A prayer from this mornings reading in Common Prayer Lord, our efforts at faithfulness are fraught with failure more often than we care to admit. Thank you that your love for us is never wasted. Keep us rooted in your word, eating at your table, and praying by your Spirit, so that we may remember when we fail that we are part of your family not because we deserve to be but because you want us. Amen. May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you; may he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm; may he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you; may he bring you home...Read More →
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March 29, 2011
It’s not me, It’s you: Being Part of the God’s Family
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March 4, 2011
What is the Form and Function of the Church?
A community that is guided by the scriptures. Without the scriptures, we’d have no direction or compass. Its our family history. It’s gives us a trajectory for our future. When we read the scriptures we read them in community with a missional bent. A community that is dependent on the Spirit. Without the dependence on the spirit, the church is merely wasting its time! God sent the son, the son sent the spirit, the sprit sends the church. A community where people are learning to become disciples of Jesus. We’re learning to do the things that Jesus would do if he were us. A community that is incarnational rather than attractional. If you build it they will come just doesn’t work in post-Christendom. A community...Read More →
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February 28, 2011
Submission in Leadership
One of the major early themes in The Imitation of Christ is that of humility. I will be honest. I am not a big fan of humility. Humility is one of those things that constantly seems desperately out of grasp. Just when I feel like I am getting close to understanding it and getting it, it moves further away from me. As a pastor however, I know its the one thing that I need the most. It is the one thing that fights against most pastor’s greatest temptation: Pride. It is a strange thing that pastors and leaders struggle so much with pride. We are supposed to be the ones who are most grounded in the scriptures, grace and truth. I think therein lies the...Read More →
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January 25, 2011
Recovering God’s Story in Worship
From Robert Webber’s Book, Ancient-Future Worship In the postmodern world of violence and uncertainty, there is a great need to recover the Christus Victor theme that God in Christ has defeated all the powers of evil, that he has conclusively abolished sin, death, and all that is evil in the world, and that because of his death and resurrection, he will return for his final victory over all that is evil and set up his kingdom and reign over all the earth. The church is called to witness to this truth by its very existence and in its worship to remember these past saving events of God in history that assures the new world we anticipate. Definitely a book worth reading…
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January 24, 2011
Follow Me. Walking with Jesus.
Discipleship as the Call of the Kingdom (i.e. a brain dump on discipleship) The call of the Kingdom is Jesus’ call to “follow me”. If the kingdom is the in-breaking of God’s reign, the call of “follow me” is the call to bring your life under that reign. If the Kingdom is that God is breaking into time and space for the purpose of reclaiming what is His.. The call to “Follow me” must be heard in light of this reality. The call of “follow me” is to have your life be so under the reign of God that people get a glimpse of the Kingdom through you. This way Jesus called them it was not possible to half-ass the response to follow me. I...Read More →
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January 21, 2011
Balcony-Type Christianity?
We just started a study of the book of Mark at The Well. Been reading George Ladd’s A Theology of the New Testament and thought I would share this gem with you, “Mark campaigns against balcony-type Christians who are too high for mission and discipleship that in Mark’s terms necessarily involves cross-bearing and self-sacrifice.” One of the things I am getting as I read Mark so far is that the disciples themselves didn’t understand what they were getting themselves into. Sure, they showed great faith by dropping their nets and leaving their lives and family behind to follow Jesus. But, they didn’t count the cost as we see them constantly misunderstanding what they were getting themselves into throughout the rest of the book. Ladd continues,...Read More →
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January 3, 2011
I am Joining the Lemonade International Board
It was with a deep sense of humility that I can announce that I have officially joined the board of Lemonade International. Lemonade International exists to “educate and empower the people of the largest urban slum in Central America, La Limonada.” La Limonada is known to have the 4th highest murder rate in the world. There is a saying in Guatemala City that “even Santa Claus doesn’t visit La Limonada.” I have shared with a few Guatemalan friends from here in the States that we visited there last summer and their response was “and you are not dead?!” By all accounts La Limonada is a hopeless place. But, by God’s account, it is a place where He is making beauty out of ashes. A Guatemalan...Read More →
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January 1, 2011
Top 5 Books of 2010
This has not been my best reading year in terms of number of books. However, I was able to read a few great books that are worth mentioning. So, I proudly present to you my top five books of 2010. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ Eugene Peterson I love Eugene Peterson’s writing. I consider him one of my “author mentors”. I rarely have anything bad to say about anything he has written and this is no exception. In fact, I think that this is his best book yet. Yes, that is saying a lot. This book is essentially an exposition of Ephesians and he offers an stunningly realistic look at the reality of the thing we call “church.” I read this...Read More →
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December 18, 2010
God is With Us.
Immanuel. God is with us. Wait. Stop. Listen again… Immanuel. God is with us. God. Is. With. Us. Wait. God is with you. Sure. But God is with me? Yes. Really? Yes. You don’t need to come to Jesus. He’s has come to you. He has pursued you. Loves you. Yes, you. The wait is over.
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December 16, 2010
The H3 Project
I’ve been dreaming about doing something like this for awhile and I’m really excited to introduce The H3 Project in 2011. I’m a big believer in shaping leaders and disciples in community whenever possible (as opposed to shipping them off to Seminary for a few years). Here’s a teaser to what H3 is: The H3 Project is a seminary-ish style experience based out of the local church. You will be interacting with some of the best thinkers and practitioners in the church today while being challenged in topics that are important for our witness as followers of Jesus. The H3 Project is all about forming people to be part of the mission of God. But it isn’t just about forming one kind of person, it...Read More →
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December 15, 2010
Six Themes of Change in the Church
Scot McKnight points to some new research by Barna. Kinda depressing really.
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December 14, 2010
The Death of Leadership? Yes and No.
There has been a bit of talk going on in the “blogesphere” about whether or not leadership is actually help for the mission of the church. I had a pretty enjoyable twitter debate (yes, apparently those exist) with Bill Kinnon and my friend Dave Fitch this afternoon. Bob Hyatt was in on it too and I think he’s on my side here. (Side note: I’m pretty sure Bob promised a blog post on the topic later today. Hopefully my calling him out here puts some pressure on him. The world is a better place when Bob blogs – Here is Bob’s post as promised). You can follow most of the conversation from Dave Fitch’s excellent post which resides here. The more I interact with Fitch and...Read More →
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December 13, 2010
Missional In Suburbia: Moving On, But Not Moving Out.
For the last few years, my blog has proudly displayed the subtitle “Living Missionally in Suburban America.” I’ve been a big proponent of the fact that we must be thinking intentionally about living missionally in our suburban context. Far too often suburbia has been seen as antithetical to being missional. The assumption seemed to be that if you wanted to be a legit missional voice or person you had to be talking about and living in the city. Now, I get the importance of the city, especially from a cultural standpoint. But the suburbs are home to millions and millions of Christians. We can’t afford to ignore the challenges that they face when it comes to responding to the call of the gospel. A few...Read More →
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December 13, 2010
My heart is completely about to explode…
We’ve been intentionally pursuing friendship with the folks in La Limonada, Guatemala over the past year. This community has become dear to our hearts. Some great news! The “Mi Casita” Safe Home has become a reality for the first eleven children who have just moved into the place they will now call “home” – where they will be provided with unconditional love, healthy nutrition, one-on-one attention from a psychologist and a support structure from house parents. A letter from Tita, the Guatemalan Directory in La Limonada is included in the news post on the Lemonade International blog. I love the way she writes.. My heart is completely about to explode. I feel lke Jesus is very pleased with this. I can see him smile because he...Read More →
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December 13, 2010
Participation in Change
I’m continuing to devour the book by Margaret J Wheatley called, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time I think most of us will agree with this quote… As leaders, we have no choice but to figure out how to invite in everybody who is going to be affected by change. Those that we fail to invite into the creation process will surely and always show up as resistors and saboteurs. But I haven’t become insistent on participation just to avoid resistance or to get people to support my efforts. It’s because no one person is smart enough to design anything for the whole system. No one of us these days can know what will work inside the dense networks we call organizations. We can’t...Read More →
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December 11, 2010
H.E.L.P and Haiti
My friend Chris Marlow, who spoke at The Well earlier this year, just posted a video of a collection of photos that he and his team have taken in Haiti on their last two trips. He and I are talking about the possibility of using these photos in an art show at The Well in 2011. The music to the video is Mumford & Sons so that makes it even better! Help End Local Poverty Haiti Trips, 2010 from Help End Local Poverty on Vimeo.
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December 11, 2010
Advent Week 3: Bono on True Religion
I’m preaching from Matthew 11:2-11 this week. It’s one of the lectionary texts for Advent. I remembered this quote from Bono who was preaching speaking at the NAACP Awards in 2008. I generally love U2 and I think Bono is amazing. His theology is far from perfect (but so is yours and mine) but I think Bono generally understands God’s concern for the poor. You can watch the speech on YouTube, the quote I’m using below starts at 2:49 and goes till the end. True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice it’s a command. And that means in the global village that we’re going to have to start loving...Read More →
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December 9, 2010
Being Well Rounded? Overrated.
I’ve become convinced that those who struggle with a deep sense of pain for the world can’t truly be well-rounded individuals. Why? Because they don’t close our eyes to the screwed up world they see around them everyday. They see news about the situation in Haiti and they don’t change the channel. They hear that human slavery is at an all-time high and they don’t pretend that it isn’t true. They see children in deep poverty, dying, everyday and they don’t close their eyes. All this is too much for them to take. And it screws them up, for the better. Well-rounded individuals are over rated. They are well rounded because they have found a way to ignore all the pain, injustice and crap that...Read More →
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December 8, 2010
Your Audience Isn’t Stupid
Yesterday afternoon I was in a meeting with my good friend Scott Hackman. We were working on the beginnings of a new business venture we’re part of called MyOhai (website / twitter). I’ll be talking more about that in the future, what it is and what we’ll exactly be doing. But that’s for another time. We were meeting at Borders and I came across this: There are so many things wrong with this picture. First of all, we all know that pay phones are obsolete, or at least well on their way to being so. If you’ve been in any airports recently you’ll have noticed that the rows of pay phones have been replaced by laptop charging stations. Second of all, does anything about this actually...Read More →
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December 7, 2010
Do Youth Groups Destroy Children’s Lives?
Needless to say this post has gotten a lot of action. 65 comments and 55 tweets. David lays out some provocative and interesting thoughts on youth ministry. I personally thing he’s making some excellent points.
