Month: January 2005

Paul (16 months) is quickly learning to use his tongue. Just a few weeks ago we were still fascinated by his simple words like “ma” and “da” and shaking his head “no” when he didn’t want something you tried to offer him.

Now, it is clear that he is trying very hard to listen to what you say and make his tongue answer back. For the most part it is still one syllable sentences. Like, “Va!” means, “Hey, it’s Violet! Can I pet you?”

Paul has also learned the value of body language in combination with his words. If he gives his cup to you and says, “juice” we all know that he wants juice. For him this has been a great relief to his frustrations. He now gets more of what he wants… Especially since he is so good at pointing to exactly what he wants and patiently waiting for you to get it right.

I am sure there is a tie in with this observation to the spiritual life. My best guess would be that of baby believers. They know what they want, they know what they are feeling. But often times the find it impossible to express something in the “right Christian language.”

Perhaps this is merely a reminder of how important it is that we, as believers, learn to speak the language of the new believers instead of the other way around. So in the regard the illustration falls apart.

As of right now, I have been working on the website since 9:00 AM. That’s about 10 hours too many if you ask me. I have a couple of little things to finish up and then it’s off to the rest of my day… or what’s left of it.

The good news is that the site is up and it looks good. I’ll be 100% happy with it once I get the menu issue resolved. I get the idea that this is a large scale problem though as it seems to be the talk of mambo-ites.

More on this later I am sure.

For the last few days I have increasingly fallen in love with the idea of launching a CMS based website that I can easily update and maintain from anywhere I have access to the internet.

This took about 2 days of fiddling with and trying to do it on my own, but eventually I broke down, spent a little more coin, and got it done.

This is a massive change since it will allow students to add content and comment on others content.

There are still loads of bugs to work out, but so far I love it. Even thought I am using a basic template, it looks pretty sweet.

In the past few days it’s become apparent that my once “private domain” where I could journal freely with only the private eyes of people whom I’ve invited has now been visited and commented on by people from the church.

Thanks to the power of Google, some people got bored and found this little place. So in breaking ranks I am changing my audience of All Blogs for just this one post. This post is directed at you kind folks who are visiting and searching this thing out of curiosity.

This note is for you… I’ll repost it every so often as a reminder.

When this came to my attention I had two initial reactions. First, I did move the blog. Back in early November I had an entry called anonymity in which I openly wondered if I should make the blog completely private so that no one would find it or if I should just make it public. I decided to just leave it as it was… But I had always meant to make it more private. Thus, I have now moved it to it’s new home and made it much harder to find. I’m sure it will be found by plenty… As the click counter continues to escalate, I have no doubt that the move to this URL was no big deal to those who want to find it. Second, I wanted to go all the way and privatize my blog, including all of it’s entries to another site altogether… Out of the public domain. (There are pay sites that have password protected blogs.

After some thought, I’ve chosen not to do this. In fact, for the last 9 months that this blog has been online I’ve written almost nothing about specific students. I have lamented and vented here about situations and frustrations, but not in a way to embarrass anyone. I’ve never mentioned names about situations… Perhaps assigned descriptive titles but nothing else.

So, moving forward there are a few guidelines I am requesting of visitors:

1. Know that while this blog is in the public domain, it is my writing exercise and it belongs to me. As the subtitle says, “these are the thoughts, good bad and random….” They aren’t messages to anyone special, they aren’t secret thoughts, don’t check here to see what Adam really thinks of you… Before blogging I journaled offline. Journaling is the practice of free thought for all who write, speak, paint, etc. (In case you didn’t know, 90% of pastors don’t write their own stuff they just buy it or steal it… But I write everything myself!) Keeping an active journal helps me categorize my thoughts, get stupid thoughts out, etc… In other words my blogging helps me write stuff for public distribution that is clearer and more articulate than it would be if I didn’t do it.
2. Unlike a lot of pastors, I refuse to keep two separate blogs. Scroll down my list of links and you will see some ministry friends who have nameless blogs. Even pastors whom I greatly respect have public blogs and private blogs. If you’re reading this one, that’s all there is. Don’t like what you read… Don’t come back.
3. Yes, I occasionally use the word “ass” in my writing. If you were to scroll through my posts, you’ll recognize it as a word I use fairly often. I’m not a prune, I’m Adam. Some may call this crass or gross that “a pastor uses such language.” Give me a break, if you knew the vices of most believers, including pastors, out there you’d realize that this is no big deal. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t gamble, I don’t do a lot of things that are common and acceptable among clergy that I know… So excuse me if I use this very descriptive and fun word every once in a while. It’s funny that those who have commented on that, I’ve heard 10 times worse come out of their mouths!
4. Keep things in context. It’s frustrating to me that some just scroll past the really good posts trying to find personal information. I know there is a lot of curiosity about me because to some I am the only “public figure” they know well. If you’re going to read my blog, please read the whole thing.
5. I rant. Get over it. Sometimes I’ll come across something in my studies or in a conversation that sends me off on a rant. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s a rant. Remember, this isn’t meant for the public domain, you’re infringing on my private space.
6. I’m a blunt person. Get over it. I’ve never been the type to sugar coat things. As I’ve matured I have learned to keep things to myself, but I tend to be pretty blunt here. If you read the whole of my comments you will notice that for every time I am harsh on a person I’ve been harsh on myself 10 times or more.
7. An agreement with my readers. By reading this, you are agreeing that you will keep this blog in context and that you won’t try to use these words against me. If you desire to destroy me, get in line. It forms to the right. 🙂

For a few months, the YS forums have had an on-going, ever-growing list of things YP’s say “no one told me about in my training. I added to that list a few weeks ago some things that I’ve learned. I thought it was worth capturing here:

1. Sheep bite.

2. You will have to empty yourself on the table everyday before the Lord…

3. The job is bigger than you. (OK, they said this… But I didn’t believe it.)

4. Contact work is more important than sounding good at youth group.

5. Ministry is what you do out of the office.

6. The pressure of leadership will crush your creativity, enthusiasm, energy, everything. Whatever is left comes from God.

7. Satan has a special ministry just for youth workers.

The other day, another forum member commented on my #6 on that list. They wrote:

This quote really hit me. I have been working for a little over 5 months now, and I look back at my original enthusiasm and wonder how I can get it back sometimes.



The more you do this, the more you realize how hopeless it is if you rely on yourself alone. When the trials of this job start to get to you and you feel empty, you know that it’s not about you and you are only capable with God’s strength alone.

There are a lot of times when I wonder why I continue to contribute to the YS boards. Afterall, I don’t get paid for it and I certainly invest a lot of my personal time and energy to it. I guess the “big reason” I continue to go back there and to comment is t wo-fold. First, I like to encourage others. Sounds so simple but I really do enjoy helping youth workers who are struggling with issues. Some of the issues are simple, they need to be pointed to a resource, other issues are complex, they don’t know what to do in a nasty situation. Encouraging them encourages me since it often point back to what a great situation I am in. Second, I get a lot of help there. For the most part I know I can bounce things off of this group of 4000 youth workers and see if someone has experienced the same thing or if they have an ounce of experience to share with me. It’s been an excellent source of book reviews, game ideas, etc.

I like to tell newcomers to the forums, if you give you will receive. It’s one of those simple principals in life that is true even on the internet.

As I was about to leave for Huntington the phone rang. It was my professors wife again, class has been cancelled for Friday as well.

Phew! The roads are terrible, but my strong desire to get this school thing taken care of in the right way was driving my sorry butt to Huntington no matter what.

So, I have a surprise day off. I am sure I will take some flack from students that I didn’t hang up the phone and rush over to RHS to have lunch with them, but they will just have to deal with it.

I am still going to finish my little paper and e-mail it in. I guess that makes me a brown-noser. (I also have the highest GPA of my life right and don’t want to screw it up, a 3.75.)

In a few minutes I will climb into Big Sexy and head down to Huntington, Indiana for my grad class tomorrow.

With the weather looking as nasty as it does, let the record state that I am not looking forward to this journey. I have a good feeling that it will be OK, but I have little doubt that it will be a long, long drive. In good weather I can do the drive in under 4 hours but I imagine this will be closer to 8 today.

I’m sure to have a story to tell!

This is the first talk in our Winter/Spring 2005 series called Apolcalypse Now.



The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. (Revelation 1:1)

Since these words were penned sometime in the late 1st Century, Christians have been waiting for the things written in this book to unfold.

Within it’s pages are prophesies of things yet to come. While much of what we will teach in the coming months will be somewhat mysterious, one thing is for certain:

There will be a time in the future when the words of this letter will leap out of the Bible and into reality. As we learned in looking through Daniel, everything that God predicts will be fulfilled. Not in spirit, not in a round about way, but exactly as transmitted to us.

Personal story:



There were a few things I hated to hear as a youngster. One of them was “you’ll understand this when you get older.”

My brother is 5 years older than me, and he used to say this to me all the time.

– When we shared a room, he would make me get in his bed so the monsters would eat me first.

– He would quietly play with matches in his room, but I wasn’t allowed to tell on him.

– He would sneak out to go to his girlfriend’s house.

– He would knock on my window to let him in when he’d been out all night.

– He would have me delete the phone messages from the high school.

– He would change the oil on his car.

– He would talk about strange things with his friends.

– He would drag me a long to parties so he’d have an excuse to leave early.

With all of those things, he would say “you’ll understand this when you get older.” As the little brother I hated to hear that phrase because it was somehow demeaning to me… it was really saying “you are smart enough to figure out what I am up to… when you learn a little more you’ll start to understand somethings.”

This is a lot like the book of Revelation. Revelation is the culmination of all the other books of the Bible. It assumes that they reader knows “some stuff” about:

Creation of the world

God’s promises to the patriarchs

The story of the Jews

The story of Jesus

The story of the early church

And the story of the church today.

The simple fact is that if you are missing basic knowledge about the Bible you will be completely lost and confused with what Jesus teaches us about the future.

For this reason, in the last 3 years we’ve taught you Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Daniel before we’ve come to Revelation. All of that should act as background for what is to come because this is the language the author uses. He was a Jew and he used Jewish metaphors to communicate.

So when we start to look at Revelation we must first acknowledge that it is in harmony with the rest of the OT and NT prophesy about the end of the world as we know it.

Revelation from 10,000 feet



Author:

John

This is the same John who was one of the 12 disciples and author of the Gospel of John. John was in the inner circle of the disciples. (Peter, James, John) John was probably the youngest disciple and the one that Jesus was the closest to. This is the same man referred to in John 19:26-27.

By the time of this book being written, John was an old man. He would have been between 55-80 years old.

Date:

Among scholarly types, there is a lot of debate about this. We know for 100% certainty that it was written before AD 96. There are two primary dates people argue over (AD 54-68 or AD 81-96) but to keep things simple we are going to say it was written in the 1st Century AD.

Place:

John wrote this book from the Island of Patmos where he had been exiled. (Rev 1:9) The story goes that John was put in exile for refusing to acknowledge Domitian as god. But the emperor respected John and wasn’t much of a killer, so he exiled John to Patmos. He was released and went back to Greece after Domition was murdered in AD 96.

What was going on in the church around this time?

This is very important. In the spring of AD 70 there was a great upheaval in Jerusalem. History tells us that a Roman ruler tried to place a statue of Julius Caesar on or near the Temple Courts.

Obviously, since this is a sacred site for Jews and they thought putting an idol on God’s temple was dishonoring, they rioted! The result of the scuffle was that about 10-15 Roman soldiers were killed. As we saw in The Passion of the Christ the Romans were always fearful that they would lose control of the city and a lot of people would get hurt. So the Roman ruler sent word to Rome that there were problems in Palestine.

Rome responded with massive force. The Emperor Vespian and the Roman senate ordered that Jerusalem be destroyed. By late summer 2 legions of the Italian Regiment totally 20,000 soldiers arrived outside of the city. The city fell on August 10th, AD 70 and the people of the city either died, were enslaved, or escaped.

Up until this point, the church was still headquartered in Jerusalem. But after Jerusalem was destroyed, the church was scattered. Between AD 70 and AD 150 there wasn’t much central leadership in the church. It wasn’t until about AD 250 that the bishop of Rome, Clement, began to be recognized as the leader of what would eventually become the Roman Catholic Church.

During this period of time the church, though scattered in leadership, continued to flourish. (We’ll learn more about this next fall when we study Acts!)

Language and form:

Unlike the gospels or the epistles, this book uses a poetic language called Apocalyptic. This means that the language is visionary and by definition vague and symbolic.

For the most part, we teach you to read the Bible literally. Since the Bible is God’s love letter to mankind, we believe that it was written in a language that is easily understood.

Example: If I were to give you a sentence and then to ask you what it means… you would see that interpretation is important.

Lisa, in a few minutes go upstairs to my office and get a bag of water balloons, we’re going to use them for a game.

Understood normally: This would mean what it says, it’s a command.

Understood metaphorically: This would mean “Lisa is an important compatriot who is a skilled helper, she enjoys destroying dryness.

Understood poetically: This would mean, nothing since it doesn’t rhyme and isn’t lyrical it must mean that I have poor thoughts about Lisa.

Understood apocalyptically: This would mean, in a time Lisa will help me destroy the earth with a barrage of unexplained water bombings.

It’s important to note that we only look at the Bible “abnormally” when it is clear to do so. We will see that John’s vision is clearly laid out to be a time to look at the Bible apocalyptically.

Outline:

The book of Revelation can be broken up into 4 time periods.

Section One: Past History (1-3)

Section Two: Tribulation (4-19)

Section Three: Millenium (20)

Section Four: Eternity (21-22)

Purpose of the book:

As John mentions in Rev 1:1, the purpose is to show the church what will soon take place.

Key verse:

Revelation 22:17 “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”

So that is an introduction to this letter, let’s dive into it!

Read 1:1-3

– An angel came and visited John.

Read 1: 4-5



– this is a personal greeting

– including a greeting from Jesus keys us into what kind of visit John must have had!

Read 1: 6-8



– this is a combination of two verses of prophesy about Jesus’ return.

– Daniel 7:13, “”In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.

– Zechariah 12:10, “”And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit [a] of grace and supplication. They will look on [b] me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.”

– Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. This is Jesus acknowledging his eternality! He was, is, and is to come always God.

Read 1: 9-11

– I’ve already told you that John was on the Island of Patmos in exile.

– This happened to him while he was privately worshipping God.

– He was told that he was going to see a vision and he was supposed to write down what he saw and send it to 7 churches.

– These churches are all in Asia Minor, in present day Turkey.

Read 1:12-16



– This is the same imagery of a man used by Daniel. (Dan 7;9)

– John would have been well aware of Daniel’s prophesy!

– John also knew Jesus intimately, this was the first time he had seen Jesus since Jesus’ ascension in Acts 1.

– John described Jesus’ mouth as a “sharp double edged sword.”

o One commentator describes this imagery like this:

§ The sword is both a weapon and a symbol of war, oppression, anguish, and political authority. But John seems to intend a startling difference in the function of this sword, since it proceeds from the mouth of Christ rather than being wielded in his hand. (Expositors Bible Commentary p. 32, Alan Johnson)

§ Obviously, this is not literal language but symbolic.

§ It’s as though John is saying, “Jesus appeared to me… he was dressed for battle!”

Read 1: 17-18



– We get a feel for the intimacy in their relationship.

– John was so excited to see Jesus and in such awe that he dropped to his knees “as though dead.”

– Jesus recognizes his beloved disciple and reassures him, “I was dead, but I am alive forever and ever!”

Read 1: 19-20



– This is Jesus explaining to his disciple what is going to happen next. We’re not going to get to it today, but the 7 stars and the seven angels and the 7 churches are all talking about the churches that Jesus is about to have a message for.

Application:

I’m going to close today by drawing your attention back to the imagery of Jesus’ appearing to John as a soldier, ready for battle.

We like to think of Jesus as a nice man, with children sitting on his knee… he looks as innocent and harmless as Santa Claus.

But we need to remember that Revelation is teaching us of a Jesus who is coming back to both judge the world and enforce judgment.

Jesus is a strong and might warrior as well. He is no weakling.

I’d like to leave you tonight with a song. In the song, we’re going to hear a story about a man who goes off to war. He writes letter to his mom, his mom writes letters to him. She prays for him, he is sustained by her prayers during hard times.

But I want to leave you with this image because it is the exact image we should have in our brains as we await the return of Jesus.

The mother waits with anticipation every day for her boy to come home… so we too should be awaiting the return of Christ Jesus.

As the song plays, I would ask just that you quiet yourself and listen to the words of the story… remembering, that this level of emotion is the same anticipation we should be waiting for these things in Revelation to happen.

Play song, “Letters from War”

Pray

I only saw the big game for a few moments last night. I saw it long enough to know that there were a couple of big stories. Ashlee Simpson got booed as she performed at halftime. No one really cares about that. The second big story is that USC is better than everyone else in the country by far.

Last night’s trouncing of Oklahoma should leave Notre Dame uneasy. Maybe Ty Willingham did a good job by only losing by 31? Oklahoma was the #2 team in the country and they lost by 34!

I just hope USC is running a clean program. As most people see that they are just getting better each year, you hope it is because Pete Carrol is doing everything right and nothing wrong. Because if there is a scandal to be had… LA isn’t the place to avoid it. They aren’t in Lincoln, NE where they can cover things up. Nor are they in South Bend. USC is right in the middle of La La Land. As depicted in Shrek, L.A. is Far, Far Away.

If USC is just getting better in 2005, look out. They’ll win another National Championship and people will start making references to UCLA of the 1970s.

This is our second winter here, so I am feeling more free to whine about some of the dumb infrastructure stuff in our area.

I’m certain this will be read as a political rant, but it is really just intended to be a reality check.

1. It’s called asphalt. It goes everywhere. Why is it that Oakland and Macomb counties are so rich yet they haven’t bothered to pave the roads? I’m not talking about upkeep, I’m talking about paving busy roads that are completely impassable. Isn’t this a safety hazard?
2. Rich white people who live in the burbs but like to think they are in the country. If you live in Macomb County and you don’t have fields planted or harvest an orchard, you are suburban not rural. Get over it. Stop fighting commercial building, shopping centers, and multi-family housing. It shows that you are bigoted and elitist and the polls show you vote democrat… I’ll remind you that you aren’t that rich to be so elite. It annoys me to hear this argument from people who live in brand new homes on dirt roads. “Keep our township rural” is what they cry. What it really seems to be is rich white folk trying to keep minorities out. They figure if they keep multi-family housing out and dirt roads they won’t have to allow for diversity. Why don’t they just burn a few crosses while they are at it. This is America baby… Diversity is our strength. Democrats give all that lip about wanting a strong economy but don’t want to see their community have any elements of this at all. They just want rich white people and that’s it. That’s not a strong economy, who is going to sustain this economy when the inevitable happens and the auto industry flees the unionized north for the cheaper labor south?
3. It’s called salt, put it down while it snows not afterwards. I am amazed that such smart people seem completely inept at snow removal. People around here live in denial that we even get snow and act like Floridians when we get it. It’s a shame that schools close for no reason. Two or three inches of snow shouldn’t result in a disaster! It should take more than a foot overnight to shut things down.
4. Dirt roads are unsafe, not a status quo. This goes along the lines of the rich white exclusion thing. Why do people live in established areas and still have roads like they are in rural Columbia? I mean give it a rest. Every single road in this county should be paved. The argument from silence is “who will pay for this?” It’s called an assessment, you send the landowners a bill. You want to build a $500,000 house in the middle of nowhere, unless you are declaring that “private estate” it’s own independent nation, the municipality has a right to send you a bill.
5. canceling things because of poor infrastructure is a shame not “just how it is.” I am sick of hearing this. It can be fixed and it should be. It’s time this area stopped pretending to be in the dark ages and dealt with some reality. You don’t “pre-cancel” school because it might snow. We live in Michigan and we should know how to deal with the weather… It comes every year!