Category Archives: personal

Life in the Wilderness

Posted on by

After God leads Israel to freedom and gives them an identity and a foundational constitution, they spend a long time in the wilderness, wandering around and preparing to enter the land of Canaan, God’s promise to them.

I resonate pretty deeply with this story, at least in part because I feel like it has represented my own journey in at least a few different seasons in my life. Essentially, God’s people are called to wait and to be patient and to grow before they enter into a new season of existence and mission in the world.

I’ll be honest: mostly it sucks. Israel bears witness to this in how much complaining they do; I have born witness to this in, well, how much complaining I do. (I’m working on this, I promise.)

But here’s the deal: the Wilderness is a reality of life, and what’s more it’s necessary. 

So here are a few humble thoughts on it.

How do you know you are in the Wilderness?

  • The maps don’t make sense anymore. Israel doesn’t follow a direct route through the Wilderness to Canaan. They wander around in circles. The Wilderness can feel like that to us: circles, indirect wanderings. In fact, sometimes we realize that the Wilderness is so wild that there are no maps whatsoever to guide our journey.
  • The story doesn’t make sense anymore. When Israel leaves Egypt, they are leaving a well-defined story: YOU ARE SLAVES. It’s not a pleasant story, but it was familiar. The Wilderness is about turning slaves into children, and this is no small thing. Nothing feels right, or feels like it fits. We may have felt like we were on a certain career track, but something no longer resonates. We may have identified ourselves with a certain lifestyle, but something seems odd about it now.(Note: at this point it’s always tempting to go back to Egypt. This is mostly a bad idea.)

Here are some ways to engage the Wilderness:

  • Avoid nihilism. The most tempting—but most dangerous—thinking while you are wandering is, “My life is over; nothing matters anymore.” Once you give up on a promise of the future, anything is an option. The Wilderness won’t last forever. There is always a promise.
  • Find different ways to move forward. In the Wilderness, the ultimate promise—”the land”, the job, the relationship, the career, etc.—may be months or even years away. It’s easy to give up hope. Despair sets in when we feel like we are walking in circles or not moving at all. What we can do in the meantime is to simply engage in smaller goals. I imagine walking around the middle east it might be, “Hey let’s just see if we can get to that rock!” or “Let’s put the tent up differently today…” (ugh?)The point is to try and find some way to feel like you are moving forward. Can you set a physical goal? Can you try to read some new books? To grow intellectually? Keep moving.
  • Engage with God. Ultimately, the whole point of the Wilderness is to be prepared for what’s next. While you are wandering, engage with God. Wrestle with Him. Pour out your heart—restless though it might be—and be honest.

If you’re not already there, the Wilderness is coming. It comes for all of us; in fact, I might even say it is a defining characteristic of God’s people. We are, after all, pilgrims who are on the move. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself in a place where the maps don’t make sense, and where you feel detached and disconnected from the story you are living in.

Just don’t disengage, and make good use of the time.

Lenny (with SLASH!)?

Just This…

Posted on by

Hey everyone…

Nothing from me today, but I wanted to encourage you all to go check out Dave Gwartney’s new ebook.

Dave is a good friend and gifted thinker and teacher; do yourself a favor and check out Ten Essential Words. 

Peace

eric

Worship “Satisfaction”

Posted on by

I read this post last week…

At first—because I’m slightly neurotic—I was really convicted by it, if for no other reason than I, um, often play guitar solos during worship songs.

Forgive me.

But the more I read it, I actually got a little tweaked (full disclosure: if it’s not obvious already, I’m a worship pastor, so as my southern friends would say, I have at least a few “dogs in this hunt”).

As usual, I think of reality more in terms of a tension to be lived in, between the truth of what Bill says and another perspective.

Here are some thoughts from another perspective. Warning: possible frumpiness to follow.

  • I love me some hymns. Love ’em. Believe in them. But the church I serve in is not a hymn-heavy church. We do 3 or 4 a month. There are hymn-heavy churches in town, however, and there are also churches who worship through liturgy, through silence, through choirs.The point is practically all of our churches exist in the flow of a tradition, and this is a good thing. My non-denominational, evangelical church is not going to become high church Anglican. We will not become full gospel AME. While we do our best to learn from other traditions and to give people a wide(r) glimpse of the church, I think that when we constantly question our own tradition we cultivate a sort of eccesiological multiple personality disorder.

    I think there’s a certain amount of wisdom to looking at your church tradition and culture and acknowledging the truth of where it’s been and what it is. Now culture isn’t frozen; we are meant to grow and change, but God created culture. It is a gift, at least a partial recognition that humanity is so diverse. There’s no point in freezing or elevating one form of worship culture and saying, this is what we need to do. 

  • Sometimes, worship participation is simply a matter of discipleship, of the heart.There I said it.

    Now, I realize that I may need to cut my guitar solos short. I accept that chastisement. But I think responsibility needs to be spread evenly. If an individual isn’t willing to sing, “Holy is the Lord,” then I really can’t make them. Ultimately, I am not the worship leader, the Holy Spirit is, and if a person is unwilling to follow the Spirit to God, then so be it. It’s a reality of my call, but I accept it.

    A word about “seekers” (whoever they are): I once heard Erwin McManus say, “if your church doesn’t have problems of heresy and immorality, than you’re probably not missional enough.”

    If we are engaging the world, there will be a certain percentage of people who simply “aren’t there yet.” As I just mentioned, I acknowledge that’s a reality of my job. There will be people in our gathering space who actually don’t have a clue who Jesus is, much less what worship is, and I need to respect their journey.

    But for those of us who are “in the know,” I think there comes a time when we have to simply say, “I’m here to meet with God; I will open my mouth and worship—not only to remind myself of who He is and what He has done, but so that I can be an example to other folks who are at a different part of their journey.” My church is primarily young people: young(ish) families and some post-college and college kids. But we have some older folks as well. One day, an older gentleman (in his 70s) said to me, “You know, I really don’t like the music at all. But God is at work here, so I’m just happy to be here and be a part of something.”

  • Which leads me to my last point…It’s not about you.

    I once led worship in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic church; our Sunday set lists included modern gospel, songs in spanish, rock stuff (and an occasional hymn lol). Our pastor once said, “Hey guess what you guys: no one here is going to be completely satisfied with worship. THAT’S NOT THE POINT. We don’t come here to just get. We come here to give.” Because that church was clearly diverse, it was easy to grasp the idea that we all need to give up something to worship cross-culturally, but I think the principal holds true for us in mono-cultural worship settings as well:

    worship is first for God, then for us. Worship often overflows into love back from Him to us, but that’s not the point.

    We worship first because of who He is and what He has done for us, not because of what we may get out of it right now.

When I have the rare opportunity to sit under someone else’s leadership, I have the same feelings:

  • “Man, I don’t like this song…”
  • “She’s repeating that chorus too many times…”
  • “The mix is HORRIBLE…”
  • “He’s going to kick that water bottle over…”

In other words, I’m not immune. But I remind myself in those times that this moment is what I’ve been given, and it’s up to me to direct my heart, soul, mind, and strength towards my Creator and Savior.

It’s my choice.

In closing, I’d say this: you don’t sing at my church because you don’t want to sing at my church. It’s really that simple. In a sense that’s okay. And also, I hear the corrections—I don’t want to be a rock star worship leader—and I realize that we need to create an environment that facilitates people meeting with God and tells the story of our faith.

But it’s never gonna be perfect.

Take it away, Mick…

Quick Thoughts on Blue Like Jazz

Posted on by

from bluelikejazzthemovie.com

Tonight, my church sponsored a showing of Blue Like Jazz. Amazon describes the book this way:

In Donald Miller’s early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.

For anyone wondering if the Christian faith is still relevant in a postmodern culture.

For anyone thirsting for a genuine encounter with a God who is real.

For anyone yearning for a renewed sense of passion in  life.

Blue Like Jazz is a fresh and original perspective on life, love, and redemption.

The movie was really well-done, but to be honest, the book never held the power for me that it had for others (I have my suspicions why, but I’ll keep those to myself for now).

As Miller re-embraces his faith, a few things struck me as important in his (and maybe your) journey:

  • Be wary of overly-neat categories. As Miller enrolls in Reed college, his mother is aware (and obviously terrified) that he is “leaving the tribe.” But the catch is that oftentimes the tribe has become the problem. Though God’s tool on earth is the church, we need to be careful about so identifying the church with God that we come to believe anything outside of the confines of our local faith communities is outside of God’s activity. As Jacob discovered, you can find God in the most unexpected places. Some of the places I’ve see His hand at work include: Elbow (the band), Andrew Goldsworthy, Flannery O’Connor, and my family.
  • Embrace people as, well, people. In the movie, Miller hides his faith from his friends at Reed, and actually comes to almost reject it. Though this caused its share of problems, the gift that it gave him (and can give us) is time, and also the ability to get to know people as human beings (that, incidentally, God created), and not evangelism projects or (even worse), “pagans” who aren’t worth are time, or love. He just comes to accept them as people who are as loving—and as broken—as he is.
  • Lastly, I was struck with how willing the characters are in the movie to simply be themselves. There is a temptation to believe that, as believers, we can only be part of who we are; that God doesn’t love the darker, doubting parts of us. That’s simply not true. God desires fully integrated, holistically loving human beings. The greatest gift we can give God and the world that He loves is a life that is fully owned, fully inhabited, and in the process of being redeemed and healed.

Good movie. Go see it.

Between Two Visions

Posted on by

I apologize ahead of time for the length of this, but this has been on my mind for a while now, and I wanted to share it. Hopefully it all makes sense. 

I’ve worked for churches now for 14 years.

I know I’m supposed to say something higher, and more important sounding, like, “I received a call into full-time ministry at 29, and have been in vocational ministry ever since.”

I know that’s what I’m supposed to say, but I’m not sure that I can, at least with any honesty. At the very least, I’m not sure that I wasn’t doing ministry when I wasn’t working for a church, and I’m not sure that all the things I’ve done in a given week working at a church were actually ministry.

Does that make sense?

So I’m hesitant to call it more than what I think it is. I’ve worked at churches—on and off, full-time and part-time—for 14 years. During that time, I’ve planted churches, done music, taught, shared sorrows and joys with folks, and had a few hard conversations. I’m sure ministry “happened,” but I’ve always been challenged with my role and activities in the context of a church, specifically….

Am I a pastor? 

Most of the time I think I am. I try to be the best shepherd I can be, and try to counsel, encourage, and challenge people as the Spirit leads.

But I know that there’s this other side to me: the side that is gifted with very public talents (we call them “up front” gifts): singing, playing guitar, teaching.

These two sides of me struggle. One side is bathed in humility; the other is extremely comfortable in a spotlight (did the 1st century church have spotlights? never mind.) 

This is a really important place for me to be—between two visions of my “work”—and I think more than a few of us “in the business” of ministry are there as well. I’ve heard stories lately of a few really gifted church teachers and communicators who have left behind their positions. Some of them have left their church communities entirely, others have merely changed their roles to allow them more time to pursue the creative endeavors that they are amazingly gifted at. They’ve tended to couch their reasoning in language like this, “We want everyone to be free to pursue who God has called them to be; something has been nagging at us for a while, growing inside, and we’ve come to believe that we should be moving into (insert “movie making”, “drawing”, “screen-writing”, “book writing” or whatever here), and we need to follow that call of God on our lives. Since that’s what we believe should be happening with you, we should model that.”

Trust me: I know this language. Deeply. I know that God gifted me to communicate through music, and I’m grateful for the chance to have pursued it. Relatedly, there are things around my church that just “need doing”, and I have to, well do them. I wish I didn’t have to. They have little to do with my “calling”, in terms of talent. If I could get rid of them, I would, in a hot minute.

But there’s this other voice inside of me that rails against this whole paradigm. The “other guy” in my life—the one that believes that sitting across a table in a coffee shop and weeping with someone is one of the highest privileges in life—calls, “foul.” That guy’s conception of his job leans heavily on duty, obedience, faithfulness, and humility: things learned at the feet of people like Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, and folks that just “followed the call”—and in some cases faced down their demons—long before the book deals came (in some cases, they never came). That guy believes that self-actualization and “pursuing who God has created me” can veer dangerously close to an individualized, westernized version of the Gospel.

Does God call us to self-actualization? I’m not so sure.

To be blunt, I wish their announcements would’ve gone something like this:

“Hey everyone. I’ve really valued the time I’ve had to be a part of this community, to lead you, to teach you, to shepherd you. But there’s been something that’s been brewing in my heart, and in my family’s minds, and it’s come to this: I no longer want to be a pastor. I want to go into movie-making/music-making/design, because I feel that there’s vital, important work to do there—even God-breathed, evangelistic work. I’ve valued being your pastor/leader/shepherd. I will never forget it, and you will always be a part of my life, as we will be a part of you. But this season of pastoring is over. We are no longer responding to that call.”

Again, If I’m being harsh, it’s only because I live in this same spot. I know what it means to want to be free to do more of what you naturally want to do.

I’m just not totally sure that’s the gig. 

Eugene Peterson says that a pastor is someone in a community who has been set aside to pay attention. I love that. I try to do that. For me, that’s not really sexy, in fact, it’s not really about me. Contrary to guitar playing, I don’t think I’m very good at “paying attention”. What’s certain though, is that I’m not paying attention to me; I’m paying attention (or truthfully, trying to pay attention) to the Holy Spirit in the community here.

I’m trying to stay faithful.

I’m not sure if God will release me from the call to “pay attention”. Right now he hasn’t, so…

… for now, my eyes are open.

p.s. The following (LONG) excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s Working The Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Ministry has impacted me more than probably any other group of words in terms of what I believe a pastor is called to. It’s long, but there’s true weight in these words (they are couched in a fictional letter from a congregation to a pastor).

If you’re a pastor, read them and see if they resonate with you; if you part of a body of believers, consider what you’re asking your pastors to do.

——————————————-

We want you to be responsible for saying and acting among us what we believe about God and kingdom and gospel. We believe that the Holy Spirit is among us and within us. We believe that God’s Spirit continues to hover over the chaos of the world’s evil and our sin, shaping a new creation and new creatures. We believe that God is not a spectator in turn amused and alarmed at the wreckage of world history but a participant in it. We believe that everything, especially everything that looks like wreckage is material that God is using to make a praising life. We believe all this, but we don’t see it. We see, like Ezekiel, dismembered skeletons whitened under a pitiless Babylonian sun. We see a lot of bones that once were laughing and dancing children, of adults who once made love and plans, of believers who once brought their doubts and sang their praises in church — and sinned. We see the dancers or the lovers or the singers — at best we see only fleeting glimpses of them. What we see are bones. Dry bones. We see sin and judgment on the sin. That is what it looks like. It looked that way to Ezekiel; it looks that way to anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think; and it looks that way to us.

But we believe something else. We believe in the coming together of these bones into connected sinewed, muscled human beings who speak and sing and laugh and work and believe and bless their God. We believe that it happened the way Ezekiel preached it and we believe that it still happens. We believe it happened in Israel and that it happens in the church. We believe that we are part of the happening as we sing our praises, listen believingly to God’s word, receive the new life of Christ in the sacraments. We believe that the most significant thing that happens or can happen is that we are no longer dismembered but are remembered into the resurrection body of Christ.

We need help in keeping our beliefs sharp and accurate and intact. We don’t trust ourselves — our emotions seduce us into infidelities. We know that we are launched on a difficult and dangerous act of faith, and that there are strong influences intent on diluting or destroying it. We want you to help us: be our pastor, a minister of word and sacrament, in the middle of this world’s life. Minister with word and sacrament to us in all the different parts and stages of our lives — in our work and play, with out children and our parents, at birth and death, in our celebrations and sorrows, on those days when morning breaks over us in a wash of sunshine, and those other days that are all drizzle. This isn’t the only task in the life of faith, but it is your task. We will find someone else to do the other important and essential tasks. This is yours: word and sacrament.

“One more thing: we are going to ordain you to this ministry and we want your vow that you will stick to it. This is not a temporary job assignment but a way of life that we need lived out in our community. We know that you are launched on the same difficult belief venture in the same dangerous world as we are. We know that your emotions are as fickle as ours, and that your mind can play the same tricks on you as ours. That is why we are going to ordain you and why we are going to exact a vow from you. We know that are going to be days and months, maybe even years, when we won’t feel like we are believing anything and won’t want to hear it from you. And we know that there will be days and weeks and maybe even years when you won’t feel like saying it. It doesn’t matter. Do it. You are ordained to this ministry, vowed to it. There may be times when we come to you as a committee or delegation and demand that you tell us something else than what we are telling you now. Promise right now that you won’t give in to what we demand of you. You are not the minister of our changing desires, or our time-conditioned understanding of our needs, or our secularized hopes for something better. With these vow of ordination we are lashing you fast to the mast of word and sacrament so that you will be unable to respond to the siren voices. There are a lot of other things to be done in this wrecked world and we are going to be doing at least some of them, but if we don’t know the basic terms with which we are working, the foundational realities with which we are dealing — God, kingdom, gospel — we are going to end up living futile, fantasy lives. Your task is to keep telling the basic story, representing the presence of the Spirit, insisting on the priority of God, speaking the biblical words of command and promise and invitation. 

My (Half) Day as a Monk

Posted on by

image via wikipedia.org

All I knew is that I needed a break.

Last week, I found myself desperately needing to hear from God. I didn’t know quite know what to do, so I drastically rearranged my schedule in order to try and put myself, as best I could, in a position to listen. About halfway through the day, I thought, “Hey, I just spent the day like a monk would!”

Okay let’s be honest: my understanding of a monk’s life is informed mostly by television, movies, and a few books, but this represents my best guess as to what it would be like. 

  • Monks get silence. St. Benedict wrote that “Monks should diligently cultivate silence at all times.” After I dropped my daughter off at school, I stopped talking (Full disclosure: In order to keep from being rude, I needed to say, “Thanks,” to a couple people). I turned the radio off, put away the iPod, and just. shut. up.
  • Monks get solitude. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, “Christ the Lord is a spirit before your face, and he demands solitude of the spirit more than of the body… To follow the advice and example of the bridegroom, shut the door and then pray… He spent nights alone in prayer, not merely hiding from the crowds but even from his disciples and familiar friends.” I hid my phone and turned off my mail app, in order to be fully present and not distracted.
  • Finally, monks get work. Though the purpose of a monastic life was not to work and “produce” stuff, the fathers of the church knew the value of working with your hands and contributing to a community. In the midst of my silence, I went out and mowed the lawn, continuing to direct my thoughts towards God (and also continuing to remain silent).

Silence and solitude don’t come easy or naturally in our society. Even our spirituality can be shot through and through with activity, busy-ness, and distractedness.

Dallas Willard bluntly writes that, “the life in tune with God is actually nurtured by time spent alone… It is is solitude and solitude alone that opens the possibility of a radical relationship to God that can withstand all external events up to and beyond death. (The Spirit of the Disciplines, 101)

Because I believe in the power of a secret, I won’t divulge all of what I heard from God that day, but I will tell you this much:

He spoke, and I heard. 

A lot of you might say, “I could never take the time to do that,” but I wonder…

  • a lot of us take regular trips to the beach or to the pool…
  • a lot of us carve out time to travel hours (because in Tallahassee we have to) to go see a great band…
  • a lot of us take days full of friends, shopping, and voices…

So why not take some time to seek some silence, and quietness. Take some space to get away from the constant voices in your life to sit at the feet of God?

p.s. to read a little more about the rule of St. Benedict, you can go here and here.

Do It Again, or Exulting in Monotony

Posted on by

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

This is one of my favorite quotes. On the surface, it speaks to God’s never-ending vitality, creativity, and energy. We take so much for granted, and if we could learn to approach the “routine things” in life with the wonder that God does, I believe it would drastically change our attitudes.

But there’s another truth operating here; another dynamic that is just as vital to life. The morning prayer of the daily office is based on Psalm 51, which reads,

Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. Create in my a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit with me. Case me not away from your presence, and take not your holy Spirit from me. Give me the joy of your saving help again, and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit…

The language of “repetition”, present in the creation of the Chesterton quote above, is present in the forgiveness described in Psalm 51. In the same way that God never tires of telling the sun to rise, He never tires of forgiveness. In fact, I suspect that we more quickly grow tired of asking for forgiveness than He tires of giving it. 

To tell the truth, it’s difficult for me to pray these prayers sometimes. I don’t like being reminded that I can’t ultimately fix myself; and that I stand in a constant need of forgiveness.

In other words, it can be a humbling experience.

But that’s almost the point, I think: in a very real sense, following Jesus begins—and ends—with humility. Do I enjoy being reminded every morning that I need a clean heart? (And that I need to ask someone else for it?) Frankly, no. There will always be a temptation to stop asking, because we tire of the repetition, the monotony.

But God never tires of the “routine” of forgiving His children.

He “exults in the monotony” of giving forgiveness…

… of creating clean hearts

… of renewing right spirits

… of once again giving joy

May we all get a little younger in this regard, and be more willing to say, “Do it again, God,” as much as we need it.

James Stayed.

Posted on by

Once, for a class in college, I had to look up my family tree. It wasn’t that easy, because (a) though actually in existence (surprise!), the internet was largely unavailable to a “mere” undergraduate student like me and (b) there are some decided gaps in my ancestry. For one thing, many of my ancestors came from rural North Carolina, and records were scant (my great-grandfather was murdered, which someday I’ll write a song about, but that’s another story. Literally.)

One thread of my ancestors, however, was easy to find. I actually traced our arrival in the colonies(!) to somewhere in the late 1600s. From that point on, my ancestors were actually pretty active in the birth of our country. It was pretty cool to see, but one thing stood out. Though our family did a lot of really impactful things, my direct ancestors weren’t always the ones pulling the trigger, or signing the document, or meeting the President. Most of the time, it seemed like it was a brother. My direct ancestor was at home on the farm while the famous older or younger brother was out changing the direction of this young country…

 

Some friends of mine come over every other week or so to study the bible. This year we spent a lot of time in the book of James, and something struck me early on in the discussion. James, as best we can tell, was the brother of Jesus, and though he wasn’t a follower of Jesus while he was alive, somewhere after the resurrection James came to believe, and eventually became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. In the book of Acts, we see James’ significance in chapter 15, where Paul and Barnabas come to report on their activities around rest of the region.

“The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied…”

According to the setting here, James has authority. Because of where he speaks (after the report), his words matter (and we see later that they actually do).

Anyway, I started thinking a lot about James, especially compared to Paul, Peter, and even Barnabas:

  • Paul (and Barnabas) travel the Mediterranean, “bringing the light” to the Gentiles (and writing what becomes much of the New Testament)
  • Peter is given the keys to the Kingdom by Jesus, eventually ends up in Rome, becomes the first “Pope” and is martyred.

But you know what James did?

James stayed behind.

He stayed behind, and he became a pastor to this little splinter group of Jewish folks who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and that something amazing had bloomed into the world. He taught them, encouraged them, warned them, and protected them as best he could.

Mostly in obscurity, for even though at least one biblical scholar called James “The true first Pope” (by virtue of his stature and authority in Jerusalem as shown in Acts 15), James is largely unknown by people today.

While Paul got top billing (and let’s be clear, a whole lot of abuse as well), James quietly, obscurely led the Jerusalem church—the first mother church—through persecution and poverty.

Sometimes, I think about James, and I think about my ancestors (the Brevards, by the way: look them up, they were pretty major players in Revolutionary War-era North Carolina), and I think about myself.

The fact is, I like it when my friends go out and do big things. I like feeling a part of their success, like my behind the scenes contributions have somehow made a difference in their work. That I helped.

But you know what?

Sometimes, I think I need to step out too.

Ultimately, I’m glad James stayed in Jerusalem. He had to. Someone had to. And eventually a little piece of his story got told, in five short chapters, included right between Paul’s letters and Peter’s in the Bible.

I don’t want to be in the Bible.

But sometimes I think I should think about “leaving Jerusalem” as well.

Stacked Decks

Posted on by

I’m highly suspicious of movements to “recover biblical manhood”, mostly because they seem like excuses for grown men (especially pastors) to:

In fact, I think it’s perfectly fine for a Christian man in the 21st century to appreciate cashmere, design, Sigur Ros, and the English Premier League (remember when that guy got his head stapled?!? Talk about a “man’s man”!).

That being said, I saw something this week that was a little alarming. This psychologist makes the case that guys’ brains are being re-wired, largely through the amount of gaming, television, and internet that we consume. I suspect he might be right.

I have a friend that I see once a week; almost every time I see him in his house, he has to put down the XBox controller in order to come to the door to let me in. This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that he’s the father of a 13 year old daughter. I always find myself wondering, “Dude, don’t you have something to do? You’re a dad!” 

Obviously, he’s not the only one. More and more, I see guys in their 20s and 30s who are much more comfortable in front of a screen (“Dude I beat Madden!) than in front of their children, their wives, their bible, or other human beings. I also admit that I’ve been one of those guys myself.

Maybe it makes me officially “old”, but it blows my mind to see dads in their mid-30s acting like 13 year olds.

But this video—and a few other ideas like it—make me think, “No wonder: the deck is stacked against us.”

Think about this:

  • Assuming we are overwhelmingly visual creatures, what do we do with the fact that the visuals we are being exposed to are more lifelike and compelling than ever? Are we capable of even processing the effects on our brain?
  • Assuming that we are also competitive creatures, what do we do with the fact that video games also offer us the illusion of competition combined with compelling visuals?

Is it possible the deck is stacked?

Here’s the deal: I think we need to be aware of this, and in some cases, we need some help. Psychologist Henry Cloud says that expecting success from the same person who can’t control himself in regards to food, alcohol, sex, or video games is futile. The whole point is they have no self discipline. The only way to get help is to get some kind of structure—help—from the outside.

I don’t know what this looks like for you. Maybe it looks like a schedule. Maybe it looks like some kind of rule. Maybe it looks like you put 2 of the 3 game consoles on Craigslist. Maybe it looks like you give the controller to your wife, and let her decide when you play.

But dudes, we have to do something. We are being changed, and we need to realize it.

One Day in 1999…

Posted on by

I was driving in northwest suburban Chicago, listening to the radio. I stumbled across this crazy radio show that was … just … stories. Just people talking and telling the stories of their quirky lives.

I couldn’t turn it off.

Next week, I went back to the team of folks I used to work with, and said, “I found this weird show, called This American Life. It’s amazing, and here’s the thing: if you’re a preacher/teacher in the church, you really need to listen to this, because it’s gonna be huge. What’s more, I think that this show tells us about the power of story in the church.”

Whether or not they listened or not, I stand by that statement. If you teach/preach in the church, I hope that (a) you realize that we’re entrusted with the best story out there; the most powerful, effecting narrative in existence, and furthermore, (b) you’re learning how to tell it in the best, most creative, most memorable way possible.

Start by watching these (in particular part 3)…

 

There’s no reason we shouldn’t try to be as creative and extraordinary as the Story that we’re trying to tell, is there?