I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my…

Heart?

A couple of blocks from our house is a very cool little grocery store, the Italian Centre (make sure you check out their web page) We go there fairly often because it’s close and it’s possibly the coolest grocery store on the planet (they sell Proraso for you straight razor afficionados) and they give my daughter Zoe a lollipop whenever she asks politely.

Zoe loves the Italian Centre for this. Whenever it’s mentioned she begins, every ten seconds, to declare “I can have a lollipop”

“Yes, and we need a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and a stick of bu…”

“… and I can have a LOLLIPOP”

You get the picture. Anyway, when we get to the store Zoe rushes us through everything so that she can can politely ask for a lollipop and when the magic moment comes and the cashier reaches for the bucket Zoe literally begins to vibrate. The actual lollipop never lasts that long because she crunches them like her mom, which I think is incredibly weird, but what really amazes me is that her excitement and pleasure over this lollipop never wanes. We’re at this place a lot, they know Zoe by name, but she is still as happy with that lollipop as the first one she had. She doesn’t feel entitled to have it. She’s not bored with it. And what’s more, her pleasure is contagious, because we love going to the Italian Centre just to see her get this silly lollipop.

I wonder if that is part of joy; the capacity to receive the same gift over and over without boredom or entitlement robbing us of it’s pleasure. I make love to my wife, play with my kids, preach God’s word to his people, drink cold fresh tap water, fill my lungs with air; each of these an incredible gift that I am capable of ignoring or taking for granted

The Bible, which I tend to think is important, says that joy is part of the Fruit of the Spirit. It’s in Galatians 5 and basically the gist is this: If we’re living by the Spirit the inevitable outcome is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Which begs the question: if I don’t have these, if I’m not growing these in myself and those around me am I living by the Spirit? I should be growing in my awareness of and pleasure in all the things God is giving me, right? I’m not always great at this.

But I’m better than I was four hundred and thirty-one words ago.

There are more important things about who you are than how you feel about penises or What I wish I had said to the girl on pride day

I said that in a sermon not to long ago. Yet another reason why I like church planting. I can say the word penis with fear of reprisal.

On Pride Day this year Bridgepointe Church went down to Churchill Square to hand out bottles of water. Now, while I realize the silliness of bottled water and myself am a fan of tap water, bottled water is way more convienient to hand out to revelers on a hot summer day.

Earth Water, an Edmonton company, gives 100% of their profits to the UN for water projects so If you have to drink bottled water go to them. Anyway, we went down to the Pride celebration to hand out bottles of water. We attached to the bottles a card that had our website and a video I did. There were a lot of reasons why we did this, but mostly the driving impetus was that we wanted to be obedient.

There is a huge gulf between the homosexual community and the church for reasons that have been talked about ad nauseum by people more intelligent than me and that gulf isn’t getting smaller. we felt God telling us to so something about this. The best thing we could come up with was to give water to hot and thirsty people. I don’t know if thats the best way to bridge that gulf but it’s a start. We can paralyze ourselves by making sure that we get a message perfectly right, and making sure we offend no one, but at some point we just have to take a step toward the other. We say “Here is a bottle of water. This is either the love of Jesus coming from the Body of Christ, or its just a bottle of water, or it’s something in between that. Whatever it is to you, here you go.”

Back to the penises. Anyway, everyone we met was very positive, and thirsty, so it was a good experience for us. The only hiccup was one young lady who looked at the card and asked if we were a Pro- Gay or Anti-Gay Church. I tried and failed to clever my way out of it by saying “We’re a Pro-Jesus Church.” She, politely, pushed a little bit and I stumbled and mumbled something about not fitting into categories, and she was unsatisfied and reminded me that this was a Pro-Gay event. (Really, I was wondering why all these dudes were wearing buttless chaps. Who knew?) We both moved on. I don’t know if she drank the water.

This is what I wish I had the time and courage to say:

“I’m sorry that you assume that as a person with a Church that I have to fit into one of those two categories. People like me, Christians… we’ve earned your distrust and you have every right to think and say whatever you want about me. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. We’ve sinned against God and against you. We’ve failed to be who we have been called to be.

That said, I can’t fit what we think into a thirty second sound bite… I can honestly say that I don’t fit into either of those categories. I don’t think I even know what gay fully means but I do know this: there are infinitely more important things about you than who you’re attracted to. I reject the idea in our culture that who we are is intrinsically tied to what we do with our genitals, and who we do it with. That is not the defining characteristic of a human being, because long before you or I are gay or straight or whatever labels we accept we are a unique creation of the Living God.

We are also incredibly broken people in an incredibly broken world and the fact that we have to have this conversation is testament to the fact that we have no clue how to live with each other, let alone God, and I believe that Jesus was God, who came here to save us in every way that we need to be saved, and what you do with Jesus is way more important than what you do with anything else. I believe Jesus knew you were worth dying for, and in the light of that, what I think is sort of irrelevant.

But in the midst of our inability to live together well, we want to bring water, and I don’t know if you’re gay or straight, but I know you’re thirsty. It’s a hot day. Pro-gay church, anti-gay church… I don’t know… today we’re an Anti-thirst church.

Just for right now, in this moment, can that be enough?”

How to read the Bible #2 : Where to start

#2 in our Bible Reading series

Amazon, I love you

Thank you, Amazon. You are never ending source of books and amusement. Thank you for recommending this book

because I own this book

keep the recommendations coming

Bring me your broken, worn out, sucky church planters yearning to…

I love how any combination of “church failure” “church plant failure” “church sucks” or the like bring people to my blog. By far the most popular thing I have written for internet perusal is Church Planting Sucks. I know writing about it will make it even even more common, but whatever. It’s about time someone started writing for those who feel like they’re failing.

Anyway, if that’s how you got here, and you are crappy church planter who is wondering if you’ll be working at Taco Bell in six months, or you think church sucks and are frustrated that nothing is happening to change it, I have a word from the LORD for you.

I don’t say that lightly so take me with all the weight that the all caps implies.

Thus says the LORD:”Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.” – Jeremiah 9:23 – 24

God isn’t asking you how big your church is, or what your format is, or how your giving is going, he’s asking you how well you know him. Get your priorities straight church planter. Get to know God and who he is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The same goes for you jaded church friend. You are perfectly right in your frustration with the church and her foibles, but are you getting to know God better? Is your frustration leading you to a place that frees you and builds the Body?

God has got some joy for you when you invest the time in knowing him. He promises that.

52 books: time to play catch up

#9: The Blind Side – Michael Lewis

Well told story about a possible top ten NFL pick next year. Also a neat story of Christianity in action

#10 Heroic Leadership – Chris Lowney

I’ll write a longer review on this one later. Thanks Carson

#11 and #12 Conspiracy of Kindness and Community of Kindness – Steve Sjogren

The first is general and the second is specifically about church planting. Both highly recommended

#13 Vintage Jesus – Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

I spoken a bit about Driscoll before and this is a worthwhile read.

#14 Dynamic Diversity – Bruce Milne

Start reading at Chapter 6 and you’ll be fine

#15 John Wesley: A Biography – Stephen Tompkins

Wesley wasn’t a stellar human being. This will get it’s own review later too.

That’ll do for now. More to come

the audience and the church

An idea thats been rolling around in my head for a while came up a couple of times in the last couple of days. Once with my friend the rock star and once with my sister who works at a megachurch.

It’s not that earth shattering an idea, and I think I may have stolen it from someone else, but it is a helpful way of looking at church numbers. Plus with my sister at the megachurch talking about it someone might write a book and I want to be able to take credit.

The basic idea is this: In any gathering that calls itself church, there are at least two groups. The first group is smaller. They are people who are committed not just to your gathering but also to the mission of Jesus in your context. They get that church isn’t just about meeting their needs,but that their needs will be met by participating in what God is doing. They care enough to commit what is most valuable to them, be it money or time. We call this group the church.

There is another group that makes up the larger whole. They come to the church. They participate in what the church does. They may contribute financally. They may even be quite vocal and opinionated on church matters, but ultimately, their role is that of an observer rather than a participant. We call this group the audience.

Now, to be clear, the audience isn’t bad. It may contain people who don’t follow Jesus yet, or wounded people who need time and space to heal. There are many valid reasons why people are part of the audience.

The point of drawing the distinction isn’t to force decisions, but to be helpful data in influencing decisions.

When I was in Medicine Hat the church grew in attendence from around 80 people to around 180 people within a few years. Within that the church numbers grew from roughly 50 in the beginning to probably eighty later. The fruit was that we couldn’t pat ourselves on the back to much because while the church had grown, we really needed to invite the audience to become part of our community.

So for friend the worship pastor, does here gear their services toward the church or the audience? He gears toward the church.

Church and audience. Just a helpful question to ask while planning.

If anyone recognizes who I stole this from let me know.

Poverty is an Issue

So the writ dropped today, and in Alberta we head to the polls March 3. Unfortunately, elections are treated like a bit of a formality here. The Progressive Conservatives have held power here for the last 37 years on the provincial level, and the Conservative Party holds sway at the federal level as well. Voter turnout is low here, as it is across the country, and most people figure that even though they might be weaker than ever, Ed Stelmach’s are still probably going to win.

I don’t really care about that. I have a pretty low opinion of the political process in general and I have trouble trusting that one party is going to be drastically different than the others.

I’ll tell you what I do care about. This past summer, about six blocks from my house in Edmonton, between one and two hundred people lived in tents. There were more people living in the river valley, elsewhere in the city. I work with people who work at the lower end of the economic spectrum and have trouble finding available and affordable housing. In the midst of the economic boom we’ve experienced, the gap between rich and poor has become broader.

I don’t care who you vote for, but I want Ed Stelmach, Brian Mason, and Kevin Taft to have to answer questions about poverty, minimum wage, and rental and housing prices; I want them to have to talk about tent cities in downtown Edmonton. I want them to talk about the influence that our boom is having on a global scale, and if we’re going to be bringing in tens of thousands of workers from abroad into this province, what impact are we having on the places they leave? Poverty is an issue. Poverty is an issue now, poverty is an issue for the future.

I will fully admit that I don’t know all of the ins and out of this issue. I will fully accept it if anyone wants to label me ignorant, silly, misinformed, idealist, or whatever else you want to throw at me. But in my small way, with what voice I have, I want people to talk about poverty in Alberta, because it matters.

I want to test to see if the blogs can actually influence the debate. I want to challenge other bloggers in Alberta to write a post entitled “poverty is a ______ issue” in the run up to the March 3 election. Poverty is a health issue, poverty is an education issue, poverty is a security issue, etc. Let’s try and keep it non-partisan, the partisan folks will be loud enough without us to help them along. I’m a pastor and what I know is the Bible so I’ve got first dibs on “poverty is a spiritual issue,” although I’m not going to stop anyone from doubling up (as if I could). If you’re going to leave a comment so we can link to each other at the time.

Poverty is an issue. Let’s make sure everyone knows it.

super bowl picks

By the way, Patriots over Giants:35 – 21

I think it will be close for a half, but a perfect season might not be enough to hold off the return of Spygate 

My wife talks about my kids

 I don’t write about my family much. Not because I don’t care, but because I don’t really have anything interesting to say.

Here Teddi talks about what happening in our world.