Category: personal

the new york times > washington > frist set to use religious stage on judicial issue

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as “against people of faith” for blocking President Bush’s nominees.

i hate being lumped in with the people involved with this. why is it that conservative CHRISTians can be such incredible pains? i’m conservative in the majority of my believes and i really despise being associated with these lunatics simply by association of beliefs. why can’t we just calling these actions what they are … politics!

pure and simply that’s what they are. one party is trying to gain power over another party. it’s happened since the creation of our country. getting bush’s judges appointed is not a “holy war”. it’s not a battle that is going to save faith in america. in fact, CHRISTian faith has nothing to do with wether these judges get into office or not. so can we please quite acting like it does?

i don’t usually ever criticize other churches – or at least i try not to. i figure that none of us actually get this CHRISTianity thing right and between all of us maybe we’ll at least do a decent job of worshiping CHRIST. yet this week i saw something that i just have to say something about and it concerns a church bookstore.

personally i am not a huge fan of church book stores. i actually would love church book stores if they really had anything to do with spiritual formation. my problem with church book stores is that nowadays they usually have nothing to do with spiritual formation at all. you won’t find classics of CHRISTian thought or books dealing with the depth and mystery of CHRIST within most church book stores. nope, what you’ll find is a bunch of self-help crap and dumb trinkets for sale. that’s where my criticism comes in. in my opinion church bookstores or only slightly better than lifeway book stores which are only slightly better than family CHRISTian bookstores.

this past wednesday one of the teens within our student ministry showed me a stick of lip balm. it was custom printed “God Chicks” lip balm with the church’s name on it. i figured it was just a trinket that the church gave out to get people to remember some message or event that they were doing. personally, i think giving things out that remind people of what the church has done or is doing is a great idea. we need to help people remember significant times within their lives and small everyday items are a great way to do that. of course, i was wrong about the church giving the lip balm out to remind people. nope, the church book store was actually just selling the lip balm just for the purpose of having something to sell. she said it had been given to her by a friend who saw it in the church book store and thought she would like it so she bought it for her. what in the world does lip balm have to do with the kingdom? i mean give me a break. what does selling specially printed lip balm have to do with spreading the gospel? this idea has to be even dumber than “testamints. this comes from a good, strong church that i would expect better from.

why is it that we feel the need to sell junk in the name of CHRIST?

if you really want to see something that will make you sick go to christianthings.com. the site starts off with a flash presentation of john 3:16. i guess the implication is that GOD so loved the world that HE freed us to buy crap.

awhile back for a variety of reasons my family and i decided to get rid of all but the most basic cable package. we now only have abc, nbc, cbs, fox, upn, pbs, and wgn (along with 7 or 8 home shopping and public service stations). this means that if a show is not on a major network i simply can’t see it until it reaches dvd. i’ve seen a few rereuns of the family guy but i’ve never been able to see many of the episodes. yet so many of the people i hang around with talk non-stop about the show. they say it is better than “the simpsons“. i found that statement hard to believe so i decided to rent one of the dvds and watch the show.

so now i have watched the dvd. while i think it is a funny show i would by no means compare it to “the simpsons.” it’s simply not in the same category. “the family guy” is a good, funny show. “the simpsons” is the greatest animated show ever and one of the best televisions shows ever. that’s the difference between the two.

awhile back pam, my wife, found the pastor’s retreat network – an organization whose purpose is to provide sabbath times for pastors and their spouses. they believe in this so strongly that they provide the service for free.

even though the room and board is free for pastors i would still be willing to bet that they are very rarely “booked up.” it seems to me that we pastors do not do a very good job of “sabbath-ing.” we have so absorbed the culture of this world that we think that part of our gospel mandate is to be constantly busy. we have to spread the good news. we have to shepherd our people. there’s so much for us to do. we are very busy people?

was JESUS busy? when we work so hard at “doing” things for the gospel do we convey JESUS very well.

i have to confess something. actually i’m not sure that “confess” is the right word since i’m not really sure that what i need to tell you is evil. still it is definitely devious. ii have started a new habit … hiding movies at blockbuster. i find a new movie that i know pam and i desire to watch but that i’m sure will be all checked out in the next few days and then hide that movie behind another movie that will remind me of it. this past weekend i hide “spanglish” behind a spanish documentary (btw, “spanglish” was an excellent movie though nothing like it’s trailer which made it look like a romantic comedy – which it wasn’t). my plan worked perfectly. i walked up to the spanish documentary, grabbed my copy of “spanglish” and checked out the only copy of “spanglish” in the store.

i was so pleased by my new strategy that today i hide a copy of “hotel rwanda. of course, “hotel rwanda” is no ordinary movie. it’s one of those movies that everyone should watch and by hiding it i may have assured that someone doesn’t get to watch the movie. i’m really evil.

wednesday night at the view we shared stories of our visit with our friends at the beautiful feet church of fort worth, texas. we told these stories from two places in the back that had been set up to convey some of the meaning we experienced. so much of what we experienced at beautiful feet was about the restoration of lives and the junk that we humans need to be “saved” from. so we set up two stations for people to speak from. first was a station that was composed of “junk” – many of the people who went to beautiful feet went to this station to express the junk that they realized was in their lives and the junk that they had seen there that was separating people from GOD. the second station was a station of restoration and it had physical reminders of some of the physical work that we have seen done at beautiful feet – many people went to this station to talk about the change that they saw GOD make in their own lives and other people’s lives.

overall, it was a cool night. i loved hearing the kids and adults talk with such depth. they weren’t saying “oh it made me thankful for all i have”. no they came away saying “the homeless men and women were just like me – they had the same needs that i do.” it was great.

i’m pretty excited about what we are going to try and do this coming sunday. as you may or may not know this coming sunday is earth day. for some reason years ago some evangelical leaders most have gotten together and decided that we CHRISTians aren’t supposed to care about the earth and therefore we have given the whole ecological movement over to others. this means that earth day in baton rouge is mixed up with a random new age labyrinth project (labyrinths aren’t new age – i love them – but the vision behind this project is not CHRIST centered) and metaphysical alternative healing sources (touch therapy, aurora reading, etc. typically there is quite a bit of not necessarily CHRIST-friendly stuff surrounding some earth day celebrations.

when i heard about the events or baton rouge’s earth day on the radio i had a sudden desire to be a part of the event. so i called the contact person and asked if we could be a part of the “alternative healing” booths. the alternative healing section is where you go to learn about different strategies for healing. this means “healing” tecniques such as vibrational therapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, healing touch, reiki, herbal remedies, aromatherapy, nikken magnetic therapy. so i aksed the contact lady if we could join the “alternative healing” section of the event. i explained to her was that within the CHRISTian tradition there is a long history of praying for the healing of individuals and washing people’s feet. i asked if we could set up a booth among all the other “healing” booths simply for the purpose of praying for people who ask for it and washing their feet. i promised we wouldn’t try to push anything on anyone and would not ask for or accept donations and that all we wanted to do was praying for people in the name of JESUS asking for their healing.

i seem to remember JESUS saying in scripture that if HE is lifted up that HE will draw all people to HIMSELF. so if we could go and pray for people and thus lift HIM up in the midst of earth day then HE would accomplish something good. we wouldn’t have to be obnoxious or forceful or anything like that for something good to happen. GOD would simply take care of what needed to happen just by us being there to pray for people.

the contact person said she liked the idea and would probably come and let us pray for her but that allowing us to come and do that was not her decision so she would pass it down the line. yesterday i received another call asking more questions. that person’s response was also positive but they said they couldn’t make the final decision. so right now i’m still in limbo waiting and hoping that this sunday we will get to be in the midst of 40,000 people praying for individuals and trusting GOD to be GOD in their lives. i really hope we get to do this.

SIDE NOTE – please don’t read this as an anti-earth day post. i believe GOD created the earth and therefore it is special and sacred and should be taken care of. if i remember right that was the first job given to humanity … to take care of what GOD had created. earth day is pretty cool and most of the people involved have no problem with CHRISTianity. we evangelicals have just dropped the ball on the environment and therefore earth day is not the normal place to find us. it should be though.

seven years ago i became involved in my first youth oriented worship service. this was when i was in carthage, missouri and i really didn’t want to do it at the time. it was suggested by a church member who i respected and i did it mainly just because he felt strongly about it. we structured the service as a worship service as just another worship service only with a slightly different flavor. thus it was for everyone rather than just for teens. it was a different approach to worship rather than a truly alternative youth only worship service. of course, this post is not really about a discussion concerning separate youth worship services (which i’m not really a fan of).

nope this post is about a graduation announcement that i received this week. one of my teens from carthage is graduating college in may. he sent me a graduation announcement and on the bottom wrote “i thought you’d like to see what that kid you taught to run sound is up to these days. thanks for giving me a start. daniel” daniel was the first person i ever taught to run sound and a/v equipment. every sunday he was there helping set up and get ready for the service and then helping to tear it all down again after the service. for three years we worked together. turns out that the kid had a real passion for it and decided that it was the profession that he wanted to train for and follow. so in may daniel will be graduating with a degree in mass media studies for the purpose of working with a/v equipment.

who knew that running sound and powerpoint for that little service would start off a career?

i know that i’m not ahead of the technology curve for the rest of the world but apparently i am for baton rouge, louisiana (which isn’t saying much). nobody i have talked to about podcasting has had the slightest idea what it was. this includes our church computer guy. when i realized how easy podcasting was i thought it would be a great idea for the church worship services (which we put on the net in an mp3 format). i went to discuss the idea with rob (the computer guy) and he didn’t have the smallest idea of what i was talking about.

i’m not sure if this means that we are ahead of the curve for the area or if our church is simply that far behind the times.

i’m very excited over the fact that i’m going to get the chance to go to philadelphia in october and spend some time with the folks at the simple way. the simple way is a church that is based on the concept of community. many of the folks at the simple way live together at the church, work together, and all of them are consciously involved in each other’s live during the week. ever since i heard the story of the beginning of their church (it’s an incredible story that i will try to link to if i can find it) i’ve been wanting to spend some time getting to know the folks at the simple way.

so i have my wife’s consent (she wouldn’t call it “consent” but i do), i have the time on the church calendar, and i think i’ll have the money necessary to get to phillie. now all i have to do is actually be able to contact them. i’ve been calling the simple way for two weeks and a lady named rose has been calling back. we’ve played “phone tag” the entire time. what i have discovered through the various messages is that it should be no problem for me to go to the simple way.

UPDATE – i finally got through to the simple way and had a great but short conversation with justin. he thinks october should be good but needs to run it past the group. so i’m almost there. he did recommend that i read “schools for conversion: 12 marks of a new monasticism” which is put out by some friends of the simple way.