Living Together

Our friend Allan Hill had a birthday last week. He's the youngest 27 year old I know. Allan lives just down the road from the church, and very frequently drops by or calls both there and at the house. There are probably very few people who have lived in Valparaiso very long that have not seen Allan out walking, and a large number of those people also know him personally.

Allan's hard not to know.

He's never really met a stranger, and when he does, he's generally within hailing distance of someone he does know, so he does what comes natural to him. "Do you know David? David is my pastor" is what I have heard on several occasions when I ran into Allan while out in the community.

So today when we were at one of his favorite places, Dollar General, when we picked out a gift for him, Bunny asked the clerk if Allan had one of them already. "No, but he will like that.," she said, so our purchase was made. She knew him that well.

I sit here and wonder sometimes, what if the whole community - not just the church - but everyone, was as open and connecting as Allan? What if we knew each other so well that pretty much anyone among us could tell someone else whether something as silly as a birthday gift would make us smile?

Think about it.

And here is what Allan will be getting.



It plays "On the road again" and sways while its ears flap up and down.

I expect to hear it a lot until Allan runs the batteries down. But it will make him happy, and that will be a gift to all of us as well.

Our friend Allan Hill had a birthday last week. He's the youngest 27 year old I know. Allan lives just down the road from the church, and very frequently drops by or calls both there and at the house. There are probably very few people who have lived in Valparaiso very long that have not seen Allan out walking, and a large number of those people also know him personally.

Allan's hard not to know.

He's never really met a stranger, and when he does, he's generally within hailing distance of someone he does know, so he does what comes natural to him. "Do you know David? David is my pastor" is what I have heard on several occasions when I ran into Allan while out in the community.

So today when we were at one of his favorite places, Dollar General, when we picked out a gift for him, Bunny asked the clerk if Allan had one of them already. "No, but he will like that.," she said, so our purchase was made. She knew him that well.

I sit here and wonder sometimes, what if the whole community - not just the church - but everyone, was as open and connecting as Allan? What if we knew each other so well that pretty much anyone among us could tell someone else whether something as silly as a birthday gift would make us smile?

Think about it.

And here is what Allan will be getting.



It plays "On the road again" and sways while its ears flap up and down.

I expect to hear it a lot until Allan runs the batteries down. But it will make him happy, and that will be a gift to all of us as well.

Grace and peace,

David

Monday Morning After Action Report

What a weekend!

The concert by EPIC427 was really good. Having the last beans and rice of the week right before the concert -not sure how to rate that. But the Spirit that was present Friday night really carried us through the weekend - even through a rare business meeting. :)

That's not to say we didn't have some challenges.

Knowing that John and Amy worked their tails off to get everything back the way it should be for Sunday, and that I didn't take the time to get up there to do an equipment check until an hour before worship griped me. Needless problems that could have been solved. Won't forget that again.

Given the number of people we had at worship practice then compare that to the multitude we had up front Sunday, combine it with a sound system that wasn't working right, and you have a sub par music portion when it could and should have been much better. Don't get me wrong, I worshiped, and I'm sure others did too, but we left some blessings on the table that we could have enjoyed. Bethany and Kira - we'll take a rain check for this coming Sunday.

We have some opportunities in the way we care for our kids, the way we greet our guests, and how our facilities are cared for. I'm hopeful we took a leap forward last night toward making those better. And yes, I have the church pictorial directory here by the laptop and am praying off and on through the day over the pictures asking God to place His servants where they were gifted to serve.

As we move through the Summer, I'm looking forward to the beach baptism blast! To seeing the nursing home ministry get off the ground. To more children being sponsored. To movie nights...

And I'm looking forward to sitting around a table hearing person after person talk about how amazing God is and how incredible it is to be a part of His Kingdom work.

My odometer will roll over 10 years next month here, and I've never been more excited or more proud to be the pastor of New Hope.

Don't Be the Frozen Chosen

Bunny and I were at Chic-Fil-A in FWB a while back. That's pretty unusual for us in two ways. First, because we don't eat Chic-Fil-A that often. Costs too much. Secondly because we don't eat inside fast food restaurants very often at all. But on that day we thought we'd slow down, take a breath,and grab some lunch at the fairly new location across from Walmart.

We went inside and ordered, and stood waiting for our food. While we were waiting, it was apparent that while the food might come out hot, we wouldn't. It was FREEZING in there. Bunny didn't have a coat in the car, so when the food came, I told the server that it was freezing in the dining area.

"We have to keep the temperature down for the people in the kitchen."

Mustering every bit of customer relation skills, and ignoring the little devil sitting on my shoulder who was whispering "Give her..." well,you know what a little devil would say, I said politely, "But out here is where the customers are."

She looked at both of us, and repeated I think a little slower for my benefit...

"We have to keep the temperature down for the people in the kitchen."

Bunny and I tried to eat, but wound up tossing most of the food and leaving.

And we haven't been back.

I'm sharing this to remind those of us in established churches that at some times we are guilty of the same mindset as the woman at Chic-Fil-A. What we are doing and how we are doing it works for us, so why should we ever want to change?

Jesus had a far different attitude. He said that He "came not be to served, but to serve,and to give His life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:45

As we head off to church tomorrow, be praying for eyes that can see your buildings, your welcome, your worship, and yes - your people as someone who has never been to your church or perhaps any church would see them.

It's not about us. It's about Jesus, and reaching people with the good news.

We're In the Paper

From It's Like Herding Cats - A pastor's life

Take a look. And don't forget to come to supper and the concert tomorrow beginning at 6:30PM

The Passive Voice

Bunny was writing something the other day for her amazingly eclectic blog, and she decided to use a grammar checker just to make sure she was making her high school English teachers proud. She got nicked a couple of times by the software for "passive voice." I can remember the same thing happening to me when I used that kind of software. The writers of that software code were making sure that anyone who wrote was going to take you somewhere.

So I'm reading the gospel of Mark today, and I get to the calling of the first disciples. "Jesus called out to them, "Come, be my disciples,and I will show you how to fish for people." And they left their nets at once and went with Him.

What does "Come and be my disciples..." mean?

The New Testament record indicates that Jesus and the disciples saw it as anything BUT passive.

DO SOMETHING!

Three Days In...

"So is this week (eating rice and beans) doing what you thought it would do?" asked the reporter from the Daily News.

If by that you mean that every time I whine about eating rice and beans I remember those who didn't make a choice to eat them...

Then yes. This week is doing exactly what I hoped it would do.

I came upon this passage today -

23 Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in him.24 But Jesus didn’t trust them, because he knew human nature.25 No one needed to tell him what mankind is really like.
John 2:23-25 (NLT)

Fact is, we are so out of sync with what God values that it's very difficult to approach poverty with the heart of Jesus. We need to get slapped. We need to be shaken. We need to be made to awaken to the human cost of our indifference.

So if this week does that, I will end it thanking God and waiting for orders.

It's SBC Convention Week

The Southern Baptist Convention is meeting right now in Louisville, Kentucky. Be afraid, be very afraid. I'm teasing, sort of. In years past, the week of the convention meeting has been one where I was afraid to read the newspaper. But since no one reads newspapers anymore, we should be okay.

What?

Oh right, the Internet. Curse you AlGore! (JK again)

So I'm tracking the convention this year through Twitter feeds and have visited the official website a couple of times to see what was going on live. I just finished watching the president of the convention, Johnny Hunt, deliver a message on the future of the SBC. Well, I watched some of the message, like a typical Southern Baptist, I found it hard to stay focused.

We have a fix for that though, Baptist Press, so I went over there to see what has been happening.

When I searched Google for Baptist Press, one of the hits that came up was a news article of a Baptist pastor praying for the death of our president. Now that's some Baptist press, but not the right one,or the right kind.

So I finally found and clicked on the "Baptist Press" link.

The Breaking News story - "The Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee recommended in a unanimous vote Monday afternoon that the denomination cease its relationship with Broadway Baptist Church, a Fort Worth, Texas, congregation that has been the source of controversy over its stance on homosexuality."

Then there were hits on disaster relief, and the Crossover Louisville project where thousands were fed.

Sigh...

Maybe next year.

Lunch - Day 1 of Worth the Sacrifice

The bags of herb seasoned rice that our Child2Child girls put together to help us along is what I had for lunch today. Pretty darn good fare with a little pepper sauce.

Bunny added 3 cups of water and a little olive oil and with the whole bag of ingredients it cooked up perfect.

Buy a bag and try it out. Money goes to Amazima, you encourage the girls in mission action, and you stay on your rice and beans course (Worth the Sacrifice)

Church Planting - The Church at Skyline Valley

One of the critical needs as we seek to have the message of Jesus heard by as many people as possible is simply venues to hear it in. The culture has changed, and most churches have lost much of their effectiveness at reaching out into it. So new churches are desperately needed.

My friend Tim Fowler is a church planter. This time around he's planting a church outside Ft Hood Texas in a town called "Copperas Cove." The fledgling congregation will meet for their first preview service this weekend. Previews are a time to try to draw people who are looking to find a church, to work out the kinks behind the scenes, and to form a core of people who are totally sold out to what God is calling them to do and be. I can tell you that getting that "core" means everything. I wouldn't take anything for the core of people God has gathered at New Hope, so I'm praying like mad that God would send Tim exactly who he needs.

Tim is a hero of mine. Please pray for him and the church. If you'd like to send an email of encouragement, or something else encouraging $ :)

Phone: 254-285-8668

E-mail: church@skylinevalley.org

Rice and Beans Rwandan Style

I Finished It!

Now I remember why I loved the Classic Comic Books back in the day. Great start and awesome ending to the book, but seriously - it cut have been a third as long and been so much better.

What's Not To Love?

 

Our big friend, sitting on the couch tonight.

Book Review: Sir Dalton and the Shadow Heart

Click on the book to be taken to Amazon.com

Fiction isn't what I read most often. And when I do, it's usually authors like Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, or the like.

It's been a long long time since I read anything with knights in it, and longer since I read a book intended for young adults.

But the publisher was good enough to send me a review copy of "Sir Dalton and the Shadow Heart", written by Chuck Black, and it's summer. Kids are out of school, and if I could find something good for them to read, it would be a help. So here we are.

The first thing I noticed was that Chuck Black used to fly F-16s. Then I noticed that this was book 3 in a series "The Knights of Arrethtrae". I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to come in late to a TV show, movie, or series of books. I'd like for example to see what the TV show "Lost" is all about, but never having watched it, I'd have to get the DVD collections staring with season one and work my way through them to today.

But this was a great book!

It blew away all the preconceived notions I had about it and the genre and I just enjoyed reading it. From the first few pages, I was hooked. Black not only weaves good vs evil through the narrative, but he creates characters that you care about. Their quest becomes yours.

Pick it up. Shoot, buy the whole series and start reading book 1. :)

It Can't Happen To Me - Happened

About 4:30 this afternoon, my Google account refused to let me log in. I tried entering my password every way I knew to do it on my laptop. Then I tried on the eMac in my office. I was locked out of my own account.

That meant no mail.
No Google reader.
No Google Docs.
No Blogger.
No Google Talk.
No Google Calendar.

Crash!

I am the most security conscious person I know, and choose very secure passwords. I back up often. But because Google is so good and so... well, free, I found myself in the unenviable position of having access to none of them. It was crippling.

The folks at Google, after verifying I was the owner of my account,helped me reset my password and get back in. Thank you Google!

I'll be looking at ways to avoid another repeat of today.

Book Review: "Eyes Wide Open" Jud Wilhite

I received a copy of this book from the publisher and having followed Jud Wilhite's work at Central Christian church in Las Vegas for a while now, was eager to dive in and see what the author had for us there. I was not disappointed, in fact I used the book as a general outline and partial source for a series of messages on approaching God, Our Identity, and Change with our eyes wide open. It worked very well.

The book is laid out in those three divisions, with individual chapters within each. As a storytelling pastor, I was especially interested in the stories that his ministry in Vegas had generated. The book was filled with instances of God's grace. Some celebrity names that popped up in the book - Evel Knievel, and "Dog the Bounty Hunter". But it's the stories of raw love and grace that really moved me.

This is a book that you could give to a new Christian, or to someone who's been a little jaded by the "Christianity" they have seen in the past, and walk away confident that if they read it, they will see the heart of God on display in real life.

The idea in "Eyes Wide Open" is to discover who God is, who you are in His radical love and grace, and find the path through this messed up world that following Jesus wholeheartedly supplies. Read it. Give it away.

Sunday Night Reflections 14 June 2009

It just keeps getter better. The Holy Spirit is on the move and He's moving New Hope.

Going into today, I knew that we'd have several elements in worship that wouldn't be the norm.

First - We'd have the folks who went on the mission trip home and eager to talk about what happened.
Second - Larry Smith Sr. would give his testimony of how the grace of God changed his heart of rage and anger at the Vietnamese people into one that God could use to touch the life of a Vietnamese girl.

That would happen after a video challenge outlining our "Worth the Sacrifice" week of eating rice and beans.

So in looking at the music, I chose: God of This City and Hosanna, then Jesus Paid It All. Originally I had another song as well but we cut it in order to give more time for the testimonies.

The message was the last in the "Eyes Wide Open" series and it was set up to lead folks to be open to how God can change us, and how we are to respond.



More later

A Long Obedience In the Same Direction

Word came in tonight that there may have been some real spiritual activity among the youth we sent out on mission. You have to hope that is so. As a pastor, seeing people gripped by the awesomeness of God, their own sin, and the possibility of freedom in Christ - who then start following Jesus - -that is what fans the flame.

It's been almost 36 years since I became a follower of Jesus, and I've seen times when for me the trail has gone cold - when I chose my own way for a time. Following Jesus can be extremely hard. It's not natural for flawed human beings. Eugene Peterson wrote a book, really one of the first on the spiritual disciplines, called "A Long Obedience In the Same Direction." Ironic that the title comes from a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, "The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is. . . that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living."

Peterson takes the Psalms and uses them as a tool to keep us pointed in the right direction. As I think about my day today, the people I talked with, the Scripture I read, and the events both here and in Kentucky, I am grateful for this passage from his work.

“Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed expectation of what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We refuse to label the others as one thing or another. We refuse to predict our brother’s behavior, our sister’s growth. Each person in the community is unique; each is specially loved and particularly lead by the Spirit of God. How can I presume to make conclusions about anyone? How can I pretend to know your worth or your place? …. A community of faith flourishes when we view each other with this expectancy, wondering what God will do today in this one, in that one."

My prayer as I leave this day behind is that some of the people I love and care for at New Hope have made a few more steps in the right direction.

Hand, Meet Forehead

Was trying to explain to a friend why we at New Hope were doing the "Worth the Sacrifice" week (Jun 21-26) of eating as the orphans in Uganda do, and this post rolled into my Google Reader.

You should read the whole thing, but here's a sample.


Neue Ministry | Join the Conversation

“Would you rather your children have grown up in Uganda or in America?”

That was one of the questions David Kuo asked at our dinner with leadership development students while we were in Uganda. A man who is a Ugandan national, a father, a pastor, and leader answered without hesitation,

“Uganda.”

Some of us seemed a little shocked. America. It’s the land of opportunity. It’s safe. You can get medical attention. At least three meals a day.

“Exactly,” the man said. “You know where your next meal is coming from. You have jobs. Paychecks. In Uganda, you may not know where your next meal comes from. You have no money. You have nothing to depend upon but God. And i would rather have my children rely on God more than i would want them to be distracted by everything else.”

Amen. Our adults need to live that way too.

Is It Worth It?

Two weeks ago, I spent almost every minute over four days sitting or lying on the floor next to my big friend Henley the Great Dane. He had come home from the vet when I was presented with a "take him home or put him down" choice. Henley is a member of our family. As much trouble as any of us may be, we don't put family members "down" because it is inconvenient to care for them.

Started out filled with love and compassion and a "whatever it takes" attitude. Over the next four days it got hard. Sleeping on the floor for four nights in a row wasn't any fun at all. Trying to get a dog who was so sick he wasn't interested in eating anything to take his medicine meant getting up close and personal with some large teeth. Helping him to his feet with the help of others and the use of a towel under his belly was nerve wracking.

These are, as was so famously written, the times that try men's souls. It's easy to love someone or something when everything is going swimmingly. But what if things get bad? Emotion only takes you so far. Commitment has to take over. You have to have already made the decision that it's worth it. Tonight as I type this, my big friend is doing much better. He can walk on his own (with a slight limp), and he's back to doing almost everything he did before. Right now, he and I occupy our customary and well loved places next to each other on the red leather love seat we love.

Was it worth it? Absolutely.