Check out this insightful post from Tom Cottar over at Missional Living…
One of the new buzzwords of our ‘green’ society has caught me by surprise and slowed me down. Insiders no longer use the term ‘recycled’, as in ‘recycled glass’, but ‘repurposed’.
Which I completely love, but not in a green way…. (read more)
Blake Coffee over at Church Whisperer has this to say about relationships in church:
Your church is not just comprised of people. It is comprised of relationships among those people. That’s an important distinction. It is the difference between a pile of bricks and a building made with those bricks. It is the difference between a jumbled wad of thread and a fabric woven with that thread. It is not just the people who make up the church…it is the specific ways in which those people relate to one another that either make them a New Testament church or not. More specifically, it is the Spirit of God living in those people and moving them into relationships with each other which make them a church…. (read more)
God has created us and our gifts for a place of his choosing and we will only be ourselves when we are finally there. – Oz Guiness
photo credit: Daniel Owen (Daniel & Sonja on Flickr.com)
I’ve been seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for some time now…
It doesn’t seem to be getting any brighter.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
God plants a seed of himself in us, Paul called is a “deposit” of the glory to come… His Holy Spirit. And this Spirit speaks to our innermost thoughts and desires, He enlightens our passions, He restores our hope…
Sometimes, when I’m feeling cynical, I think He teases us…
I know a couple of ministry-types that kinda flounder from position to position, church to church, looking for the right fit… To me, they constantly seem to be trying to shove the proverbial square peg into a round hole…
They don’t see their own shape…
If you know many ministers, you know at lease one of these guys:
The Evangelist who continually tries (and fails) as a Pastor…
The Missionary who settled for a job administrating other missionaries…
The Youth Pastor who thought it was time to “move up” to Senior Pastor…
Their work doesn’t bring energy and life to them… Instead of living “abundantly,” they have settled for a place of service that provides some counterfeit for life: monetary stability, worldly prestige…
You get the idea?
I find artists to be especially vulnerable to this kind of thing… After all, there are only 32 new positions for “rock stars” that come available every year and 85% wash out by year-two… For the guy that has great musical talent, a job selling widgets seems more stable, reasonable and safe…
But Jesus didn’t say, I have come to give you a stable life…
Knowing this truth, however, is very different from walking it out… I struggle a lot to walk in my gifts and calling… I get discouraged easily when things appear to be trending away from the goal that I’ve set my heart on…
That’s when I eat Oreos…
Discouragement is the enemy of abundance, but I’m not convinced this is true of Discontent…
Discontent can be a catalyst… It can drive us to work harder, work smarter and really sell-out to our vision and calling…
Are you sold-out to your vision and calling?
Or shall I pass the Oreos?
Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. -The Bible, Psalm 37:4
Last summer, I was in the best physical condition of my adult life. But a year of inactivity and a tendency to self-medicate a gnawing discontent with Little Debbie Nutty Bars and Oreo Double Stuffs has me about 30 lbs overweight and kinda disgusted with myself…
We’ll talk about the gnawing discontent another time…
So, I’ve started a fitness program… Not because I am obsessed with personal beauty but because I’d really like to be able to actually partake in the excellent hiking, bouldering and snowshoeing that I moved to Colorado to enjoy…
And for another reason that has been feeding that gnawing discontent that I mentioned before…
I am physically limited in my worship expression…
On the last Sunday that I didn’t play in the band, I was standing out in the congregation and I wanted to raise my hands…
But my shirt was too tight…
Dancing would be out of the question…
I only mention dancing because I know this dancer… She has a beautiful gift. I didn’t grow up in a “dancing” church, so it has always been an enigma to me as an expression of worship. I can read in the Bible that David danced before the Lord “with all his might,” but I’m challenged to envision what that might have looked like. I imagine that it was something like the way Hannah dances (that’s the dancer I know, by the way)… It’s not pretentious or showy, just graceful and glorious in a way that words don’t really capture…
Hannah gets migraine headaches that inhibit this gift…
Do you see where this is going?
I realized that my extra weight was inhibiting my worship and that I take my generally good health for granted… and take my body for granted as an instrument of worship… and I make choices that lessen the strength and fitness of my physical body where others struggle against illness or injury that comes at them against their wishes…
After the Jews had been in captivity in Babylon, they came back to find the Temple of God in ruins. The building had been destroyed and the ornamentations (crafted in the days of King Solomon from gold, silver, bronze, precious stones of almost every imaginable kind) had been plundered. One of the Harrods (they were kings) rebuilt the Temple, but the people wept because the new Temple had lost the glory of the previous one…
If my body is a temple… it’s seen better days…
My capacity to worship, whether it’s by raising my hands or helping build houses for the poor, might very well be lessened by my choice to snarf down a bag of Fritos…
So, what do you think… Is it just vain or shallow, or does the way we maintain our bodies really matter in a lifestyle of worship…
The fable of the Tortoise and the Hare is centuries old… most of us have heard it (one version or another) and know the moral of the story…
Slow and steady wins the race.
There are a number of more specific applications, but the one that has been on my mind lately is the choice that church leaders often have to make between the committed person and the talented person.
You hear all sorts of ideological rationalizations one way or the other, but the choice does have true, natural consequences… real pro vs. con discussion points exist…
When I was a student minister (back in the Willowcreek heyday), I worked for a pastor who had such an intense commitment to excellence (as he defined it) that the commitment of potential volunteers was never a question… Consequently, we had to reschedule our worship team practice because our drummer got sentenced to community service on our regular rehearsal night… Some drug-related charge.
He was a really good drummer…
He did not, however, have any moral convictions regarding his sexual behavior or chemical addictions…
If we were a rock band, I can see where that’s none of the “front man’s” business, but we were a worship team… It bothered me then and it bothers me still…
But there are more subtle leadership shortcomings that get enabled in the church.
I recently heard about a musician that I know who is being elevated to a place of leadership in his church. Other members of that team are concerned because he has a history of being late, skipping practice and skipping Sundays that he is scheduled to play. No one can remember the last time he came to church when he wasn’t playing in the band. Nonetheless, the leadership is giving him more responsibility…
Because he can really rock.
This is the kind of leadership decision that has the potential to fail on its own merit, leaving the church looking around one Sunday morning for someone to lead worship. But the worst problem is the message that it sends to rest of the team…
I’d like to see this leader hold his team accountable for being at rehearsal…
The most likely failure of this leader will be the inability to really lead. Most leadership experts agree that leadership has more to do with a person’s commitment than his talent… This is particularly true of creative types…
But we see this in a LOT in church and in Christian marketing:
I see that you play guitar… why don’t you write a devotional book…
I noticed your beautiful voice… why don’t you take over our youth group…
You have a great gift for design… would you like to be an elder in our church…
I might be exaggerating a bit, but I’ve observed that this is a fairly common practice… especially when a church wants to secure the considerable talent of a marginally committed person…
I’ve known a few that stepped up at became good leaders…
But only a few.
What’s your experience and observation on this issue?
