Tag: “Sugarcoated, MTV-style youth ministry is so over. Bible-based worship is packing teens in pews now”
Very cool. Time Magazine released an article about the shift in Christianity. It may be the first article in Time since I left high school that I find truth in. Check it out!
I’m a little weird when it comes to food. I cannot stand for my food to touch, and I finish each serving before moving on to another (for example, I eat all of my green beans and then move on to mashed potatoes), beginning with what I’m least sure of in terms of desire. It is for this reason that KFC’s new “Famous Bowls” are my worst food nightmare. I meana COME ON. How digusting can you be? Why would you EVER mix chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, and cheese together? UGH!
I have a love/hate relationship with the fall. I spend all summer longing for cooler temperatures and football, for crunchy leaves and pumpkin patches. And yet, when fall arrives, I am bombarded by my date book. It beats me and haunts me until I have little life left.
For example, (to be read very quickly for dramatic appeal) I’m leaving work early tomorrow for an insurance women’s convention, and then all next week I’m packing, so I have to leave at 5:00 sharp. Friends are coming by to help, so I can’t work late. Then I’m out on Friday the 27th to prepare for the move; the move actually happens on Saturday. As soon as I get moved in, I’m working on Christmas gifts, which means I’m going to be sewing like a mad woman: I’ve decided that I’m making all my gifts this year (remind me why?). My friends are throwing me a housewarming party on the 11th, so that will take a lot of time and preparation, and then I’m helping to throw Christine & Steven, whose house I’m moving in TO right now, a housewarming/Thanksgiving/birthday/PEFO party on the 18th. The following Tuesday, I am driving to Tyler after work to pick up my grandmother, and we are driving back to Dallas the same night. She’ll spend the night and hang out with Willie while I work that Wednesday morning, and as soon as I get off, we’re driving to Amarillo for Thanksgiving and my dad’s birthday. We’re driving back to Tyler on Saturday, where I’ll leave her, and then return to Dallas early Sunday morning. Let’s not even move into December.
None of what I just listed includes my routine agenda of work, church, B.A.D.D., and time with Willie. I feel somewhat assaulted by it all, so I cannot imagine those who I KNOW are more busy than I.
I think of Christine who is going to Africa in a few days. Jessica and Tommy are balancing a new marriage with school and work. Tim and Emily are getting married and trying to blend a family. Jason and Michelle are dealing with a surgery. The Clements and the Smiths have new additions to their families and are somehow expected to keep up with everything else.
Despite the apparent chaos, I am given mercy… for now. I’ll cease my complaints.
I stole this from Ste-en.
Most of my friends and readers have gathered that I’m sort of a music snob, albeit, not near as snooty as some of my friends. I do admit to some guilty pleasures. Here are some of the songs I’m digging a great deal right now.
Golden Days by The Damnwells: OK, I just love this band. I saw them with the Old 97s a while back and fell madly in love. Golden Days isn’t the best song on the album, but I connect with it for some reason.
It Won’t Be You by Tara Leigh Cobble: Well, it’s Tara Leigh and Matt Wertz… Do I need further explanation?
Nothing’s Going to Change Your Mind by Badly Drawn Boy: This is a swelling, intricate, ballad with hints of the 70s, and this guy is about to blow up. His music is incredible.
Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl by Broken Social Scene: This band is made up of SEVENTEEN members, and they ROCK. I have not felt so overwhelmed and excited by an album in quite a while.
Wake Up by Arcade Fire: I love bands that pay tribute to their influences, but are talented enough to make their own mark. Arcade Fire is one of those bands. Listening to this song, I think of the Pixies and Talking Heads, and so many others. Good stuff, indeed.
Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens: Ahh, Sufjan. A.Maze.Ing. I love his lyrics even more than the music itself. I quite enjoy the tongue-in-cheekness.
I Turn My Camera On by Spoon: Mick Jagger anyone? This is one of my favorite Austin bands, hands down.
Portrait of a Summer by Sounds Under Radio: My friends Lang Freeman and Bradley Oliver have a great new album coming out called Cinematica, and this may be my favorite single from it. Love this band.
Two of the families most precious to me have grown recently, and it occured to me that I hadn’t celebrated this in my blog!
Justin & Elizabeth Clement, along with their first son, John Huss welcomed their second son Edwin Gardner (answers to Gardner) on September 12 (I think!!). He is SO handsome, and John Huss is the proudest big brother!
Steve & Jennie Smith, along with their daughter, Ana, welcomed their son Bennett Stephen to the family this past Saturday, October 14th! The healthy birth of Bennett is an extra special blessing and beautiful story of grace, as Jennie suffers from a miserable condition which causes severe nausea and vomiting throughout the pregnancy.
I am personally incredibly thankful to our Lord for his blessings in these births, and for what these families mean to me. Please join me in praying for them and thanking God for them!
“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” Psalm 36: 7
Two of the families most precious to me have grown recently, and it occured to me that I hadn’t celebrated this in my blog!
Justin & Elizabeth Clement, along with their first son, John Huss welcomed their second son Edwin Gardner (answers to Gardner) on September 12 (I think!!). He is SO handsome, and John Huss is the proudest big brother!
Steve & Jennie Smith, along with their daughter, Ana, welcomed their son Bennett Stephen to the family this past Saturday, October 14th! The healthy birth of Bennett is an extra special blessing and beautiful story of grace, as Jennie suffers from a miserable condition which causes severe nausea and vomiting throughout the pregnancy.
I am personally incredibly thankful to our Lord for his blessings in these births, and for what these families mean to me. Please join me in praying for them and thanking God for them!
“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” Psalm 36: 7
i’m always wanting more
anything i haven’t got
everything
i want it all
i just can’t stop
planning all my days away
but never finding ways to stay
or ever feel enough today
tomorrow must be more
drink more dreams more bed more drugs
more lust more lies more head more love
more fear more fun more pain more flesh
more stars more smiles more fame more sex
but however hard i want
i know deep down inside
i’ll never really get more hope
or any more time
any more time
any more time
any more time
i want the sky to fall in
i want lightning and thunder
i want blood instead of rain
i want the world to make me wonder
i want to walk on water
take a trip to the moon
give me all this and give me it soon
more drink more dreams more drugs
more lust more lies more love
but however hard i want
i know deep down inside
i’ll never really get more hope
or any more time
any more time
any more time
any more time
the cure
Go have fun calculating your compatibility with your crush!
http://www.crushcalculator.com/content/love/592937269
Another guest blog for your enjoyment!
This past week, my college ministry had a guest speaker from a ministry in New York. He is a part of an organization known as Christ Communities. Now I know nothing specific about this man or his ministry, so any venturing I do into specifics is pure speculation. But what I heard I was not too impressed with. This ministry is basically a community “infiltrating” organization, where there main goal is to go into already existing ministries and build relationships with lost people.
The basic gist was this: to REALLY be effective for the gospel, we need a new strategy. what we need to do is go dark, like Jack Bauer (his words, not mine) did in-between seasons 3 and 4 of 24, and infiltrate the enemy base camp. While the analogy obviously breaks down (lost people are not “the enemy”) it is a good picture of what the ministry tries to do. Instead of using “church” to reach people, we go to where the lost are: the bars, the coffee shops, even apartment complexes, and reach lost people.
Now, to be fair, I have nothing against trying to meet people where they are at. I think that it is a good Idea to go to the bars, to the coffee shops, and meet people that don’t necessarily agree with our faith. And really, I don’t know enough about this guy to really defiantly say anything about his ministry. But through out the “sermon” (if referencing John 1 in passing can be called preaching the gospel) I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. I never heard him say he had a church home. Never once here him say that he pointed people in his community towards one. The one time that he did reference it was in a negative connotation, talking about how people from the south would move to the north and plant churches that resembled ones like home, and were ineffective at reaching people. I always had this feeling that while he didn’t say it, there was a disdain for the established church, that it wasn’t doing a good job reaching the lost, and that we should just cast it aside like its out-dated. But I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, seeing as he never said any of those things, I really couldn’t in good conscience say anything against him for things I was unsure he himself believed.
What really has me disturbed is a conversation I had about 2 days later. I was hanging out with some friends and for one reason or another I was asked what I thought of our speaker. So I , as tactfully as humanly possible, said that while I didn’t disagree with anything he said, I don’t see why we need an alternative to the established church to reach lost people. I agreed that we needed to build communities, but I don’t understand why we had to divorce that from the church.
We had a little civil back and forth discussing it, when one of my friends tells me “Todd, I understand what you mean, but you have to understand that that doesn’t work in New York. People hate church at immediately disrespect you when you bring it up” (paraphrased). I was a little taken aback by the statement, but was not willing to start a debate in mixed company, so I, as tactfully as possible, agreed to disagree. Rethinking my friends statement, there are numerous things I could have brought up, not to mention the Brooklyn Tabernacle which seems to be doing alright for itself
Now, I understand what my friend meant, that the church, historically, has a bad reputation with lost people? But whose fault is that? And does it really call for us to give up on the establishment all together? Is the church going to be stronger if we break down into these subculture communities, going “Dark for Christ”?
This is a classic case of making the system the scapegoat for the faults of the participants. Is communion really offensive to the lost world? Is tithing, Worshipping, praying in one place really that distasteful? Seems to me that there are other belief systems that do that and they don’t have a problem with people shunning them for there hypocrisy. Its not the fault of the establishment of a worship service that has lost people hating the church, its is the actual “body” that has done this. We have, over the years, become known as hypocritical, inauthentic and pious. But instead of trying to change things from within the church, people would rather try and start something new, something fresh and more appealing to the lost person. I’m pretty sure that if you were to plant a church in New York City, and the people in this church were to be willing to be transparent with there lost friends, and were to show others the Love of Christ, that that church isn’t going to do badly.
I heard in the same conversation that most churches claim to have community but really all they have is a country club mentality. While this maybe so, does a group of believers coming together and talking about life and what it all means really constitute as church? If so, then why does Paul give us elders in the pastoral epistles, the timothy’s and Titus? Why are there so many instructions for an establishment that really just doesn’t “get the job done”? So yes, while you can have church and not have community, community does not equate church. If my generation would stop looking at the system to fix the problems of the body of Christ and start looking at there hearts, I’m pretty sure they’d find that a system is only as good as those who use it, and though it hasn’t been used all that well in the past, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. Paul seemed to think it was a good Idea, and I’m going to stick with the guy who had that whole “revelation of God” thing going for him.
I am considering going away for a weekend. No city lights. No cell phones. No television. Just me and God.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
