Category: personal

let me be transparent for a moment – i hate the word transparent, i’m fed up with people saying that they are being real, and i think i’ll puke the next time someone tells me that they are genuine. current catch phrases that’s all they are. they’re the words that are current right now and ministers, speakers, and other various youth worker wannabes say them so they will sound good. but to me they’re basically just words with very little meaning behind them.

the reason i think this is because i actually do have a theory on being “real” – kind of ironic isn’t it. my theory is this – we are most real when we admit how fake we are. we are all pretty much a bunch of posers. i screw up regularly and i want to keep those screw ups as well hidden as possible. even though possibly the best thing that could happen to me would be for you to know each of my sins so that i would no longer have to pretend, that’s not what i want to happen. i want to hide my sin and keep on pretending like i’m perfect. i am one very fake person. in fact, i am so fake that when i begin to become “transparent” i am usually thinking in the back of my mind about how secure in myself i am to let people see my weaknesses. i’m not secure. i’m pathetic.

the good news for me is that i’m not alone. i’m surrounded by pathetic people. people who desperately want to be “real” but don’t know how to because we are so completely fake. in my heart i want to live the life of the velveteen rabbit but in my mind i don’t want to go through all the pain and anguish of getting rid of all the layers of fakeness within my life. what if under all those layers of “fakeness” i find out there’s nothing real in the center – the equivalent of a fake onion, simply made up of layers.

thankfully JESUS loves fake people if only we recognize that we are fake. hypocrites don’t realize that they are posers, hypocrites think that they are “real”. JESUS loves fake people who understand how “unreal” they are. one day JESUS will take all of us “posers” and make us real.

i’m not trying to offer up a cheap, little, sunday-school answer here. i’m not trying to just cover a very difficult problem with the simply phrase “but JESUS will take care of things in the end.” i know life has difficult problems and the answers to these problems aren’t easy. it’s just that there’s not another answer to the problem of how fake we are. if JESUS doesn’t love us as a group of wannabes then we are all basically out of luck. there’s nothing else we can do about it. none of us are real enough to find an answer to our fakitivity (my wife’s word). either JESUS loves us in spite of our fakeness and helps us to become real or we’re doomed to live and die in a world that only pretends to be genuine

so let me be as transparent as i can be – there is nothing transparent about me. i am so fake that i even trick myself into believing that i’m being real. yet there is still hope for me. that hope is found in the only ONE WHO is real.

am i as clear as mud?

julian of norwich was an anchoress and a mystic (1340 – 1426). during her “first showing” she saw all that had been “made” as a little object sitting in her hand. it was only about the size of the hazelnut. she was amazed by how fragile it look and bewildered that it could survive. looking upon it she made the following statement:

in this little thing the (“hazelnut of everything that has been ‘made'”) i saw three properties. the first is that GOD made it, the second that GOD loveth it, the third that GOD keepeth it. but what is to me verily the MAKER, the KEEPER, and the LOVER – i cannot tell; for till i am substantially oned to HIM, i may never have full rest nor very bliss: that is to say, till i be so fastened to HIM, that there is right nought that is made betwixt my GOD and me.

God:

• made me
• loves me
• keeps me

i’m not sure that it can get much better than that. now if i could only remember that this is true and live based on it.

i spent a wonderful day with my family – tossing the football, wrestling with my kids, eating at the table, taking noah to a birthday party, etc. it was a great day.

pam and i were going to go to a yom kippur service tonight at one of the local synagogues. we were really looking forward to it because we are both very interested in the hebrew faith. i have nothing but profound respect for judaism.

we wanted to make sure that it would be okay for us to visit the service, since it is a very important service, and we wanted to find out if there were any customs that we needed to know about before coming to the service. so i called the synagogue.

when i asked if the service was open to the public the secretary said “you mean to … like … non-jews?”

“yep, i’m a gentile”

she said “i’ll have to ask”

so she put me on hold and went to ask. she then came back and said it would be a minute longer. the second time she came back she said it would be okay for us to come to the service but that the ushers would probably have alot of questions for us. i told her that would be fine and then asked if there were any customs that we needed to know about. she told me, “no, but the ushers probably will have alot of questions.”

needless to say i didn’t feel very welcomed.

now i know from my past that this is not true of all synagogues. growing up i had a fair number of jewish friends who took me to synagogue every time i spent the night with them. their synagogue was always open and welcoming. from this i know that this unwelcoming spirit has nothing to do with the jewish faith and everything to do with the people in the building. there are unwelcoming CHRISTians who operate churches that feel just like the synagogue i spoke with.

i just can’t understand why a church that worships the “most high GOD” would not be excited about others joining them. it makes no sense to me that you would not relish the opportunity to share the worship of the “LORD of hosts” with others. yet this synagogue was like this and many CHRISTian churches are like this too. how can we not welcome strangers when we know that they bear the image of our LORD in their flesh?

it scares me to think of the times i have been unwelcoming.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Channel 4 to screen ‘Priest Idol’

LONDON -With the working title Priest Idol, the show will give a vicar 12 months to boost the church’s turnout. Backed by advisors, the vicar will be able to spend an undisclosed sum of money on anything he or she thinks will appeal to parishioners. Being filmed in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, the three-part series is due to be broadcast at the end of 2005.

have we as the church really fallen down this low? have we truly reached a point where we are reduced to doing this in order to revive lagging attendance at our churches?

please say it ain’t so.

what happened to the hope that we have to offer this world? what has happened to the freedom that we have to offer the world? are these, and the other amazing joys of following CHRIST, not enough to grow a church? do we really now have to hold contests and bring in television cameras into our churches in order to stir us to reach out to a sick and dying world?

please say it ain’t so!

YS Forums -> An open letter to Mike Yaconelli.

i’m a youth specialties forum junkie. i’m not really sure when it happened (i think around my 50th post i was hooked) but i know that it is true and there is no use in trying to deny it. i enjoy the banter, humor, encouragement, and fights that take place on the forum. i enjoy the fact that i am sometimes challenged to reconsider what i believe and sometimes i merely want to slap someone upside the head because they can’t understand what i’m trying to say. it’s an enjoyable place that i like to visit every now and then (actually i like to visit it alot).

i ran across the above thread and it has left me a little confused. i understand what mark riddle is trying to say in his letter but i don’t understand how a ministry could get to the point that someone could say this about that ministry. mark riddle’s basic point is that youth ministry separates teens from the church and thus is failing. i would have to agree that when a youth ministry does separate it’s teens from the rest of the church then it does fail. you set these teens up for a fall. you set them up to think that the rest of CHRISTianity will be one big “youth group” and when that doesn’t happen they simply turn their back on CHRISTianity. this is my problem with some (and i do mean “some” here) para church youth ministries. they separate teens from the church and IMHO guarantee that those teens won’t become a part of a church after high school. i think it’s destructive.

my problem with mark riddle’s letter is that i don’t see how any effective youth ministry can become like what he is describing. adults becoming involved within the youth’s lives and the youth becoming involved within the lives of other church members is a natural thing within an effective youth ministry. i don’t see how it can be any other way. maybe “youth groups” can separate from the rest of the church but youth ministries have to be a part of the church. the whole measure of a youth ministry is whether or not it is building up the bride of CHRIST, so how could the teens and church not be involved within each other’s lives.

10 reasons why your church sucks

a very interesting article. i’m not familiar with ginkworld but if the rest of the article are like this one then i believe i will start reading it regularly. the whole article details a former church member responding to an abusive church leader over why he has left the former church and is now going to another church.

i wonder what someone would say about our church. i could attempt to answer but truthfully it would be very biased and not really accomplish anything. i think we would do a lot better than the church that is addressed in this article, yet i’m sure that there are some who have had bad experiences with our church before who may say the exact same statement about us. i know we can’t get it right with everyone, but a lot do hope that we are usually doing a pretty good job.

hurricane ivan scared a bunch of people around here and started a MASS evacuation from new orleans, which is below sea level. tuesday afternoon i received a phone call from a run-away teen shelter in new orleans asking if they could stay with us. i told them that would be great but i would have to check with our pastor of administration first. turns out he had already told the red cross that we would gladly be a shelter for any needs that the red cross had – they put us as a secondary shelter asking that we stay open, ready, and available for them – most likely to be a meals location. this meant we had to be open for the red cross and i had to call the shelter back and tell them we couldn’t. turns out this wasn’t a problem because within the 10 minutes it took me to find out we couldn’t host them and then call them back they had already received a call from a camp in texas saying they could stay there. i was pretty disappointed. i really wanted to be a part of helping them.

wednesday morning i went to substitute teach in our church school. druing the day my administrative assistant came running into class with a smile on her face and said “they’re here!”

“who?”

“the teens from the shelter … and the have babies!” she was extrememly excited about the chance to help the teens and the chance to hold the babies.

it turns out that they had left new orleans soon after our conversation the previous day and it had taken them 13 hours to make the usual 1 hour trip from new orleans to baton rouge. they needed a break, saw the church, and thought “they’ll help”.

this was great. what was even better was that my leadership team, teens, and parents had already stepped into action. some of them had driven by at the right time, noticed the vans, and stopped to ask what was up. before i could ever get over to see out visitors (it took me about 30 minutes) our parents, kids, and leadership had already taken care of them. food was found. toiletries were brought. diapers were purchased. it was all done before i could even get over there. everyone encouraged them to stay and rest as long as they wanted to and every need was met. i was actually a little disappointed because all i actually got to do was go buy some water – every other need was met before i ever got there. these teens and their leader were refreshed and it wasn’t because we had set up a program or trip for the adults and teens. nope they saw the need and decided for the glory of CHRIST they needed to do something about it. 7 hours later they left to finish their trip.

this would have been good enough but there was more. after our youth service last night i received a call from one of our youth. he said he had just heard from a former boss at jason’s deli that help was needed in making meals for emergency workers in the area east of us that don’t have power. he had already called some of our youth and wanted to know if i wanted to come. “sure” i said and i told him i could get some more.

“nope. i’ll take care of that. you just come if you want to.” is what he told me. today i took my wife and kids with me to the warehouse to find that 15 youth were already there making 3,500 meals. they had set the whole thing up. they called. they organized. they reacted.

i am not sure i have ever been so proud.

they get it!

right now everyone is freaking out about hurricane ivan. some schools have already canceled, the mayor of new orleans has told people to evacuate the city, my neighbor has boarded his windows and then additionally propped up those boards, the roads in baton rouge are packed with people fleeing from mississippi and new orleans, and the governor of louisiana has declared a state of emergency. all this for a storm that hasn’t even decided where it wants to go. i’m not one of those fools who says “i can withstand this thing” but it all seems a little too soon for me. let’s wait until tomorrow to figure out what is going to happen. then run away like scared little girls.