Blogs I read

I often see blogs with dozen of other blogs listed in their site. I wonder does this person actually read all of these different blogs? Do they know all these people? How do I get my blog on here?

In case I’m not completely strange I’ll tell you a little bit about the blogs to which I connect.

Beauty and Depravity – Eugene Cho

While the title of this blog lends to some interesting searches finding it, I found it through Jesus Creed when he was writing about the Korean missionaries who were kidnapped in Afghanistan. I’m new to his blog, but it reads well and he seems like a wise and Godly man. He’s also a pastor and church planter and barista and Quest seems to be doing some things in Seattle that we would like to attempt in Edmonton. Eugene was also on of my inspirations to have a website after reading this post. See, stories bear fruit.

Containers and Compartments – Teddi Taylor

Teddi is my wife, my best friend, my confidant, my administrator, my editor, my partner in crime,  the mother of my children and a darn good writer as well. She helps me to relive parts of our family’s life that I don’t notice, and she’s kind enough to send some traffic my way.

Dave’s Web-log – Dave MacIntyre

Dave is a friend that I talk about here. He’s just starting out and says nice things about me.

iProcess – Jeff Young

Jeff is a friend that I met through the Arrow Leadership Program. He’s also a pastor and a great writer. He’s also been walking tall through a tough time lately and has demonstrated to me how to behave as a man of grace and forgiveness and conviction. I’m blessed to know him, and he has great hair, of which I am jealous.

Jesus Creed – Scot Mcknight

We’ve discussed Dr. McKnight before as well, but I believe that Scot McKnight isn’t really a human being, but an incredibly prolific theology robot. He produces some amazing work on his site for free, but also has time to teach and write great books. His fashion sense leaves a little to be desired, but I try not to hold that against him.

Jordon Cooper

I’ve never met him, but I check his site every day, and I’m also part of Resonate.
He provides really neat links to great stories on the web, and he seems to be a thoughtful person. His site is really a gift that shortens my browsing time. He devote what seems to be a lot of time and effort to the church in Canada, and (I can say this as someone who spent four years outside Moose Jaw) he lives in Saskatchewan, which is hard for anyone.

Real Live Preacher – Gordon Atkinson

This was one of the first blogs I ever read, and man did I need it at the time. Gordon’s writing is beautiful, and as a pastor, I need to hear his crazy energy and hope in the midst of depression. He also has a book that I would recommend. I’ve emailed him a couple of times and he has always responded with care and grace.

So there you go. That’s why the blogs are in my roll. I read them all. I know some of them. I would probably put yours there if you ask nicely.

Bridgepointe

A few people are interested in Bridgepointe and what we’re about. I’m going to post something I wrote a while back. Partly I’m doing this because I want to have most of my writing in the same place, but I also think it’s worth reading

Vision: Fools and Failures

There’s a statement that’s been trying to get out of me for weeks, and it’s been next to impossible to get into words. Every time I sit down to write I get scared and tied up and everything I want to say seems disconnected and stupid and impossible. I’m trying to describe where I think Bridgepointe is being called and what we’re asking people to join and I’m failing. So in the midst of that failure and foolishness, here goes.

We want Bridgepointe to be a church.

I know, it sounds simple, but it’s not, and I think all of us know that. We’ve all been part of churches that, for whatever reason, failed to be what they claimed to be and wanted to be. I’m not hear to criticize other churches, but we want Bridgepointe to be a group of people who are who we say we are, who we do what we say we’re going to do, and when we fail, as we surely will, we admit our failures and foolishness to God and to the world and to ourselves and we jump back in again.

What if we could become a group of people who actually believe that we have good news for the world? What if we shared that good news with people as naturally as we told them about a great album or book or movie? What if we really welcomed people and allowed them to change us and expected them to be changed? What if we really believed that we are God’s people and he is guiding us and that when we prayed, someone actually listened and something actually happened?

I think we might change the world.

or at least our world

or at least ourselves

So how do we get there?

At the proposal stage of this thing I had to come up with lots of plans and strategies for connection and assimilation, and those are important and good and smart, but the reality that I know with every bone in my body is that J.B. and I aren’t cool enough or smart enough to make this thing happen by ourselves (well, maybe J.B. might be). The kind of community we’re dreaming of only happens if and when God shows up.

You know what the fun part is?

He said he would.

After the fall and the flood in Genesis, God took the first step to begin his plan of salvation by asking a guy named Abram to get up and move his family to a place God would show him (Genesis 12). God said that he would bless Abram, and that through Abram, God would bless everyone on the planet. And Abram obeyed. And the amazing thing about Abram wasn’t that he was so wise or spiritual or cool or a brilliant strategist or working with the best model. The amazing thing about Abram was that when God said get up and go, he went.

When God said get up and go, he went.

I believe that’s what God is calling us to. And like Abram we’re going to fail and be fools and some of us are going to get new names and some of us are going to walk with limps, but God promised that he would bless the world through us.

So the question today, bigger than Bridgepointe or a new community or anything else that might be going on, is this: When God asks you to get up and go, will you?

More than anything else at this point, that’s what Bridgepointe is about.

Another one bites the dust…

It appears that my humble little experiment has already begun to bear some fruit. My friend Dave has also decided to put his thoughts in some semblance of order on e paper. He talks in his first post about his reasons and also says some nice things about yours truly.

Dave is a good friend from college and we both work for the same nameless multi-national coffee company. He also is younger and prettier than me. I try not to hold these things against him.

I love storytelling because of the unintended consequences.  When I tell stories, be it through preaching or writing or performing or teaching something often happens that I never planned or could not possibly hope to control.  Sometimes people learn something about God that I didn’t know myself. Sometimes people decide to examine relationships and priorities I didn’t know they had. Sometimes people start web-logs.

Now none of this happens because I am a brilliant storyteller or because I carry with me the wisdom of the ages. It happens because there is something bigger going on.  . In the stories we tell with our words  and our lives we are pointing to the things we value most; the things we’re passionate about and love. My stories, hopefully, point to things inside us and outside us that are bigger than we dream.

Welcome Dave, may your stories be big and powerful and small and silly. May they touch people you don’t know in ways you never dreamed. May all of your words point our ears and eyes and hearts to something bigger going on.

52 books

1 – Story by Robert McKee

This is the first book on my plate for 2008. It was a Christmas gift from my wife and I’m enjoying every page. I first heard of Robert McKee through his appearance as a character in the 2003 film Adaptation where Nicolas Cage’s struggling screenwriter goes to Mckee’s seminar to seek guidance on how to bet finish his screenplay. I heard about him, and his book specifically, again not to long ago through a Donald Miller talk. McKee is a screenwriter and dramatist but his real gifting is as an observer and teacher of Story and Narrative. He believes that there are certain principles by which all good and interesting stories work and the book is designed to teach the reader how to use these to produce better, more meaningful, more life-engaging stories.

Some of it is technical, but alone the chapter on The Decline of Story is worth the price of admission. He derides the loss of the apprenticeship and mentoring that writers had in the old Hollywood System and also the academic trend to reduce story to its collected parts but he also has this gem:

“The final cause for the decline of story runs very deep. Values, the positive/negative charges of life, are the soul of our art. The writer shapes a story around the perception of what’s worth dying for, what’s foolish to pursue, the meaning of justice, truth – the essential values. In decades past, writer and society more or less agreed on these questions, but more and more ours has become an age of moral and ethical cynicism, relativism, and subjectivism – a great confusion of values. As the family disintegrates, and sexual antagonisms rise, who, for example, feels he understands the nature of love? And how, if you do have a conviction, do you express it to an ever more skeptical audience?

The erosion of values has brought with it a corresponding erosion of story.” (p. 17)

As someone who spends a lot of time communicating and thinking about how to better communicate this book convicts me to communicate better, to tell better stories. I’m a student of the bible and no matter what you may or may not believe about how that book came together, we can agree that those are some pretty neat stories; stories that haven’t eroded with the passage of time. It’s encouraging that my job is tell those stories and get out of the way