Quote: Reggie McNeal

"God takes attendance on who is NOT there !"

Love God, Love people nothing else matters !

"There are some people who think that the world will know we are Christians by how we defend truth." ~ Reggie Joyner.
Thanks to Ben Armant for this one.

Good challenge out of Orange Conference

SOmebody at the conference shared this on their blog... Reggie Joiner shared last night about Prodigal Son story at the Orange Conference! I was there last year and would've liked to go again this year ...

Comparing the Loving Father’s response to the returning son to that of the Older Brother.

LOVING FATHER: Preoccupied with whoever is missing
OLDER SON: Preoccupied with self

LOVING FATHER: operates on a context of forgiveness
OLDER SON: operates under a context of shame

LOVING FATHER: throws a party
OLDER SON: throws a fit

LOVING FATHER: confronts the older brothers thinking
OLDER SON: criticizes the loving father ways of thinking

LOVING FATHER: probably kept the porch light on for the sons return
OLDER SON: probably turned the light off and locked the door

As a church - our heart, our mission needs to be that of the LOVING FATHER. We need to treat every prodigal the way a loving father treats his prodigal son. We need to make sure our church emphasizes FORGIVENESS & JOY.

Good stuff to act on.

Expectations and excitement

Carey Niewhof has a great blog about getting what you came for. It got me thinking about what gets us excited. More over what do our kids see us getting excited about.
A question I asked my son last year - "What would you bring me if I asked you to bring me what was the most important thing in my life ?" - He told me my computer ! What a challenge !
How would your kids answer that question ?

One (young) person can make a difference

I've been impressed with the curriculum our Youth Pastor has been using recently from Youth For Christ USA Three Stories. "I was so impressed I bought the company" NOT - but i did subscribe to their youth evotional. Today's highlights a young person who is making a difference in their community and much further afield. Here's a snippet

"Nine months later, the No Cussing Club has a Web site, claims 10,000 members and boasts chapters in several states and countries. Hatch considers his greatest
achievement, though, to be getting his hometown of 25,000 to become a cuss-free
zone. "

Check out the whole evotional here

Seeing and Answering

I like the challenge that John Johnson heard N.T. Wright make recently:-

N.T. Wright reminded us to come to the biblical text with 1st century eyes and
21st century questions, rather than 19th century eyes and 16th century
questions. Most do not want to do the hard work of exegesis (that pulls us into
the 1st century), while others are too out of touch with present culture to know
the questions they must ask. Wright notes that there is a crisis in Western
democracy. These are dangerous times—threats of terror, an ecological crisis
that should have the attention of every believer, and a wave of books by Dawkins
and others intent on attacking the credibility of Christianity. There must be
cultural critique, but it must not be in the form of bashing, but rather be
about Spirit led discernment. Reasoned discourse is what will win the battle.
And Wright models this. It was clear in each of his talks that he has spent
considerable time seeking to discern the flow of the biblical books, the world
of the authors, while discerning the times in which we presently live. A good
model for all of us.

I think we need to ask God to open our ears and eyes as well as ask God for revelation

To hear the questions people are asking today. To see the Word speak from when it happened into today. The Answerer is the same yesterday, today and for ever.

What does that look like to you ?

What if ...

At our small group last night we were discussing loving together. And said the challenge was that we don't know each other that well. We asked what it would take to get to know each other better. So ..
What if we met with our small group more regularly even every other day. Maybe these times would be prayer times, sharing communion together, annointing of oil, laying hands on each other, speaking blessings over each other and of course singing God's praises. The kids would be there of course.
Billy Ritchie over in England has thoughts on these lines too.
What does it take to make this "What if... " a reality ? Choosing to make it a priority and finding like-minded people. Anything else ? ... WHat do you think ?

It broke Dad ! Can you fix it ?

I'm not a poetry kind of guy, but every once in a while a poem will really grab me. Ratna, one of our amazingly hard working and caring office staff here at First Alliance Church shared this poem with me last night.

First I was reminded of my son who had just yesterday morning asked me to help him build a Lego project, but then immediately after I start to help him pushes me out of the way so he can build it. A few minutes later he comes and grabs me again and syas he really, really really needs my help this time, because it seems to be broken and not working out right.

Next my mind goes to Moses and his grasping God's calling on His life to save his people in Egypt. He starts off by killing two Egyptians who abusing his fellow Jews, which he seemd to think fitted into the plan. However that only made him have to wait another forty years to nove into his calling!

Anyway I'll let you read the poem ...

Broken Dreams

As children bring their broken toys

with tears for us to mend,

I brought my broken dreams to God

because He was my friend.

But then, instead of leaving Him

in peace to work alone,

I hung around and tried to help

with ways that were my own.

At last, I snatched them back and cried,

"how can you be so slow?"

"My child," He said,

"what could I do?

You never did let go."

Author unknown

Family Ministry

I didn't realise there were quite a few ways of doing family ministry. Jon Erwin presents us with a great working table of Family ministry models. There are many options. There are several organisations individuals promoting literature and methods for family ministry as well. Two that that we've taken ideas and resources from are

Mark Holmen's "Faith begins at Home" - great book - we were able to distribute this to our parents last year. This year the book has expanded into Church wide package, which we're looking into here at FAC. Mark Holmen is coming to GTA in May and we're taking a group of our parents to hear him.

Orange is all about family ministry. I went to the Orange Conference last year in Atlanta. It reinforced my changing philosophy of ministering just to children. Since at Church we have the children most Sundays for 1 hour and the parents have between 80 and 100 hours - unstructured time with their children each week we need to find a way to help parents make better use of some of that time for things of God. This is especially important when we look at Deuteronomy 6 - charging the parents with sharing God's words with their children throughout the day.

So this year we've added a monthly FamJam to our family ministry schedule where the whole family come together. This is on top of Families Eating And Sharing Together (FEAST) which we started last year.

Blogged recently on my Family ministry blog about Keeping hope alive!
On Sunday our parent group (FEAST) discussion was around chapter 5 of Dr Tim Kimmel's Grace-based Parenting. It's focus is for us to lay a foundation of hope in our kids lives.
Childhood is a time we should move our children from dependence on us todependence on God. And knowing there will face challenges they can’t handlebutGod can.
Tim goes on to give us two things that are needed to raise hope-filled kids
A) They need to see/watch parents who place confidence in the only trueGod. When they see parents who say the right words but without much joy, with much fear and lack of love for not yet Christians they get a mixed message.
B) They need to be raised by parents who treat them the way Jesus treats us. With grace.
The importance of this really struck home when I read about 17 young adults in a Welsh town hanging themselves and 3 youth in Northern Ireland
As Jesse Jackson says we need to "Keep hope alive!"
Dr Kimmel goes on to say that childhood is a time we should move our children from dependence on us to dependence on God. And knowing there will face challenges they can’t handle but God can.
He also talks about parents being there for their kids so the kids know that there is someone bigger than there problems. This helps them understand as they get older that God is bigger than any of our problems.

It just takes a spark to light a fire

It just takes a spark to light a fire. We do not even know the "fires" we have started. Some good, some not so good I'm sure!
Take this guy over here at the Fermi Project (check it out here). He's choosing to serve his community for an hour a week and somebody has copied his efforts.
At my church we're going through Forty days of Community and part of the small group actvitiy is to find a way the small group can show love. My group hasn't decided yet what we're going to do. I'm excited to see what we do, especially now that I'm thinking that our spark might just start a fire. Maybe with others or maybe even with the individuals in our group, maybe even me :)

Cup O' Joe with Bill: For Thinkers Only: Strategy and Execution

Over on a Cup O' Joe Bill asks the question
What's more important:The great execution of a flawed strategy..or a flawed execution of a great strategy?

It's like one of those survey questions where you're given two options and you suppossed to choose one over the other. And of course neither are true or both are equally valid.

If his purpose is to get you to think Bill certainly does that. My thoughts are that it doesn't really matter for a number of reasons:-

If you've been called by God to do something and you're being obedient to that call, what looks flawed maybe achieving exactly the desired effect from God's perspective.

If you're working on a team, flaws are often a catalyst for strengthening relationships, which in the end are more important than any strategy or execution.

On the other hand if you're a person that is able to learn from mistakes then both are important, because both are learning opportunities.
Thanks Bill the answer is Yes :) !

Cup O' Joe with Bill: For Thinkers Only: Strategy and Execution

As a child I remember being taught that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the donkey that there was a large crowd that welcomed him. That was Palm Sunday. I was also taught that by the end of the week the whole crowd has turned against him. I've often wondered about that.
I've just been listening to a Bruxey Cavey podcast where he talks about the place Pontius Pilate offered to release Jesus, where the "crowd called for Barabbas to be set free and Jesus to be crucified. He explained that as far as he could make out the court where this took place held at best a maximum of 200 people. The Sanhedrin had arrested Jesus the night before and brought Jesus in the morning. He goes on to say that there were probably more than 3 or 400 in the Sanhedrin and thousands of staff at the Temple who would probably follow the "company" line. So it could have been that the "crowd" was a crowd of mostly the Sanhedrin. So maybe the crowd that welcomed and loved him on the Palm Sunday still loved him and hadn't turned 180 degrees.
Makes sense to me !

What do you think ?

Where to find joy ? Me! Me! Me!

Mark Driscoll - Helps us look for joy in the right way. Along the way he does a critique of the most popular preacher in the US. What a timely reminder for this day and age. Thanks Paul Dazet for finding that.