The tomb of Jesus

So the Discovery channel is going to air a special on the tomb of Jesus. This, of course, has created quite a stir, on both sides of the argument.

I don't really know what to make of the whole thing because no one is doing any kind of unbiased reporting. Everyone presenting a case has an agenda. So I think I will watch the special, wait for the brew-ha-ha to settle down and then do some research on my own.

Wouldn't it be nice to turn on the news and get the news and not someone's editorial opinion or commentary?

Updated 3/1/07
Found on Emergesque. The Washington Post writes"

"Leading archaeologists in Israel and the United States yesterday denounced the purported discovery of the tomb of Jesus as a publicity stunt."

Full Post article here.
So it sounds like there are some folks who are trying to do some honest research and writing on this thing.

Depression and Restoration

My friend Bill taught at church last night. He was creative. He was insightful. He was real. He spoke from his heart about some hard stuff. I resonated with so much of what he said. As I looked around the room, it appeared many others did as well. His whole message was less than 15 minutes but man, did he pack alot into that brief span. It is well worth the time. You can listen to it or download it here.


technorati tags: depression

SNOW DAY!!!!!

It snowed here in the Northeast last night. At right Kayos and the George Kids chucking snowballs at the camera guy. That snow man is approximately 6'4" tall, okay, we got a little carried away.














I remember eating snow as a kid but not quite like this.

It's back to school for them tomorrow.

Faith in the Suburbs

As a college student, I swore I would never end up in suburbia. I would never drive a minivan. I would never fall prey to consumeristic mindset that exists especially in the suburbs of NYC...well you get the idea.
And here I am. I took this photo earlier this year while dropping Jared off at preschool. There is no photoshopping involved, every car in the photo is an SUV or minivan.
The mental image of this picture has stuck with me. It makes me think that God has a sense of humor. It makes me think that my plan probably isn't the best plan. It makes me think , if my part to play in the mission of God is in the suburbs than who am I to argue.
I bumbled onto a blog yesterday called The Suburban Christian. I love the description, "...The better we understand how suburbia shapes us, the better we can shape suburbia." So I think a change in mindset began back when I accepted the call to go on staff at Crossroads. For me, that meant that we would be in the suburbs indefinitely. Let me clarify one thing: I don't believe for a second that you have to be in full-time ministry to be on mission with God. It's just for me that's where my journey has taken me. But I digress, as I see images like the one above, as I read blogs like the Suburban Christian, as I meet and talk to people who are hurting and poor in spirit in starbucks, on the sidelines of a soccer game and at the grocery store, the mindset of being sent to the suburbs continues to take shape.

And then I heard the voice of the Master:
"Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?"
I spoke up,
"I'll go.
Send me!"
Isaiah 6:8

technorati tags: suburbs Christianity missional

Tuesday Miscellaney

• The boys are on vacation this week and Gail isn't. So we had boys day today. Video Games and Wings for lunch and a snowball fight for dinner. That's the good stuff

• I saw an ad today for a conference called Buzz. The tagline asked "Is your church Buzzworthy?"I recognized some of the speakers from other conferences or blog references and they are "very successful" pastors of large churches. Something about the sound of "Is you church Buzzworthy?" struck me as well...just wrong. Is your church serving the poor? Is your church caring for the hurting?Are your church doors wide open?Something there's got to be a better yardstick to measure your church with than "Buzzworthiness."
  

I have actually watched more American Idol this season than I care to admit. I think Mr Seacrest actually enjoys his part in the plight of those poor folks who never had anyone care enough about them to tell them they couldn't sing. He enjoys the drama he "creates" a little too much. I don't make light of peoples' eternal residences. That said, I think there is a special place in hell waiting for Ryan Seacrest.

Miscellaneous catch-up

After several bouts of the flu I believe my family is finally on the mend.

My usual blogging time has gone to administrating an online discussion of Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson's Renovation of the Heart in Daily practice for Crossroads Community Church.

We have begun the process of taking our extended leadership team through Gallup's Strength Finder Assessment. The concept is to identify your strengths then build on your strengths rather than try to "fix" your weaknesses. According to Gallup, there is no data, anywhere to show anyone, ever, converting a weakness to a strength. The best you can hope to do is get that weakness up to average. But identifying strengths and letting people loose to utilize those strengths is where things to start to explode. The assessment provides you with your top five talent themes. My top five are: Maximizer, Achiever, Connectedness, Competition and Belief. In English, I have the ability to take good things and people and make them great, I work my ass off, I see everything as happening for a reason, I thrive on being challenged by others and I have a strong set of values which shape everything I do. More to come on Strengths Finder as we begin the process of identifying and letting people loose.

I spent quite possibly the coldest weekend of my life with 300 high school students at Young life's Lake Champion. It was a solid weekend. I got to know some kids that are relatively new to our programs. The weekend also provided a great opportunity to connect with some kids who haven't been around much lately.

Gail continues to rock at Grad school. She brought home 3 A+ and an A for the first semester. She was upset about the A.

Jake's second grade teacher decided he needed to take the rest of the year off. So twenty 7-8 year olds are now trying to figure what to make of their new teacher. Jake is a not big fan of change. Neither is he a big fan of school. Throw those two things together and it has made for a tough couple of weeks.

I was able to score opening day tickets for the Yankees. Jake was stoked.

We cancelled club tonight, our weekly high school program, due to the weather. I will take my leave of you now to enjoy a glass of wine, some video games and Lost with Gail.

How we view the world

A couple of posts back I wrote about the tragic death of my friend Mehrdad. This obviously caused me to think a great deal about our relationship and the time I spent with him. In the midst of all that I had, I don't know what you would call it, a revelation, a thought, something.

I was on my way to pick Jared up from school and I rounded a pretty severe turn when I saw a rather beat-up big ol' honkin' sedan coming the other way. Something was off about the image I was seeing though. It was like I was looking through a camera that was being held slightly off from square, the car had a 10 degree list to the left. I literally shook my head to clear what I thought were cob webs from my brain. The image remained skewed. I shook my ahead again and this thought began to occur to me.

This is gonna sound crazy but I have been called crazy before. For seven years, I spent August through November, looking at Mehrdad in a football helmet. Every day for four months for seven years that's I saw him. And everyday his helmet was crooked, slightly off from square, like he just got tackled and his helmet got knocked askew but that's how he looked from the minute he walked out of the locker room to the minute he took off his helmet. I had been spending so much time thinking about Mehrdad that the image of him and his crooked helmet was once again present in my mind. In that moment, silly as it may sound, I believe, my perception of the oncoming car was impacted by the time I spent with Mehrdad.

We view life through a lens; more like a series lenses. You know the kind when you go to the eye doctor and they slide that contraption in front of your face and the doctor asks is the eye chart easier to see on number 1, or, he slides a lever and changes the lens, or number 2, back and forth, between the two lenses, 1 or 2. The lenses that we view life through are the people with whom we come in contact. For better or worse, if we spend any significant amount of time with someone they will affect the way we see things.

The image of the car being slightly off was not necessarily deep or meaningful other than it was happy reminder of my growing up with Mehrdad. I guess the bigger a-ha for me was that the way we see life is impacted, to a greater or lesser degree, by those around us. The other side of the coin is that we impact how others see the world.

So, who is impacting your world view? How are they impacting it? Who would you like to see have a greater impact on your world view? A lesser impact? Maybe harder to answer, whose world view are you impacting? How are you impacting it?

Missing the point

I have been hanging out with a new high school friend, we'll just call him "Bob."
This past week, I had a vanful of kids to take home, we dropped off everyone else and continued on to Bob's house. Over the course of the next 15 minutes "Bob" proceeded to tell me a little bit more about himself, in his own, words, "sometimes I act up, I get hyper and jump around." In more clinical terms, my guess is he has some undiagnosed ADHD and impulsivity stuff going on. He also told me how poorly he had been treated in previous youth group settings. The implication was that his behavior was not bad enough to require disciplinary actions but inappropriate enough to make him stand out.
I assumed he meant the poor treatment was from the the other kids. But as I listened, I realized it was his previous leaders who were making him feel left-out, unwanted and not worthy. Things like this: In a room of twenty people, teams of eight were being made, "Bob" didn't get put on a team. Everyone has to be odd man out sometimes, but listening to "Bob," this was a regular occurrence. On another occasion, volunteers were requested to share their musical talents. Despite "Bob's" volunteering he was once again overlooked. Time and again "Bob" was made to feel like he wasn't good enough or didn't fit the right mold. I don't know the programs or youth leaders he referred to but I am embarassed and ashamed for them.
Maybe I am overly senstive to stuff like this because I have had to watch my own child struggle socially but this stuff should not happen. A kid like "Bob" might need more coaching or guidance or redirection than your average kid but that doesn't make it okay to dismiss him or make him feel like a second class citizen. As leaders, no never mind as leaders, as eveyday people, trying to follow Christ, our goal should be to erase the margins to which people like "Bob" get relegated not push them furhter away. Jesus spent his public ministry going to the people who got overlooked and left out and drew them in. The woman at the well, Zaccheaus the tax collector, the woman caught in adultery, the demoniac, the hemorrhaging woman, lepers, invalids, the aged, the sick, children,they didn't fit the mold and Jesus went to them. We should do likewise. To do otherwise is definitely missing the point.


tags Youth Ministry

Sad news

Three days ago there was a triple homicide one town over from us. One of the men killed was a good friend, Mehrdad. He and I were captains of our freshmen football team in high school. He had a great laugh, the kind that was contagious. He would teach us a phrase in Iraninan, his native tongue, and tell us to go say it to his mom. She would giggle and blush and then yell at Mehrdad for teaching us Iranian swears.

I lost touch with him after high school. About two years, ago I bumped into him at the gym. We played a little bit of racquetball together. More accurately, Mehrdad took me to racquetball school. He was always ranked #1 or 2 at the gym.

His wife and two young children are left to deal with this tragedy. Please pray for them.

Mehrdad was a good man and a good friend. He will be missed.

Work in Progress

Hey...look at me...I'm posting again. Pretty cool huh?

I thought I'd write about something we are currently wrestling(in the productive sense of the word) with in our Student Ministries. I tried to keep the mission for our Student ministries simple:

Love (all students, period.)

Lead ( students into relationship with Christ)

Build (those students who choose to follow Christ into disciples)

Love, Lead, Build.

There has been an unwritten, but very often spoken, companion to those three: We want our students who spend any significant amount of time with us to own their faith. That means we want students to respond to the work of Christ in their lives because they choose to, not because I say so. We want our students to be able to articulate what they believe not what their folks believe. We want our students to connect with God 24/7 not just on Sunday mornings.

Recently, I feel like we have discovered another component that we need to work on. We want our students to know or at a bare minimum, begin to understand, who it is that God uniquely created them each to be. I think simply stating that fact out loud will allow many of our students to breathe a sigh of relief. 1) It's not only okay but normal to not really know who you are as a middle school or high school student 2) Someone wants to help them on that journey of discovery.

So what is it that makes us, well us? Not who we are, but who we were meant to be? (The differences between those two things is huge, incredibly important and a integral piece of this particular puzzle) How do we discover that? What conversations should we be having with our students? What experiences should we be creating? In what ways might we have to change what we do on a weekly basis?

Maybe there will be more to come on this as we work through it. Until then, I'd love to hear what ya'll think.


tags Student ministry Youth ministry Youth work Leadership

Soul rest becomes impossible

Man's greatest moment of pride and character is when he is pushed beyond what he thought was his breaking point and succeeds.

I don't know who first coined that phrase but the man who made me and 45 other teenage boys memorize it was Jerry McDougall, my high school football coach. He is one of the winningest coaches in CT history. While I played for him we won two state championships and at the end of my JR year were ranked #13 in the country. He was the National Coach of the year. When he told us to do something we did it.

So I memorized that sentence and tried to live it. And it served me well for the last twenty years. Playing football in college, dealing with relational hurts, tackling the corporate world, even in ministry, those words echoed in my mind. I have willed myself to do things I didn't think possible. Gail will tell you I even claim to be able to will myself to not get sick when the rest of the family comes down with some nasty virus.

This belief that I can control outcomes has gotten me thus far. But...as the level of responsibility in my life increases, daily, it seems, controlling outcomes and willing myself to succeed has become exhausting. I am tired. My soul is tired. I am learning there is much I cannot control. Then I read this paragraph from Dallas Willard this morning:

"...pride is the root of disobedience. We think we are "big enough" to take our lives into our own hands, and so we disobey what we know to be right. This distances us from God and forces us to live on our own. Soul rest becomes impossible."

(Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Experiments in Spiritual transformation p 145)


I have spent my life trying to control outcomes. I don't like the idea of giving up control. I know that is what it is supposed to mean to follow Jesus. You give control of your life over to Him. And all these years, I guess I thought I had done that. I have let God lead me....to an extent...but then it has been my job to insure the proper outcome.

Jan Johnson, co-author, Renovation of the Heart: Experiments in Spiritual transformation, suggests starting with this prayer as a way of "abandoning outcomes to God:"

" I trust you, O God. I want to simply rest in your life as you give it to me. Show me how to be at peace...Help me to look to the heavens and exclaim, 'Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. I'm thrilled O God to dwell in your house, O God, forever.'"

I'm, by no means, ready to give up but I want to 'simply rest.'

I don't believe God wants me to abandon the drive and determination I learned under Coach McDougall but at the same time I know God wants me fully surrendered to Him and to the idea that outcomes are His deal, not mine.




tags pride and character Dallas Willard Christ follower Christianity

Random Bumblings

In the sad state of affairs department:

I have only been posting roughly once a week...that sucks.
I haven't had a real day off in very, very long time.
The assumption that Sunday school is boring. I had a conversation yesterday with a counselor about a child dealing with ADHD. I mentioned the child's difficulties in "Sunday School" and the counselor grimmaced and said Sunday school is especially hard for children with ADHD because it is so boring. The counselor had no knowledge of the specific church or program I was referring to. The assumption was Sunday school is boring...period.

On the lighter side of things:

I went Christmas Caroling on Sunday.....and had a really good time. I'm not, what you would call, the stereotypical caroling type, nonetheless it was a cool afternoon. We visited, what I could only describe as a housing project for seniors in the middle of suburbia. There were probably 25 or so of us, maybe 3-5 of whom had any business singing in public. The youngest caroler was 2 and the oldest was 52ish. I think we really brought a small piece of joy in to some folk's lives. We received hugs and handshakes and were even asked if we would take a donation. (We said no.)

Gail finishes her finals on Thursday.

Jared's Christmas thing for his preschool is tomorrow night. He is shepherd #3. His line is, "He will be a King someday, let's get started right away." The grandparents will be in town and I will have the video camera cranked up. (Anybody ever see the movie parenthood?????)

What do you bring as a symbol of your love and devotion?

That's me with the camera phone and my buddy Gary right before his wedding. It was a great day. He cleaned up real nice for the occasion about 80 friends and family were in attendance and despite my colossal lapse of memory it went off without a hitch.

What did I forget you ask? I forgot the friggin' rings. As the supposed responsible best man I was given the rings about 8 weeks ago because the bride and groom were afraid they would lose them. So Gary and Lexi are standing on the altar and it dawns on me....I don't have the rings. I turned to the groomsmen next to me..."I don't have the rings" Haha very funny was the reply..."No I don't have the rings."....hahahah again.
At this point we are starting to create a little bit of a ruckus at the altar. Finally, the groomsmen last in line and I go downstairs. I send him off with the keys to my house and God's speed to get the rings which were sitting on my dresser approximately 5 miles and as many traffic lights away.
I get back upstairs just in time to do my assigned reading. We all sit at this point as the ceremony progresses to two short slide shows at which point I tell my friend Rich who is conducting the ceremony, I don't have rings. I demand his off his hand and his wife's. Fortunately she was sitting right behind us; my plan was to use their rings just to get us through the ceremony if need be.
The ceremony continues. Ian, the speeding Groomsman, comes back upstairs, and discreetly passes, or so we thought, the rings down the line of groomsmen to me. Come to find out later everyone in the church was laughing at us. Then with the grace of a charging rhino I hand one ring to the matron of honor and with that Rich says Gary, "What do you bring as a symbol of your love and devotion?" "This ring" says Gary and looks at me and I calmly and coolly hand him the ring. Neither he nor Lexi were aware of the chaos spiraling around them. If I hadn't have told them at the reception they would have never known.
Like I said it ended up being a great day.

One Punk under God

I saw this video from MTV over at YouthMinistryTV.com. It tells Jay Bakker's, the son of Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker, yeah that Jim and Tammy and Fae, story. Jay and his church Revolution are also the subject of a new Sundance series called One Punk under God

Of all the reactions a kid could have to the circus that was his life, starting a church for the disenfranchised and the people the rest of the church have chosen to overlook is pretty cool.




Tags Jay Bakker Christianity Church Sundance Channel
One Punk under God

Ethos NYC

I spent the last 2 1/2 days at the ETHOS NYC event, a leadership expereiment, at Columbia University. The event was lead by Erwin McManus and several of his team from Mosaic LA. I'm not a good note taker so here are some random quotes I jotted down.

Unless otherwise noted the quotes below are form Erwin McManus:
Ethos, defined as, The fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, and practices of a group or society, cannot be created, cannot happen with only one person.

The Church as it exists right now is an institution, what Jesus started was a movement. Somewhere along the line, we lost our motion.

The predominant mindset will become the ethos.

The majority will not lead, a small group willing to risk greatly will lead.

Mystics live in relationship with invisible realities. (Could be my favorite one)

Talent doesn't point to passion.

Ambition is good, selfish ambition is bad.

We have screwed up Jesus' command in Matthew 28:20. He did not tell us to teach all nations all things but to obey all things...most of us already know too much, the question is how much do we obey?

Drawing the line of faith too close creates high maintenance discipleship. Pushing the line out...followers of Christ are those who give all.

If we listen well enough, most people will tell us how to lead them to Christ.

In response to what is the most effective thing you are doing to reach people for Christ:
"We throw parties. Our first party one person came, now 80-100 show up."
one of the Church planters of Mosaic Dusseldorf, sorry I am spacing on his name
"Instead of building a church building we built a coffee shop that sees 600-700 people a day. And we hold a couple services there on Saturday Nights"
Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church Washington DC

Emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. It is not possible for a Christian to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.

Most people, in our congregations, live off other peoples spirituality.

My message has to be done by Thursday so I can take my day off on Friday and Sabbath on Saturday.

We violate the image of God in us when we don't practice taking sabbaths.
Pete Scazzero, Founder, New Life Fellowship, Queens, NY

Those are my notes, fragemented as they are. Lots of stuff still churning in my head, may be another post to come on ETHOS NYC: the aftermath






Ethos erwin mcmanus
leadership
Character

Don't mind me while I rant

A blogging friend recently asked if it was okay to repost some comments I had left. I was told ahead of time the thoughts would be edited; I had paid my friend a compliment in the comment and she thought it too self-serving to reprint it. In the reprint, I was cited as the source. Asking permission to repost my stuff was a very courteous gesture, while not necessary, I appreciated the thought.

Now let's travel to the far end of this spectrum we shall call blogging integrity. Over a year ago, I read and printed for reference, an article on leadership from a favorite e-zine. I recently read a post from a widely-read emerging missional(whatever you wanna call it) blogger on leadership. As I read, I thought "yeah this makes alot of sense." Then another thought occurred to me, "Hey this stuff sounds kind of familiar." I walked away from my computer. A day later, I dug up the old article I had printed. Wouldn't you know it, almost word for word, the article on leadership from the e-zine got jacked, lifted, pilfered!!!! I realize that there is nothing new under the sun; almost all ideas are old ideas revisited. But this was word for word. That's just poor. I don't care who or what the source or who or what the author you don't do that. There wasn't even a token, "I don't remember the guy's name but..." or "I read this someplace else..."
Maybe I'm just being naive. Maybe if you put something out on this crazy internet thingy, you should do it, knowing that someone, somewhere will probably steal one of your ideas and claim it as original. Call me an idealist but blogging integrity is not something to be taken lightly if you take your blogging at all seriously. One would never publish something in print form that was someone else's work with citing the source. I am not suggesting footnotes according to Strunk & White but the simple "Hat Tip" will do; something to give credit where credit is due.

Here endeth my little rant.


tags blogging integrity blogging integrity leadership

When God breaks through...

So I have been reading through Renovation of Heart: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation by Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson.
In praying through and thinking about the experiment for Day 32, Next steps towards Love, Joy and Peace, I had a huuuuge a-ha. I was considering what the book refers to as the "destructive feelings" that exist in my life. I have gone through my adult life with a bad habit that I didn't know existed. If I have a bad day, a tough exchange with someone, if a program I planned didn't go well, you get the idea, then I am entitled to some sort of compensation for that unpleasantness. Say something goes wrong, I get home, I replay the day and think to myself, that was miserable I am entitled to....not just a glass of wine with dinner but one after the kids got to sleep, or a giant stack of oreos, or 3 hours of video games that end at 2:00 am.
As I thought these things through I realized that I was standing directly in the way of God's work in my life. The bible talks about "God turning what man intended for harm into good" and "God working all things for the good of those who love him."Instead of acknowledging God's ability to work even in the crap of my life I chose to handle it myself.
I prayed and asked God to forgive me for getting in his way and for the faith to trust Him to handle even the crap in my life.
I love it when God breaks through.

Scot Mckinght on an "Evironment of Honesty"

Scot Mcknight has some insightful thoughts on the Ted Haggard Mess that has been/is unfolding.

Haggard's troubles point to larger problems within Evangelical Christianity not just the sins of one man. According to McKnight

1. Christians, and not just pastors, do not feel free to disclose sins to anyone;
2. Christians, including pastors, sin and sin all the time;
3. Christians, including pastors, in evangelicalism do not have a mechanism of confession;
4. Christians and pastors, because of the environment of condemnation of sin and the absence of a mechanism of confession, bottle up their sins, hide their sins, and create around themselves an apparent purity and a reality of unconfessed/unadmitted sin.
5. When Christians do confess, and it is often only after getting caught, they are eaten alive by fellow evangelicals — thus leading some to deeper levels of secrecy and deceit.

Therefore, we need to be diligent about correcting the above. We need to be diligent in creating an "environment of honesty." Please read Scot's full post here.

Love compels us to action

I taught this morning at Crossroads about the how the love we have received from God compels us to action, living beyond ourselves. Sometimes, I take for granted that I live with one of the best example of self-sacrificing love I have ever met.

That's my wife, Gail, playing UNO with the boyz. It's 7:00 on Sunday night. We spent the morning at church. The afternoon was spent watching football with a bunch of the college guys then Dinner at my mom's.

She doesn't complain about the hard parts of doing full-time ministry. She always puts the boyz and I before herself. I am obviously biased but she is truly amazing.

Pleasant Surprises

Have you ever been really pleasantly caught off gaurd by something?

I was, this evening. An old friend and his fiance came over for coffee and dessert. My friend has seen alot of life. A few years ago he made a series of bad decisions that just sent him into a spiral. I did everything I knew how to, to be there for him; gave him rides, gave him money, offered advice, went to court with him, listened to him. Unfortunately, each bad decision seemed to make him withdraw from me all the more.

As he withdrew, I continued attempts to reach out to him. It became increasingly difficult to catch up with him. His phone got disconnected, his cell was destroyed in a car accident. Towards the end, even when I did manage to catch up with him and arrange times to meet he wouldn't be there. We lost touch.

A mutual friend was home for a visit. We were telling stories and rehashing memories. We decided to go find our long lost friend. We went to his last known address and just happen to find him home. He seemed genuinely happy to see us. That was about a year and half ago.

He has since got back involved with a local church, has a steady job, seems to be making some good decisions and has a beautiful fiance who loves him.

So back to tonight. He handed me some money and said there would be more coming. I never expected him to pay me back when I gave him the money but he did. The money doesn't matter to me but the fact that he is dealing with his past in a constructive manner made my whole month. He seems to be in a genuinely good way. I couldn't be happier for him. As he was leaving, he shook my hand, looked me straight in the eye and said "Thank you."

Did I mention I was pleasantly caught off guard?