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Showing posts from 2012

Revelation's Message For Today

REALITY: Revelation's Message For Today LTO THE CHURCHES 1. The World Is NOT As It Seems.  The world is a matrix of falsehood, a falsehood affecting you to the core, and trying to mold you into a false-self. MANY have taken on the false-self way of life. But there is a much, much better way! 2. Jesus, The King Over All, Knows All About You.  Christ knows your past (where you have come from), your present (why you are who you are), and your future (what it will take to get you where He wants you to be = with Him all the way!) 3. Our Enemy Has Messed Things Up.  A Dragon is in control of the fog that covers the Reality of things. You will only see things his way in this world. Unless you hear God's voice speak to you (and have a Revelation) and go God's way, you will continue to live in a fantasy world = Satan's destructive world with a candy coating. Jesus knows every move the enemy makes and WILL make--and Jesus is hated for that! You can learn the en

Are The Temple Courts Still In Place?

Have we merely exchanged one place for another, one attitude transported from the Temple of old to our Church today? Have we denied access to people and issued invisible passes for entry? Have we sinned by marking off the territory between people and God and made it much bigger, much more difficult than it really is? Do we surround our churches (and our hearts) with "courts" limiting admittance to people? Do we wear looks on our faces that betray our sinful hearts which speak to people, “You may come THIS far but no farther!” The court of the Gentiles is where we marginalize our children and our youth. We have sent them out of our adult worship communicating to them that access is for adults only. We have told people who work on Sundays they are to be in church but then feast at their tables and in our hypocrisy banish them to the outer courts. We must repent and tear down the gates of our attitudes. The court of the women has become the boundaries of where the age

God: Not The Audience

I was recently reminded while reading Marva Dawn's book, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down , about a phrase I heard in a church back in 1991. It was the first time I heard it and saw it demonstrated that summer in a church in Greenwood. The children's pastor's message for the 'children's chat' was how they (we) are the actors in worship and God is the audience. He posited the question, "When you leave today, be sure to ask your parents on the way home, 'How did we do today?'" as a way to remind them (us) that God is the audience alone and we all are the performers (not just those on stage). Neat illustration? Yes. Corrective? Sure. But there was always something it that didn't seem to sit well with me. And Marva's words (p153) helped me to reflect on why. Marva: "...the congregation being the actors who worship God and God being the Actor who reveals himself in that worship to his people..." Yes, God is involved in t

Nothing Can, But Everything Tries

We usually only hear the NOTHING CAN part in Romans 8. No one wants to talk about the BUT EVERYTHING IS TRYING TO part. Here is where I am getting this from. It's in the Bible. Paul is writing to the Romans and in chapter eight there is A LOT of good stuff! And it ends great, take a look. Let's begin with verse 35, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.--NIV. So how does everyday stuff seek to separate us from the love of God that i

Are Teens Living an Avatar Existence in our Matrix World?

What if teens today are living out their lives in a somewhat Matrix existence? A false reality where the "adult world" that is seen and lived in by adults is participated in by their sending a 'surrogate avatar' out into it everyday while their 'real body' is kept in an underground world. This makes sense. The world the next generation has been handed by adults of the past 2-3 generations has not been a very safe one at all. What is seen on the outside is never the "real"--it hasn't been the real in the former generations for decades! All that is cared about is the self--and we have become very adept at self-preservation. But I wonder if this isn't just a deception of the Enemy? If we are creating a lifestyle of fake-living, how can the next generation be real? They would be cast to the sidelines until they wised up on how to live with us--in a fake, covered up manner. But learned they have! 2 nd life living among our teens is n

Teen's: Too Hurt To Be Touched, Turned Around or Transformed?

REACTION TO:  Chap Clark, Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers   (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011) 264pp.                 I resonated with so much that is in this book—personally and professionally. It isn’t hard to want to take to heart the challenge to be a youth advocate once reading Clark’s findings about today’s youth. Adults who want to be effective in reaching out to this generation need to consider Clark’s presuppositions—today, not many are “getting it”—not the church, the schools, youth workers or parents. What IS going on inside the world of today’s teenagers? I am still in the process of re-wiring my mental thought processes to Clark’s ‘underworld’ schemata but frankly it is taking a while—he states in his update to his first edition, “It isn’t getting any better,” and that is the ‘why’ for this second edition.                 This is yet another book which speaks to the elongation of adolescence but doesn’t give a complete definition (explici

From NIV to Meta-Narrative

I had a life-transforming experience when I was about 19. A MEGA-shift that was so simple I am still moved by it 25 years later. It happened when I bought my first NIV translation of the Bible. All of my life I was exposed to the hearing and reading of the KJV of the Bible. I am not bashing it. But that is all I knew--one verse after another in tabbed formation. I memorized it, studied it for Bible quizzing competition, knew some passages frontwards and backwards. But something happened deep within me when I read the Bible for the first time in paragraphed form. I can still feel the newness of the distractions (those little super-scripted numbers which represented the verse I was on while reading) caused me and how I had to search through words and even sentences to catch up with others while reading to find where we were together so I could keep up. That learning curve is behind me now. But the impact the Word of God has had on my life since is ever in front of me. I was re

Aim Your Kids' Faith EARLY!

“Faith trajectories are often set in early adolescence.” In their recent book, StickyFaith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids (Zondervan, 2011), Drs. Powell & Clark layout why kids’ faith isn’t sticking. Their research indicates that somewhere between “40 to 50 percent of kids who graduate from a church or youth group will fail to stick with their faith in college.” Even more perplexing is “only 20% of college students who leave the faith planned to do so during high school. The remaining 80% intended to stick with their faith but didn’t.” Powell and Clark ask a very important question: “Why go through any changes in your life--seasonal transitions--with faith in the backseat?” Why indeed. As adults, do we really want to invest our whole lives of faith—at home, in the church and community and the world, in front of our children only to see them squander that investment at such a crucial time in their lives? But what can we do to give kids a suitable, rea

Just Teach 'Middle Class Rules' to Those In Generational Poverty--Really??

A reaction to Ruby K. Payne's, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. The author speaks from her experience and for many others including myself. Having worked with those who are in poverty I resonated with much of what Ruby Payne states in this book. She gave verbal expressions to many things I have come across in my own observations. And I would agree with what the subtitle touts, “A must-read for educators, employers, policymakers, and service providers.” The “Could You Survive?” test really catches your interest and helps you identify where you come from as well as the ‘hidden rules’ other segments of society (poverty, middle class, and wealth) come from. I found her quote, “Most of the students that I have talked to in poverty do not believe they are poor, even when they are on welfare. Most of the wealthy adults I have talked to do not believe they are wealthy; they will usually cite someone who has more than they do” very intriguing (p45). Solomon in Ecclesiastes 4:4,

How The Good Samaritan Turned Off His Cell Phone,or How Facebook Erodes Intimacy

Reaction to: Shane Hipps, Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith, 2009. This book really preaches. It is one of those books that doesn’t just tell you how to do it—it is doing it while it is telling you how! If we look at our computer screens and refocus we can actually see our own reflection on the screen (or the outline of our reflection)—this reminds us of who we are and that we are not our computers (and our computers are not us). This “magic eye” methodology—the training of the eye to see what is there but normally overlooked—is how we need to approach the technological advances of today as well as how we live our lives as the Church in the world. We must walk the line however fine it may be between observing the 2nd Commandment of not making for ourselves graven images and using images to convey a message. The methods we chose speak a message themselves as Marshall McLuhan was quoted, “the medium is the message” (25). Even the television screen is a part of th

Don't Trivialize Human Experiences--Enlarge Them!

William D. Romanowski, Eyes Wide Open: Looking For God In Pop Culture (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press) 2009. Remarking about the kind of faith informed engagement with popular art and culture, Romanowski states that, “Our aim should be to preserve the best features, improve the weakest parts, and eliminate the worst traits of popular art” (23). This is really what the entire book sets out to show us how to do—practically, emotionally, spiritually, but most of all with great discernment. This really is a very good book! At each turn with the author’s setting up of his point-illustration-principle-vision layout, many times I found myself guessing correctly which movie he was going to be citing next. I found this statement on paradigm shifts needing to happen very interesting: “The change is signified by a remaking of cultural perceptions and the introduction of new questions and standards for acceptable solutions” (p35). With the fast pace of technological advancements and media’s barra

Conservatism as an Injustice

A reaction to Nancy Pearcey's book, Saving Leonardo: A Call To Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, 2010. The author finishes this book with an inspiring assertion: “We are called to revolt against false idols and the power they exert over the minds and hearts. Christians should be on the front lines fighting to liberate society from its captivity to secular worldviews” (p278). This comes after a quote from Francis Schaeffer, “One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary”--against the status quo. Pearcey argues the way to do this is through the artists (as prophets) in the church, who like Bach, could inspire a spiritual revival and spark a global revolution. I am unsure this author’s methodology in this book would achieve that level of inspiration. This book needed to be written. There is so much good information laid out in fair historical patterns. The

What if Metallica Came to YOUR Church?

A reaction to John Van Sloten's, The Day Metallica Came To Church: Searching For The Everywhere God in Everything ,  2010. This book caused me to rethink some of my foundational theologies, specifically Creation and the Fall. If God created us in His image and declared His creation as ‘very good’, what consequences did the sin of Adam and Eve have upon us? How deep does it go? I have some very strong thinking patterns that hold everything as either good or bad, God’s or Satan’s, black or white. This either/or (dualistic?) outlook doesn’t leave room for the mysterious. But what if all of these things were meant to lead me to something more? What if I always stopped short because I was led to believe that when I came to a certain point I had arrived—mission complete--stop here and move on to another subject? And what if that wasn't true? I was challenged by the thought of how God speaks to us outside of the Bible. I have believed that God speaks to me through many things (

Christians In/To/Above Our Culture

A reaction to H. Richard Niebuhr's, Christ and Culture, 1951. This book seems to leave us to choose and that in itself is both puzzling yet refreshing. It leaves us to choose what to DO with the truth we possess. But it also shouldn’t lead us to believe we must choose one of the five typologies Niebuhr gives. There may be another answer and I believe there is. Niebuhr also leads his readers into desiring to choose the (his?) fifth type even though he makes it seem like any of them would be okay to choose. There is also the choosing of being more biblical in our own response to culture rather than just following the philosophy of those who have gone before. The problem we all live in is: How do we relate to the culture around us and to those within that culture. There must be a hammered out way of doing this by now with so much church history behind us! And I would agree—the way we live our life reveals our loyalties and the objects of our devotion—it is either “Christ or cul

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