“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

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This year we found out about a big event hosted at a high school in one of the small rural communities just outside of our city. It was quite fantastic. There were jumpy castles, clowns, entertainment and more. Our kids had a blast. They were even serving a pizza/hot dog lunch in the cafeteria for a ridiculously low price. (this is starting to sound like an infomercial)

Around the school that day there were several local community groups helping out. One of the groups helping to serve the lunch was from a local church which I think is fantastic. What I found interesting was the t shirts the church group were wearing. They were very bright yellow and said

“Church Name (changed to protect the innocent) community outreach…..We Show Up!

While eating, my wife and I had a conversation about the “We Show Up” tag line on the shirts. To be honest I’m not sure what to think of it. I don’t mean to be hard on the group of people who were there on their holiday, giving up their time  serving my family lunch but I don’t understand the intent of the we show up. That’s why I’m writing this post. I need some help and want some outsiders opinion.

Were they trying to draw attention to the fact they were doing this good deed? Were they trying to draw attention to the fact other churches weren’t involved. Were they trying to state that “Hey we’re here for you, our community please count on us”?

I guess trying to guess their intention isn’t really possible (or fair) but I don’t understand what they would be trying to communicate with it, or to be honest how I feel about it. If you have any thoughts please comment them.

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I know I am painting with a very broad brush here but it seems like a large majority of the time I hear believers talking about risks  and the need to take them it’s usually in the context of a short term missions trip or looking at financing a building project.

Not that there is anything wrong with those two things but we have a faith based on a God who sent His son to earth to die on a cross. He then rose from the dead so that we could be reconciled with God and live life to the full.  We then usually live safe little lives where we take very few risks. We sit nicely in our pews then go out into the world and blend right in. Large groups of us may raise our voice to complain about something we’re unhappy about (usually the government) but won’t allow God to speak into our lives beyond dealing with some surface level sin.

A lot of these thoughts come from my reaction to an interaction I had earlier today.  It was with a leader in a local church and there was just no excitement. There was no willingness to change anything from the status quo. There was no willingness to risk anything.  Everything is just fine the way it is and there is no reason to look at anything other than what they’re currently doing and how they’re doing it.

I’m not a fan of change for change sake but I believe we need to be open to God’s calling whenever it comes.  We need to be creative in our thinking as we seek to share the gospel.  We should be full of a holy mischief. We should make people a little uncomfortable because we live as people who have a hope. A hope that is worth dedicating our lives to and giving up everything for.

Again I know I’m painting with a very broad brush. I know there are people of faith who are taking huge risks for the kingdom of God.  I know there are believers who are creating beautiful art and others who are thinking and wrestling with the realities of living a life a faith. So I ask for your forgiveness as I gripe about the way we as Christians often settle for a bland way of living.

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I’m posting this from my phone. I’ve never done this before so I’m hoping this works and is viewable.

I’m out doing some song writing and came across two fantastic definitions for the word “guide” that I wanted to share.

Guide
1) implies intimate knowledge of the way and of all it’s difficulties and dangers

2) to put or lead on a course or into the way to be followed

They’re nothing profound but I was really struck with the beautiful picture of God as our true guide. That in the struggles and realities of life He alone has an intimate knowledge of the way to be followed.

May God guide you!

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An eleven year old student of mine named Cameron is doing an incredible thing right now. Cameron attends the church I used to work and a short while ago that church lost a special young man named Ben. Ben pasted away in August after a year long battle with Leukemia.

So Cameron (again remember he’s 11) has decided to put on a fundraiser to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society. He has booked a venue. He has put a band together. He has asked other musicians to do some performing. He is getting food and refreshments all donated and on many levels he is making his music teacher proud. By what he is accomplishing musically and what he is doing for a great cause.

Check out this link to the Canadian Cancer Society website and you can read more about why Cameron is doing this as well as pledge your support. Go now! NOW!

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“I have tried to develop a habit of having a “quiet time”. Sometimes it would stick. Sometimes it would not. Guilt would be thick when it would not. But for a long period it became what I did first thing every day. It was beauty. The internal joy it brought was overwhelming. Then at some point it went hollow. It’s not that it was a bad idea to form a habit of a quiet time, but the habit had slyly begun to suck the life out of my relationship with God. I had fallen in love with my spirituality rather than with the one whom I sought, and in the end it left me void and wanting. A frightening aspect of habit attached to our spiritual formation is that inherent in the idea of habit is the possibility for meaningless ritual. With the formation of habit there is a subtle abdication of consciousness in our actions. This can twist things that were intended to bring life into cold and empty ritualistic experiences. Indeed we are broken. We do bad things without thinking and when we try to do good things they often end up warped. How can we maintain life in our spiritual formation?”

One of the things that lead to me needing to leave ministry was the exhaustion I was feeling about planning worship services.  Both the planning and leading of the services became such a “cold ritual”. What was suppose to be moving me closer to God had “begun to suck the life out of my relationship with God.” I worked really hard to prevent that by trying to keep things in our services fresh and by making sure I was ready spiritually to lead but I couldn’t do it anymore. The confines of planning worship times for a large group of people who all have their own needs and expectations was too much.

Don’t get me wrong I loved my job. LOVED IT.  I loved trying to create new experiences for us as a congregation and shaping where we were going, I really loved working with and engaging the young people we had involved and I really miss it.  But I became bitter. I felt that I was just a dealer providing junkies an empty ritualistic experience.  (I don’t believe that was true but it was how I felt)

Now I’m thinking through the things I do and things we (universally) do as a church and really trying to examine what has become old and stale (even if it started with right intentions)? What habits or ways of thinking are holding me back from moving closer to God? Or am I just crazy (don’t answer that) and making bigger issues of things that aren’t important?

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So here’s the scoop. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things and have a lot of things I’d like to say here on wanting-more but as the title states I hate typing.

I thought to myself “I own a recording studio for crying out loud.  Just record what you want to say  and put that up.” Not really switching it to a podcast as I’d like to occasionally type somethings. So I’ve spent a chunk of time the last two weeks  figuring out how to best implement this in WordPress and it was going to be too big of a pain and probably cause me to have to change my web hosting package. Not really interested in all this.

Then it was pointed out to me I have a camcorder. Why not do video posts then embed them from Vimeo or Youtube.  I could even do it from my iPhone and upload from there.

While I really don’t like the idea of my face being on here it will allow me to share my thoughts a lot easier, quicker and without all the poor grammar.  I do a lot of work with a video producer so overtime I might work on making it higher quality but we’ll see.

Don’t worry they won’t be long videos. Just short 2 minutes clips. It will probably be quicker to watch then to read. So over the next few days I’ll try it out and see how it goes.

Blessings

On a side note I just noticed according to the spell checker in WordPress, WordPress  is spelled wrong.

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The timing is kind of ironic to me since I’m about half way through Frank Viola’s book Pagan Christianity.

Now go join the discussion!

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