Category: hmm… thoughts

This morning I’m publishing a "draft" of a post from 2 weeks ago. I like some of the things I was thinking here… even if they are incomplete.

I’ve been reading Henry Blackaby’s "Spiritual Leadership" over the past few weeks. Here is a quote that I came across that really hits home as I talk to, encourage, and "whatever" folks through YMX.

Moreover, those yearning for recognition and approval from others rarely find that positions of authority fill the void because they have sought a worldly remedy for a spiritual problem. (p. 75)

Time and again I’ve seen youth workers who are struggling with "should I stick it out or should I go work elsewhere?" To me, this often goes to the "hip idea" of calling. Like a tuning fork it rattles me when I read/hear "I’m questioning my calling."

There are two levels of this. The truly called often shy away from the calling because they bear the weight of it. (Such as Moses) But the "think they are called" often run away when the going gets tough because they are in that position because they "sensed" the calling but it wasn’t verified by others. (Such as JohnMark)

Here’s how this plays out in my mind. Not claiming infallibility here. A young leader "feels called" to go into ministry. So they do. They get whatever education or experience they need to get hired somewhere. Everything is well and good at first. But then the going gets tough. The least healthy churches have a tendency to hire the least equipped to deal with the problems of an unhealthy church.

So, it doesn’t take long for the new leader to say "I don’t think I’m called into THIS!" My question for that new leader is about verification. If your calling has been verified by the people around you… you shouldn’t run from it but embrace it through it’s hardships. So… the question goes back to "who does the calling."

If your calling has been verified by others and you are experiencing hardship… endure it! There simply doesn’t seem to be a point, in my opinion, when you can throw in the towel. Because if you are called somewhere… you are there until the same people who called you there release you.

But the falsely called or self-called should feel free to kick it in at any time. They are in a position that wasn’t for them in the first place.

Here’s the incompleteness of this thought.  I don’t know where the difference lies here in those called into vocational ministry vs. a general call to action that all beleivers receive. I think there is a difference… and I think that people can get called vocationally into specific types of ministry for times in their lives (such as urban youth ministry or music ministry or lead pastor ministry) but I’ve not throught much beyond this thought.

To depend on the Bible more and more.

Last year my friend Eric Stapleton, a missionary in Vanuatu, blew my mind with his observations of life in another culture. He said, "By seeing the syncretisms of their culture, it revealed to me many syncretisms in my own life and culture."

syn·cre·tism  (sngkr-tzm, sn-)
n.

1. Reconciliation
   or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion,
   especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.
2. Linguistics. The merging of two or more originally different inflectional forms.

Why did God use this to hit me with a 2×4? I think… and I’m still digesting this… that there are lots of places in my private practice of following Jesus, the way I lead others to follow Jesus, and the way that church in America works that syncretize things from our culture into how I do and think about relationships with Jesus.

Rob Bell does a good job talking about this concept, but it leaves me wondering about solutions. In Velvet Elvis he talks about people always taking the interpretation of the Bible somewhere… he demonstrates how Christians have interpreted and re-interpreted "better" passages as time has gone on. He stabs those who hold to "the old way" in the hand and reminds them that the Bible is alive and not dead.

But there are boundaries to that. Bell, and lots of "emergent" leaders like to use this line of thinking to remove traditional "biblical" boundaries. They say that by drawing boundaries they are "killing the movement of God."

So… this is what I am wrestling with. If the Bible is alive and morphing in it’s interpretation to the generations (see 2 Peter 1:1-4)… how in the world do I know how to prepare myself and my students to navigate their faith through such a dramatically changing climate? How will we know what’s true and good? How will we know how far is too far?

Feel free to discuss with me on this.
– When I say "the Bible is alive" does that mean that it changes? If so, how is it that God is immutable (unchanging and unchangeable) and His Word is mutable in its interpretation
– Is looking at Scripture with a relativistic, or even "culturally situational" mindset a syncretism of what’s going on here and now… or is it something that has happened all along?
– The "fear" of the current evangelicals is that this type of thinking, this new hermeneutic (how we read and apply literature, including the Bible) is that it’s branded as a way to embrace impure lifestyles… is that true? Are these fears well-founded or merely fear-mongering by those "in control?"

It’s been a long weekend of relaxing, movies, swimming, fireworks, and wasting time. I realize this is high time in Romeo for "doing nothing" but it’s time for me to get back into my routine.

We’ve got Light Force tonight. It’s good to come together and concentrate a little here and there over the summer. I don’t think I have any adult leaders except Kristen and I (and Dave)… but it will be fine.

All of this, while not coming out that well, is me grasping at my task. My task is not now, nor has ever been, to be merely a social director or "a friend" to students. My task is to reach and disciple students in the name of Jesus Christ in this community. I’ve not been distracted from that task… it’s just sometimes hard to see through the forest of summer.

More proof that Congress has absolutely no idea what the average American is like. There is so much stupidity and racism in this clip… I don’t even know where to start. Well, let’s start with it being funny.

As I look back on the last few days I see monster days with monster accomplishments. As I look at today and the week ahead I see more monster days in the aims of more monster accomplishments.

Big personal stuff. Big family stuff. Big projects at la inglesia loca. Big stuff for wrapping up the big building project. Right now live is just big and monsterous.

The amazing thing for me is that normally when my life is monster-like I have a hard time seeing what God is doing. I long to catch my breath, to run up the proverbial mountain for a break. But right now that is not the case.

This happens rarely, but it is clear to see by a lot of people what God is doing. We are not left questioning the unknown, for once we see it with our own eyes. God is at work, He is orchestrating amazing things for His glory. He has brought the right people together at the right time for this church. He is bringing in more people, more helpers. Kristen and I aren’t running at break neck speed for no reason… we’re just trying to keep up with all that God has laid at our feet.

How cool is that? Thank you Jesus for allowing us to partner with you when you don’t even need us.

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.

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 _____?

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?

Last night I was charged with leading our DVC small group. Here’s a snapshot of the notes. Go to the extended version of this post to get the FULL MONTY.

What’s at stake? If the world is convinced that the Bible is
not reliable, than the core beliefs of Christianity can be ignored.

1. Did

   Constantine

   influence the New Testament Canon?

2. Are the Gnostic documents discovered
        at Nag Hammadi historically accurate?
3. Who are Gnostics and what do they
        believe?

(more…)

So I’m learning this little tradition from my 5 year old daughter. Before she turned 5 she went through and listed all the great things she did while she was 4. So, as today goes I’d like to provide my own rendition and recount the good things about my 20’s.

Goodbye 20
-Having a job at the Logan Center in South Bend was great, this was my first true "big boy job" as I filled in for 6 months as the HR person.
– Living with my dad one last time.
– Getting engaged to Kristen right before a Neal Diamond concert at the United Center in Chicago
– Working as a volunteer youth worker with Dan Schmidt at Trinity Evangelical Free Church in South Bend
– Working at a golf course
– Finally serving as a camp counselor, ful-filling that lifelong dream at Timber-lee in East Troy, WI
– Finishing my sophomore year at Moody Bible Institute. 2 F’s and I quit, never to return.

Goodbye 21
– Getting married
– Having our first place on LaSalle
– Get our child substitute cat, Kelly
– Kristen graduating from MBI
– Our first "real jobs" where I started working at BlueCross and Kristen worked briefly at a design firm before being hired at Home Physicians

Goodbye 22
– Kristen got our Camry on her 22nd birthday
– We moved to Hoyne in Ukrainian Village
– We became members of Calvary Memorial Church

– I started teaching 4th grade Sunday School

Goodbye 23

– We backpacked in the UP’s Porcupine Mountains.

– Spent another vacation in California for two weeks in San Jose.

More later

(more…)