On hospital visits and fantasy football drafts

Today I will be traveling 2 1/2 hours to visit an elderly gentleman from one of our congregations who had hip replacement surgery. Last week he fell and broke his hip. Our small hospital can't handle these kinds of surgeries so we have to travel to a larger hospital.

Following this visit, I drive to Denver for my fantasy football leagues' draft! I am pumped!

When I finally return to Wray tomorrow, I have a funeral at 2pm. It's going to be a crazy 24 hours!

Preaching Philemon

I don't remember ever hearing a sermon on Philemon. This week, the New Testament reading from the lectionary is Philemon. This is the text that have have picked to preach on. I am looking forward to it as I believe it has many principles for mediating between injuryed parties.

Living in a small town, we tend to have our share of disagreements and arguments, even feuds. A disagreement in the city doesn't even compare. In the city you can go a long time before ever seeing the person. If you disagree with someone at church in the city many churches are large enough to allow you to avoid the person all together. If you are in an argument with the school administration in the city, your path only crosses theirs at the school meetings and appointments you have with them.

In a small town things are radically different. Arguments and disagreements no matter what the arena always find there way into the church. If people disagree about a situation in the schools, or in the government of town, or in the county decisions, these feelings bubble over into the church. Sometimes people will quit attending church because the feelings over these issues and the heat of the situation is so great.

Into this context comes the book of Philemon. Hopefully it will prove to be a fruitful week of study and exposition.

Condemnation and blame too prevalent in the emerging church discussion?

Here are some challenging thoughts from Dallas Willards' great book The Divine Conspiracy which have me wrestling with the whole tone of the discussions many blogs are involved in concerning the modern vs. the postmodern expressions of the church.

A few decades ago there emerged in American society something called the generation gap. It did not exist in the world of my youth, in the forties and fifties. It was caused by exactly what Jesus here calls our attention to: "the law of reciprocity of condemnation," we could call it. Popular arts, sexual morality or immorality, disenchantment with "the establishment," the Vietnam War, and the draft, racial segregation, the role of education in society, and other factors, were all a part of the mix.

But it really doesn't matter much now what "caused" it and who "started" it. The fact is, we are now saddled, as a people, with a conceptualization of youth against age and age against youth, of generation against generation. There is a mixture of blame, misunderstanding, mistrust, condemnation, and even shame between age groups. We now have names that more or less strongly incorporate this mixture, such as "boomers," "busters," "Xers," and so forth. And we have many other ways of clustering people into mutual condemnation groups. Heartfelt acceptance of the gospel of the Beattitudes alone can offer relief from this dreadful battle of condemnation and countercondemnation.

Powerful words to weigh as we all seek to follow Jesus more faithfully and discuss these issues for all to see.

TaraJosh.com

I recently learned that Josh was the youth pastor at a friend's church in Highlands Ranch, Colorado called Summit Community. I saw the news report on them but had no idea that they were connected to my friends church. It is a truly remarkable story of hope and love.

Wrestling with an aborted conscience

This is a very interesting article about abortion.

Regent Radio :: Audio by Eugene Peterson, Gordon Fee, N.T. Wright and many more...

Wow! Cool resource I discovered via Prodigal Kiwi's blog.

Sermon research team

I am very intrigued by the thoughts in this article by Rick Warren. Overall, I would love to be able to have weekly interaction with other pastors concerning my sermons. Unfortunately I don't know if the pastors here would be interested.

Teach Doctrinal Truth by Storytelling

Ministers wanting to shape important doctrinal understandings and education in people's lives today must become good storytellers, says Rick Durst, dean at Golden Gate Seminary near San Francisco.

Nice article on storytelling and preaching.

Bible study mind maps

I have only recently been exposed to the concept of mind maps. I have found it to be a great tool in my note taking and organizing information. Clearly I am a visual person. Now I am experimenting with mind maps for the biblical passages that I am studying for my teaching and preaching. If I can figure out how to load them on the site in a way that others can read them I will.

Last Sunday I preached with my only notes being a mind map of my sermon. It was very helpful and I plan to continue using this method for the near future. I plan to upload some of my sermon mind maps as well, once I figure out how to do it.

God is not a republican. Or a democrat.

This is a very funny (and pointed) animated video attacking the Religious Right's lobby for George W. Bush in the upcoming election. Great stuff! Enjoy!

Religion Experts Ask How Jesus Would Vote

I found this article via Mile High Musings:

In fact, Jesus might not support Bush or Kerry — or anyone else, for that matter.

"Jesus was not one to take sides on political issues," said Derek Davis, director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco.

While there were obviously no Democrats or Republicans during the time of Jesus, different groups vied for attention, including the fundamentalist Pharisees, the aristocratic Sadducees, the spiritually devout Essenes and the revolutionist Zealots.

"Interestingly, Jesus never sided with any of these groups but remained above such earthly disputes," Davis said. "This does not mean we should do the same. He was God. We are mere humans."

Now I feel even better about being an independent! (Plus I don't have to bother with the phone calls soliciting money!).

We are on vacation so the writing is a little behind this week. I'll probably return with a vengence next week!

Wal-Mart churches spring up in rural areas

...Farley said rural churches need to face reality, particularly the expectation that they should have a full-time pastor.

Fifty years ago this model was emphasized so strongly in the SBC that many people treat a bivocational pastor as a step backward, he said.

But Farley recommended churches reevaluate their ministry and accept their capabilities and limitations. The other step he suggested is finding a niche and doing it well.

"I tell rural churches all the time to find themselves a signature ministry," Farley said. "Don't try to compete with these big, emerging churches. Find something you do well that will draw people who need the ministry or want to do it, such as music or ministry to an age segment."

"I know one rural church with 75 to 80 in Sunday school and they take 30 to 40 people on a mission trip every year. If a church can find something to get excited about, it will revitalize them and they'll do well. That's the future of the rural church."

To survive, existing rural churches need strong pastoral leadership and a willingness to reach out and serve their communities, said Harris, who accepted Jesus as his personal Savior at a rural SBC church in southeastern Kentucky.

"If they stay like they've been, they're going to die," the NAMB official said. "There's a new kind of rural church needed that is more ministry -- than program-driven. People are hungry (and) homeless. There are unwed mothers. I haven't been in an area where churches couldn't grow if they looked around at the needs."

Randy Jones, director of missions for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, said that rural churches can be revitalized and turned into missions-minded, growing assemblies. But it requires committing to a minimum five-year process and realizing that some who don't like change will leave, he said.

Excellent thoughts on the rural church.

Yikes!

Leadership Summit 2005

Leadership Summit 2005
I attended this conference last week via satelitte. It was a powerful and well done conference. Due to working in a rural church, many of the concept are difficult to apply and most of them need to be contextualized.

Bill Hybel's sessions were fantastic! It was such a shot in the arm to keep pressing on, keep going forward, and be faithful to the ministry God has called me to.

If you get a chance to attend this conference, I would highly recommend it!

Sermon on Hosea 1:2-10

Here's the text from the Hosea sermon. Sorry it's taken awhile to get online. I decided to place it on Sermoncentral and link to it from here so more people would come across it.

A young couple were on their way to get married when they had a tragic accident. The next thing they knew, they were standing arm-in-arm at the pearly gates. They told St. Peter what had happened and then said, "We really want to spend eternity as man and wife. Is there anyone here who can marry us before we go in?" Peter thought for a minute and said, "This is an unusual request, but if you’ll take a seat, I’ll see what I can work out." The couple waited for three months before St. Peter finally came back with a minister to perform the ceremony. The man said to Peter, "We’ve had some time to think about this. We know that marriage is difficult even under the limited term of ’till death us do part.’ Since there is no death in heaven, I just want to make sure that if this marriage doesn’t work out, can we get a divorce?" Peter said, "Are you kidding? It took me three months just to find a preacher. What do you think your chances are of finding a lawyer?"

This is a funny story that highlights a difficult truth: marriage is hard. How many marriages are you personally aware of that have ended in divorce? Divorce is rampant in our society. It is so common that there is even a magazine dedicated to it called appropriately “Divorce Magazine”. Some statistical reports show the divorce rate near 50% in the U.S. Some argue that it is even higher!

Yet in spite of these statistics people are getting married. And summertime is the most popular time for weddings. This year I will officiate many weddings. Weddings are exciting and fun celebrations...

Read entire sermon

Pastors.com Article: The Next Christendom: shifting center of Christianity

Here are some excellent thoughts on the "Third Church" from Philip Jenkins...

Jenkins foresees the two faiths continuing to clash, yet he believes Christianity will leave the greatest mark on the next century.

The reason? Islam demands all people learn Arabic to read their holy book. Christianity translates the Bible into the language of all people. By doing so it encourages literacy and adapts to new conditions and places.

“And,” Jenkins says, “when people read for the first time, it probably gives them a great deal more self-confidence … and that tends to spill into political and social matters.”

Yet the Christianity of the Third World is different than that of the Northern Hemisphere. It is much more conservative and traditional -- especially among Roman Catholics. The biggest difference between the two churches is the poverty of the South.

In an interview with Atlantic Unbound -- the online edition of Atlantic Monthly -- Jenkins said, “You’re dealing with people [in the global South] who are not the world’s fat cats. That means they tend to relate much more closely to the biblical world and its concerns than do people who are rich and from their First World. Often they’re people without access to the kind of medical care that the First World takes for granted, so the medical, healing and exorcism elements of the Bible make very good sense to them.”

Jenkins saw the difference between the old Christianity of the North and West with the new of the South and East in a recent visit to Amsterdam. As he traveled through the city on a Sunday morning he found nothing which could be called church life. It was a day like any other day. Churches for the most part sat empty.

When he moved to the poorer suburbs, he found an entirely different picture. African immigrants -- many of whom had ancestors whose first contact with the Gospel came through Dutch missionaries -- were crowded into churches. “Seeing these Africans who are clearly not the world’s richest people, but who are very sober, respectable folk, you think, ‘Well, that’s the future of Christianity,’” Jenkins told Atlantic Unbound.

One thought that comes to my mind is an article I read in the latest edition of The Layman were the outgoing moderator for the PCUSA said that the Third Church are in their adolescence and they are learning and becoming more mature. Her comments were spoken in relation to the issue of homosexuality in the church. Those in the Third Church especially Dr. David F. Githii, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, have taken great exception to this comment and so do I.

In fact, this comment smacks of self-righteousness and judgment. Why do we believe that a greater "sophistication" on issues concerning sexuality is the mark of a more mature church? If I remember right, this isn't Jesus' standard.

the GATHERING and elsewhere: Emerging Church

We agreed that contemporary culture was seeking the following things as part of their spiritual search.

A sense of unity
Shared experience
Participation
Freedom
Being in a large group/community
The display of emotions is acceptable
Truth
"You have to experience it"
A yearning for Eden
Common purpose
Energy
Enjoyment
The importance of experience
Presence / intimacy
Something ethereal
Free will and choice
Its okay to be searching
A suspicion of control
A desire for personal responsibility (you have to find out for yourself)

Interesting thoughts! These ideas were gleaned from several pop culture sources.

The Comeback Kid: John Elway

This is the day all Broncos fans have been waiting for! John Elway is going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame today! He may not have been the greatest quarterback but he was the most entertaining! Elway is the first Bronco to ever be inducted.

8 days, 2 weddings, 2 funerals, 2 sermons

It has been a marathon week! Today, I will officiate the 2nd funeral this week and then cram some work in on my sermon from Hebrews 11.

The woman that died this past week joined the Christian Church in 1954. No one at the church can remember her ever coming! In 50 years no one can remember her attending! Wow! Of course, this will not be mentioned at the funeral.

Now I know that church is not the end all or be all of the Christian life. I know that we are saved by grace not by going to church. But to completely forsake the gathering of the body of Christ is totally counter to what I believe Jesus desires for us.

Furthermore, I am becoming more and more convinced as I read The Divine Conspiracy, that salvation is more than just believing the right theory concerning the atonement. Salvation is relationship. Salvation is transformation. How is transformation demonstrated, how is relationship demonstrated in someone's life if they fail to become a part of the community of believers? Should not our relationship with Christ transform us, transform our priorities, transform how we spend our time?

Yet the focus for so many people at a funeral is whether or not they believed the right thing. Few ask if they were transformed. Fewer still offer evidence that they were transformed. I hope that at my funeral there will be much talk about how God transformed me, changed me, how I was passionately in love with Jesus Christ. I hope it's not an exposition of what I believed. Who cares what you believe if it doesn't change you!

[Listening to: Comfortable - John Mayer - Inside Wants Out [EP] (5:00)]

Event Announcement: Missional Church Forum

From Allelon:

SEPTEMBER 2 - 4, 2004

THE CONVERSATION WILL BE FACILITATED BY
Alan Roxburgh, George Hunsberger, Todd Hunter, Mark Priddy, Gary Waller & Others

LOCATION: Eagle, Idaho

You are invited to explore new forms of the church with other people who care about beginning new churches andfindingfaithfulwaysforthemtolive.

The North American church is living in an alien context. Once the church was the center of community life, but now the church has been relegated to the margins of society. This time of change requires new, adaptive skills and leadership. Due to a series of critical factors we find ourselves in a place for which we are unprepared and in which many of our assumed skills and frameworks lead us in the wrong direction.

Missional Church Forum provides you an opportunity to examine situations you share in common with other leaders who, like you, live in them daily. It will provide opportunity for discussion around several key missional themes. Facilitators will be present to stimulate thinking along these missional lines. Time will be given for roundtable discussions by conference participants in order to help clarify and strategize for these challenging times.

SOME KEY IDEAS FOR THE CONVERSATION:

1. What does it mean to be missional?
2. How does the church hear the voice of God?
3. How do I help an existing church to begin to think missionally?
4. How do we impact the consumerism of our culture?
5. What does it mean to participate in the Kingdom of God?
6. How does the gospel speak to our culture?
7. What does leadership look like in a missional context?
8. What skills do I need to possess? How do leaders become cultivators of communities?
9. What is the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of ordinary men and women within congregations/communities?

HELP SHAPE THE EVENT
You can help shape the event by taking the polls at http://www.allelon.org/polls. The information will be used to help facilitate the needs for the direction of the conversation.

If you need more information you can email office@allelon.org or call the office 1.208.947.1609

If you have received this email by mistake or no longer want to get the network update you can change your email preferences here
or send an email to ADMIN

ALLELON
PO Box 639
Eagle, ID 83616
USA

Phone: 1.208.947.1609
Fax: 1.208.947.1610

FINALLY!

I was finally able to post today! My internet service provider out here in the sticks is just not working for some reason. I connected through an AOL trial and was able to post right away. Hopefully things will get sorted out and I'll be able to post through my ISP soon.

Anger or Dallas Willard is the man!

I am slowly working my way through Dallas Willard's excellent book, The Divine Conspiracy. It is a great book that I have been living with for a while, challenging me in many ways. The book is a powerful exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount. Here's a quote from his discussion on Jesus teaching concerning anger in Matthew 5:

The first illustration of kingdom dikaiosune (righteousness) is drawn from cases in which we are displeased with our "brother" and may allow ourselves to treat him with anger or contempt.

When we trace wrongdoing back to its roots in the human heart, we find that in the overwhelming number of cases it involves some form of anger. Close beside anger you will find its twin brother, contempt. Jesus' understanding of them and their role in life becomes the basis of his strategy for establishing kingdom goodness. It is the elimination of anger and contempt that he presents as the first and fundamental step toward the rightness of the kingdom heart.

The emphasis is mine because I find it amazing to think that the elimination of anger and contempt is fundamental, elementary to my spiritual life. Yet how many times have I heard this proclaimed? How many times have I been challenged to eliminate the anger in my life?

To this end, I am experimenting with a couple of new spiritual discipline tool idea thingys. I'm calling them "anger mapping" and "contempt mapping". As spiritual mapping has become popular among church planters and missiologists, I think anger mapping could reveal a powerful picture of particular geographical locations and the abstract relationships of those in a particular community.

I think it would look a lot like a mind map at first but could probably be overlayed a geographical area to demonstrate strained relationships and the "anger terrain". I'll be experimenting with this as I get a chance. What do you think?

THE MEATRIX

This is a very creative short animation lobbying against corporate farms. It's rather timely in light of the recent developments in the animal cruelty legal battle between PETA and KFC.

Vacation

I was on vacation most of this week and since I have been home I have been attending to cleaning and putting away our camping gear and officiating two weddings, and preparing for a funeral on Tuesday, not to mention this mornings sermon. Yikes. I'll post the Hosea 1 sermon soon, Lord willing.