3 runs to continue the game… or else we’d get mercied. I hit the ball hard, but right at the 3rd baseman. I did my best to run out the play but got beat by a step for the 2nd out. But the ball went past the 1st basemen and up against the fence. So, I felt like being aggressive and rounded first and headed for second. Well, 5 steps before I got there I could see the 2nd basemen ready for the ball to arrive so I pull up and was getting ready to either get tagged out or get in a rundown. But the 2nd baseman dropped the ball. So… I rounded 2nd and headed for third. (Of course, the 3rd base coach was screaming at me to stop!) As I finally made it to 3rd, all the folks from the church were half laughing and half roaring as the umpire called me safe. It was a riot! The funny thing was as I got to 3rd is I had already decided that if the 3rd baseman dropped the ball I was going home no matter what. But it didn’t happen. The next batter hit a homerun.

    We still lost, but that was a great memory.

  • Evaluate everything?

    I’ve been "thought silent" for several weeks. It’s not that I don’t have anything worth writing about, it’s just that time of year when I am having a hard time holding a thought long enough to have a complete thought worth writing down.

    Evaluate and justify everything. For those who know me, this has been a mantra of mine over the last several years. I am annoyed that few ministries really learn from their successes and failures, and so I tend to over analyze everything in my own ministry.

    At the core of this evaluate everything mentality is it’s logical conclusion. I always say to myself , "If something isn’t working, stop feeding it." That simply means that if we are investing our time and energy into something with specific goals and we are not reaching those goals, or are reaping the wrong benefits… then we need to think about not doing it any more.

    Of course, this goes beyond numeric goals. It’s not like because youth group isn’t growing or Sunday school is growing that we need to stop doing it. Afterall, a ministry could be accomplishing all of it’s goals and actually grow smaller. Why? Because people aren’t a business… heck, even in business you can do everything "right" and not grow numerically. Even in business there are times when you actually get healthier by getting smaller. Just ask General Motors.

    This isn’t a new thought for me. For a long time I’ve thought this way and there are many things we aren’t doing in Light Force because they got "evaluated out." Retreats. Small groups. Regular small service projects.  They all got "cut" because the effort/expense got outweighed by their benefits. It’s normal and healthy for any ministry to do this… even with things that are working somewhere else.

    This is my new thought. Some of the best stuff in ministry is a complete waste of resources. What? That’s right. Some of the "best stuff" that we are doing is, goal speaking, utterly unremarkable. In fact, there are things that aren’t going well, have high impact, and have butchered their goals like ordering a steak at Wendy’s. Make sense out of that? We can’t… but we know we’re onto something…

    Should those things be cut? Well, no. But it’s hard to justify "wasting time" and "wasting resources" when most of the good stuff happening is merely incidental. Afterall, can life change really be "bad" when it is happening "by accident?"

    Bigger thought question:     Is this "evaluate everything" mentality even good for ministry in general? Does everything have to be justifiable? What about _____?

  • A serious case of the munchies

    I saw this on the CNN website. Imagine going to Home Depot and getting some new cabinets for your kitchen. You know the routine… the husband has the truck purring outside and wants to get in and out. But the wife spends an extra 2 hours forcing you to look at 7,000 different pull handles for them. You finally complete the purchase, get home and unwrap them… and this happens:

    A contractor late last week discovered two 50-pound "bricks" of
    marijuana wrapped in plastic bags inside a bathroom vanity he had
    purchased at a Home Depot store in Tewksbury, said Chief of Detectives
    Lt. Dennis Peterson.

    The estimated street value of the marijuana is around $145,000, Peterson said.

    Similar incidents have occurred in other parts of the state. [Read the rest of the story]

    So, I know some people who wouldn’t have called the cops. I’m just having fun with this, but I was wondering if they found a couple bags of empty Doritos in the contractors truck?

  • Glue Boys

    A friend of mine pointed me to the Glue Boys website last night.

    While I am interested in watching the documentary… I’m not sure this is a plight that people will really care about on the African continent. That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? The way I see it, there are so many massive problems to address that this one, as terrible as it is, is nothing compared to the AIDS crisis.

    That said, I am looking forward to learning more. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you know about, it’s what you do about it.

  • Goal!

    When it comes to commentators, there is nothing like the sound of "GOAL!" on  Mexican TV. This is just pure World Cup glory.