to the ordinary

Pregnant

Around the second weekend of May, Sarah, Ryleigh, Addalyn, and I will be moving to Huntington, WV where we will be planting Missio Dei Church. It has been a long journey that has brought us to where we are, and we know an even longer road lies ahead.

It has been nearly 1 year since we left Florida, and Sarah rightly says we've gone through a lifetime of changes in the past year. With those experiences God has refined us in a way that has been painful at times and always humbling. In every step along the way, God has required of us more letting go -- not only in regards to our pride and arrogance, but in our plans and aspirations. If I stop and think about it too much it gets overwhelming.

We are in a pregnancy stage right now where our Vision, Values, Strategy and Structure are being developed through much prayer, conversation, reading, and study. Much of this blog will pertain to the process we're in concerning Missio Dei over the next few months. A brochure, promo video, and website are in the works and will be finalized in the next couple months.

Although each of you reading this blog are separated from us geographically, we invite you to join us through prayer. In 1 Samuel 11, Saul wages war on the Ammonites. To rally the troops, he slaughters oxen and sends pieces to all the tribes of Israel, saying that if they don't come to fight the same thing will happen to them. Three hundred and thirty thousand men came to battle! The amazing detail of the account was recorded in verse 7: they came out as one man. Fight with us as one in prayer: for my family, the city of Huntington, and Missio Dei Church.

[I read this article to a friend of mine before posting and he said, "Or what?" I said, "What do you mean?" He responded by saying that Saul issued a warning with the ground chuck he sent through the Postal Service to the Israelites. Don't worry, if you don't pray for us you won't find a horse head in your bed.]

Still Dancin'

I fill out one bracket and one bracket only for NCAA March Madness. I do my best to pick who I think will realistically win, except when WVU is in the tournament. If I don't take them to the national championship, I'll at least push them forward beyond where I think they'll realistically go.

You heard it here first: WVU to the Final Four, losing to Memphis by 3.

I had them over Duke, and then over Xavier. In the Elite 8, I've got them over UCLA.

You heard it here first....

Coming Around Full Circle

I can appreciate the absolute certainty and confidence some people exude. Other people have little assurance of anything and question the question. Examining things critically while remaining humble is an ability that we should rightly desire. On several occasions over the past year I have been very confident that I knew what I was talking about, only to find myself eating my words and changing my tune. Sometimes I'm too lazy to find the answer; sometimes the answers are not available (because of limited knowledge and my finite state); sometimes God only reveals what I need to know and not what I want to know.

I'm grateful for the patience that God has with people. It is a maturing and wonderful thing to come under conviction for mistakes of the past while knowing that we are works in progress. The only assurance I have is God's Word. With every door I walk through I come to an awe invoking realization that there are another 1000 doors that can be open.

In short: I have hunches, ideas, guesses, and presumptions that are fallible. God has revelation that is infallible. I live confidently in His revelation, and leave a good amount of room for humility, corrected thinking, and possibility in mine.

Good Bumper Stickers, Bad Theology

Guys like to talk about cars. You even judge the masculinity of a guy on the car he drives. Subconsciously, if you roll up on someone in a truck with a 6-inch lift and mud tires, you figure there's a tire-checker (baseball bat) under the seat and that guy would fight you if he had to. That's not necessarily always the case, but your mind tells you that.

I've heard one pastor describle on several occasions, by way of illustration, that the good people in the world are the ones who use their turn signals. Dallas Willard talks about Bumper Sticker theology in his book, Divine Conspiracy, in regards to the expression, "Christians aren't Perfect, Just Forgiven."

The bumper sticker that says, "God is my Co-pilot" gets under my skin in particular. Discounting the guy who miraculously got his license and went against his friends' advice and put stickers on his car anyway, the expression is bad theology. It conjures up imagines of a God who sits in his seat, and ocassionaly gives advice about where the best rest areas are, where he wants to eat, or where you should turn. Practically, the bumper sticker leaps from the traffic to our lives when you hear someone say, "God is a part of my life." These are the people who relegate worship to Sunday morning and think good worship is good music.

God plays a part like vacations play a part, or entertainment plays a part, or sleep plays a part. An all-consuming, all-knowing, all-loving, all-right, and sovereign God does not deserve nor want a part. In 2 Corinthians 5:14 Paul says that the love of Christ controls us. Here God moves from being a passenger, along for the ride in your life, to being the driver.

Everything

I asked a friend this past week what his worship of God was like. He said he didn't really do much and didn't quite know how to answer the question. I then asked what his worship of other people or other things was like. He was still taken back, saying that he didn't worship other people or things. I explained that if he wasn't worshipping God, and that was driving the deepest affections of his heart, then something or someone else was consuming him.

Sarah and I had a conversation a few months ago in which she told me that she really didn't do much. She explained that her days were filled with changing diapers, feeding babies, and playing with Ryleigh. I responded that we can approach the seemingly routine, mundane, and insignificant details of our lives in one of two ways: 1) through faith in Christ as an act of worship, or 2) flippantly, haphazardly, and neglecting God.

In the second way, we go to work, come home, eat meals, rub shoulders with clients or customers, converse with neighbors and co-workers, and spend time with family to the tragic tune of God as an afterthought. In the first way we praise God while changing a diaper in that He is our provider and has made it possible to purchase them. We feed the children and thank God for feeding us through our Bread of Life. We play with children and rejoice that He has given us an immense responsibility to show our children Jesus, teach them faith in Christ, and show them joy in a Savior who loves.

Paul's words in Romans 14:23 set an amazingly high bar and point us continually to Christ.  "Everything that does not proceed from faith is sin." The monotonous becomes the majestic when everything we do, big or small, is done for God's glory, for the sake of his name, and as an act of worship toward our Redeemer.

Milestones

I was off work today and spent the majority of my time with Ryleigh--a "Daddy/Daughter Day". We hit up the History Museum in Raleigh, which I enjoyed much more than her. Then we were off to the Natural Science Museum. With the rain and it being a Friday I don't think I could have picked a worse day. It's possible that every elementary school within a hundred miles was represented at that museum. I thought I was going to get jumped by a mob of 4th graders. Plus I got called down by an understandably unhappy guy (due at least in part to glass-shattering screams and jeers by kids that thought if they took pictures of the fish that the fish would die) for letting Ryleigh sit on the escalators while she rode down. We rode it several times because it entertained her the most and was the least crowded spot in the place.

Finally, we did what will no doubt be a milestone in my daughter's life. We went to Chuck E. Cheese! Aside from being terror stricken at the outset by the man trying to put a stamp on her hand, once inside it was sheer bliss. After a quick stop by the Food section to place an order for a cheese & sauce covered piece of cardboard, we were on to the real action. Slides, games, blinking lights, Whack-a-Moles, and my favorite, Skee-ball. I'd let Ryleigh hold the ball, walk it up the ramp, and actually drop it in the slots. Without a cognitive awareness of numbers, she couldn't figure out my gesturings for her to drop the balls in the 100,000 point slots.

Nonetheless, we won 20 tickets which netted us a ring with a "$" sign on it, which we could have bought at WalMart for no more than 5 cents. I think all in all the $7 bucks it took us to get it was well worth it. We bought some pink cotton candy (also a first) and headed home. A day well spent!

Excuses

As only the "Golden-Tongue" can, here is John Chrysostom's response to excuses by people for not showing up to worship. Ironic that in the 4th century the place was packed for Easter and Christmas. The excuse he is addressing here was "It is 'too hot' during the Constantinopolitan summers to attend worship":

...for such excuses are womanish: indeed even in their case who have softer bodies, and a weaker nature, such pretexts do not suffice for justification...I would remind them of the three children in the furnace and the flame, who when they saw the fire encircling them on all sides, enveloping their mouth and their eyes and even their breath, did not cease singing that sacred and mystical hymn to God, in company with the universe, but standing in cheerfulness than they who abide in some flowery field: and together with these three children I should think it proper to remind them also of the lions which were in Babylon, and of Daniel and the den: and not of this one only but also of another den, and the prophet emerging from these dens. I would conduct these persons who put forward heat as an excuse into the prison and exhibit Paul to them there, and Silas bound fast in the stocks, covered with bruises and wounds lacerated all over their body with a mass of stripes, yet singing praises to God at midnight and celebrating their holy fire, and the den, and amongst wild beasts, and mire, and in a prison and the stocks and amidst stripes and intolerable sufferings, never complained of any of these things but were continually uttering prayers and sacred songs with much energy and fervent zeal, whilst we who have not undergone any of their innumerable sufferings small or great, neglect our own salvation on account of a scorching sun and a little short lived heat and toil, and forsaking the assembly wander away, depraving ourselves by going to meetings which are thoroughly unwholesome?

From Life and Practice in the Early Church, Steve McKinion, ed.

Servicentrism

In the 16th century, Copernicus published his revolutionary view that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and that it in fact revolved around the sun. This is what we call Heliocentrism today. The impact this had on society as a whole and the church in particular cannot be understated. Denying the view that the Earth is the center of the universe was not just a slap to the ego, but was seen as a denial of Scripture. From Scripture, the Church argued, the Sun rises and sets. Additionally, when you step outside and look up, you see things in the atmosphere moving. Of course the earth is stationary and things are moving around it, people thought.

It seems as though the church as we know it is Service-centric...everything revolves around the service. Typically when discussing church planting and launching, what most people are referring to is a public worship service. Many church plant specialists emphasize the need for a staff that can pull-off a Sunday morning (or any other time) service well. People think that what it means to plant a church is to start a service and see how many people you can get. I listen to guys talk only in terms of the numbers in attendance at their services. Their goals consist of getting such-and-such number of people by this time, then such-and-such number by this time.

This isn't to downplay the importance of a worship service. The fact is we operate within a cultural context where we have to work with people's perceptions of church and take it from there. If an un-churched person wants to go to church, they don't call up all the Christians they know and ask them to come to their house. They attend a service somewhere. The principle evangelistic strategy of the church, however, has been to get all the lost people we can to come to church, or more aptly, attend a worship service.

Nothing inherently wrong with inviting your lost neighbor to worship. Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 14 when he deals with worship to say that the unbeliever, in the midst of people worshipping God, might say "Amen"--or, "Truly, Certainly". In other words, an unbeliever encounters the only God being worshipped and receives faith to say, "This is what it's all about. He is what it's all about." However, an invitation to the Sunday worship service is no valid excuse for neglecting an invitation to Christ.

Sitting up to take Notice

Last night's game was un-eventful through 3 1/2 quarters. It blew up from there! I was on my feet when Eli avoided 2 tacklers, amazingly breaking free to throw a bomb down field to Tyree, who caught the thing on his helmet!!

If you watched the pre-game show that began, oh, about 8 hours before the Super Bowl, the most eye-opening segment was a FOX commentary on statistical data generated from the game. Here's a couple of numbers for you to crunch:

• Revenue for everything involving the Super Bowl is approximately $9,500,000,000. That's right:  9.5 Billion Dollars.
• Antacid sales increase 40% the day after the game
• 150,000 people traveled to Arizona for the game. Their average salary is $200,000.
• The most expensive, face-value ticket you could purchase for the game was $900. Those tickets were being sold by scalpers for more than $20,000.
• 10,000,000 people in the U.S. watched the game in a bar.
• Album sales for most of the halftime performers increase about 50% the day after.
• 15% of all avocado sales are attributed to dip, used for nachos, during the game.

Roughly one-third of our country was watching the game last night. Whether churches came together for the game or for worship, contextualizing the Gospel for our culture is blatantly necessary when looking at what people are really worshipping--and for most of us, it ain't Jesus.

Lost

We're 25 minutes away from the LOST SEASON 4 premier. I'm more excited about it than the upcoming Super Bowl on Sunday. Two people in Starbucks this evening were throwing Lost Viewing Parties tonight. We're headed over to our neighbors for a little get-together of our own. Entire websites have been dedicated to theorizing the intricacies of Lost. The names of the characters is one notable feature that sticks out to me. Here are some of the philosophers names that have been used for the show's characters:

John Locke -- one episode was even entitled: Tabula Rasa

Desmond David Hume

Rousseau

I've not put a lot of thought into a philosophical bent that the show's writers may have and how that plays out, but it's noteworthy. The Dharma Initiative was a research project being conducted on the island that the survivors find themselves. Dharma is a term synonymous in both Buddhism and Hinduism. If you're watching tonight, you're in good company.

Due to the writer's strike in Hollywood, I heard that only 2 months worth of episodes have been written.