As many have asked for a link to the talk I referenced in both my sermon on January 7-8 and in the Redemption Class I thought I would publish here once again her TED talk. Note she does use a curse word, and I disagree with her conclusion that “I am enough” unless that is in the context that we need not clean up before we submit to Jesus. The reality is that we are not enough, we need help, and Jesus is the help we need.

This weekend we’ll focus more on what poverty is and how we go about being forces of redemption in the midst of it. So, invite someone and come on out to HCC Saturday at 5:30pm or Sunday at 9:00am or 10:45am.

This transition video that Jon Welch put together for the two sermons I’m preaching is awesome, and I couldn’t be more proud of the voice behind it.

When darkness dominates in certain parts of the world like India, Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Bosnia it is hard for those of us in the West to appreciate how long it can take to see fruit from labor. If we don’t see the “numbers” here that we tend to associate with God’s movement in a year or less it would be difficult to remain motivated as a preacher and open as a Church. In places like Bosnia people may go years without seeing the first person submit to Jesus, but numbers don’t always tell the story through the eyes of God. Faithfulness to a calling in the midst of dry seasons may eventually be what bears a tremendous harvest even while it may be decades later. As church budgets dwindle in the new world economy the temptation will be to look at the numbers when it comes to supporting missionaries. In order to make a decision other than that then prayer and reliance upon the Holy Spirit for guidance are a MUST. If you have been guilty of playing the numbers game with your church or your church budget I’d encourage you to watch this…

The time has come to be equally concerned with the quality and quantity of relationships within the Church and how the Church is doing outside. It has also come time to figure out how to measure how we are doing apart form the weekend worship attendance.

November 7, 2011 may be remembered as the day the new Nook Color was announced by Barnes and Noble. It will go down; however, as the fulfillment of a dream for me, and as a testimony to the faithfulness of God my Father.

Here is where it all began:

I was a new dad, a young youth director in a mid-sized United Methodist church, and I had just gotten a new job at Lexmark to help supplement our income, and to put to work my MS in Chemistry.

Duffy Robbins was the speaker at a denominational youth even in Frankfort, and other than enjoying him I can’t remember what he had to say. Sorry Duffy.

What I do remember is walking past a table with a bunch of kids pictures on it. One of the first ministries I implemented as a youth director was sponsoring a kid through World Vision as a Youth Group. The youth would send her letters. We’d take up offerings to help cover the monthly support. I’d post her report card on the bulletin board. She eventually married at the tender age of 14 and she was from Africa.

This ministry was another child sponsorship organization called Compassion. I remember just thumbing through the packets, and eventually it hit me to see if by chance there might be a child with the same birthday as Shelbi Lynn. I felt like I was supposed to do this, but this time it was for us as a family. I made a deal with God that if there was a packet of a child with the same birthday as Shelbi, then I’d do it.

Now as the weekend went along I passed the table several times. I never found a packet with Shelbi’s birthday. On the last day the person at the booth finally asked me if I was looking for something in particular. I explained the desire for the birthday match and that there weren’t any on the table thinking she would just sigh and say, “Sorry, we can’t help you.”

Instead she pulled out a box full of other kids.

In about two minutes, there she was, Dennis (pronounced Daneese) Rafael Campos from Peru. A beautiful child, with a beautiful family, who needed Jesus, and a sponsor and I had made a deal with the LORD…

Go here for Chapter 2 “Compassion”

I once thought about being an architect. I love creating living spaces. I can still remember designing my first house in seventh grade shop class taught by an incredible teacher, Mr. Vincent. Since then I have had the privilege of designing and building all three of the houses in which Kristi and I have lived, but I never thought of doing something like this… It’s not just any box, but a box of glass that also happens to be a house. That’s right, a house. The story is that a family bought property on which there was a very old house in Lithuania, but the house was not considered large enough for the family. Traditional thinking would be to some how fabricate an addition to the house that imitated the original architecture.

The result; however, is anything but traditional. It is stunning! Instead the architect designs a glass enclosure of the house and makes some living space very public, like eating and kitchen and even hallways and entryways. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and other private living space is contained in the original house. I still wonder what they did with the original fireplace and chimney. It is still there but did they exhaust it through the roof and is it still useful? There is a lot about this structure that boldly allows the residents to live their lives in public, while making space for some mystery. For instance, I love the fact that the people at www.coolhunter.com don’t show us what the builders did inside to the traditional house.

Transition to traditional thinking about being the Church. While the Internet’s impact on our culture is relatively new and at the same time rapidly evolving I wonder how traditional ways of being the Church will need to change. Can the cultural norms for communication like email, texting, Facebook, and Twitter replace good old fashion face-to-face, or might it just need to encapsulate the personal? While some struggle to answer the Either-Or questions I think we need to start figuring out better ways to do Both-And. When it comes to being the Church what old structures do we need to keep within a modern architecture? How might we encapsulate traditions in a modern way that make our living out the Gospel of Jesus public and mysterious at the same time?

We live in an exciting era in the American Church. An era that will very likely see a tremendous amount of change as leaders discover what Richard Stearns writes in his introduction of The Hole In Our Gospel, that “…being a Christian, or follower of Jesus Christ, requires much more than having a personal and transforming relationship with God. It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world.” (p.2)

This is an age where we begin to see a new fleshing out of what it means to be an ambassador of Jesus Christ. With the invention of beta testing and continuous app updates we have been given an opportunity to investigate and experiment with what it means to be the Church while maintaining much of the doctrine to which we already ascribe. We are being given permission to refuse to arrive, and to always alter and adapt how we participate in our faith. Many are already beginning that experimentation, like Shaun King in Atlanta, and while that may look like a failed experiment I believe his audacious experiment to have done much to move a community toward Redemption. I don’t necessarily think everyone should go try what Shaun tried because I think a different leader does something different, but the fact that the Church must involve people penetrating the community is being understood once again on a scale unseen in my lifetime.

This public penetration is necessary to see all people of all nations come to an understanding of who Jesus is, and it will be necessary in order to maintain the authenticity and authority of the Church with those who follow us. The knowledge of, and belief in Jesus is not just for us, but our neighbor should also benefit, and benefit from us not the preacher or the worship service or the Bible class, but us, personally.

The following video and the story behind Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir has sparked a renewed sense that every ear will hear about Jesus in my lifetime. Now it begs the question, how will I participate and with whom might I partner to begin answering some of these questions?

• What opportunities await the Church in a world that continues to increase it’s knowledge ability exponentially with each generation?
• How might we be able to communicate the truth of who Jesus is and what He means to the world through the use of technology?
• How might the fellowship of believers change as intimacy and depth become more possible while remaining thousands of miles apart physically?
• How might we usher in the Next Age more rapidly if we put our minds to making disciples through the use of technology?

Small groups are growing churches answer to discipleship. There are numerous theories on how to do small groups, and when I was given the task in 2005 of developing the small group ministry at Harmony I tried most of them. Simply put, good small groups require hard work. If people are going to become more Christlike, which should be the ultimate goal of a small group, then getting people to uncover their crap takes time and effort. Neither of these is the comfort obsessed culture willing to give us, and so we not only battle Satan, but the powers and principalities that govern our American life. The following short video is supposed to be funny, but for many people who fear the vulnerability that becoming a disciple of Jesus requires I think this is really what they pursue…The Shallow Small Group.

Hey, I know you feel like you are risking your very life by dealing with the sin you have committed and the sin of others that you have endured, but if you really want to experience healing and wholeness then the faster you go deep the faster you grow deep. If you are in a small group be the first to confess, and if you aren’t find one where people will walk you into and through the depths.

I spoke with a few people after preaching this weekend, and I have gotten a whole lot of feedback so I wanted to take a minute and address a few of the issues that were raised that I did not have time to touch on.

First, while we are supposed to engage in conflict, and embrace conflict in a way that leads to peace we cannot expect peace to immediately replace what we had before. We may have a peace that we are finally facing this issue, but some of us have a lot to work through before we are even able to forgive other people for the sins they have committed. We just need to be willing to walk through the process while holding onto the promise that peace is on the way.

Secondly, when we hold out an olive branch and allow ourselves to be vulnerable we may get rejected. Just because we are pursuing peace doesn’t guarantee that others will join us. It is definitely a noble thing we are doing by offering and seeking forgiveness, but there will be some who will try to knock us down. Some people will choose to hold onto the grudge, and then we are faced with the choice as to whether we get angry or feel sorrow toward them.

Lastly, take baby steps. Get involved with a group of people who will walk you through the steps you need to take in order to forgive or seek forgiveness. You may have lived with this issue for years, so give yourself time. Don’t be discouraged if you just aren’t at the place where you can offer or seek forgiveness. Be confident that as long as you are moving toward the conflict God will eventually get you there, and He will give you PEACE.

Thanks for sharing with me. It was a pleasure sharing with you. Let me know if I can help.

I just finished Philip Yancey’s Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? It’s the first book I have read on any e-book reader, and I liked it so well I just started my second and third book on the Nook. The Nook for PC and Android are pretty cool too.

Anyway, back to the book. The short answer is, yes.

You’ll have to read the book to get the long answer.

So, as with any book that I typically read I am forced to think about some things, confess some things, and even repent of some things. In the end, a book worth reading is one that will point out how much I suck, and then point me very gently back to Jesus.

This book, while not Yancey’s best, is definitely worth reading. The Jesus I Never Knew is, in my opinion, his best.

I was confronted by the fact that God, my heavenly Daddy, typically views my prayers like my trips to the grocery store with my Ugandan kids. Every five seconds they point and yell, “Daddy, I want!” I was confronted with the fact, that if that was the extent of the conversation I had with my kids, then my relationship with them would be void of any depth or meaning. The repentance involved with this revelation is going to involve me praying differently. I am not supposed to quit telling Daddy what I want, but those requests should be embedded in a sea of other conversation.

How I am going to create that sea is still up for grabs, but I think it will have something to do with intentionally indicating that I want God to listen in and give me feedback on every thought. I want to invite Him to have input on those little conversations I have inside my head.

How about you?

How would God describe your conversations with Him?

How would you describe a relationship you had with someone if the only conversation you had was one way and included a laundry list? As a pastor this is often why we struggle to build relationships with others because we are often only sought out because people want something.

If you want to borrow the book just let me know, or if you have a Nook I can lend it to you.