Great Wall of Integrity?

      In ancient China, the people desired security from the barbaric tribes to the north.  So they built the Great Wall of China.  It was too high to climb over, too thick to break down, and too long to go around.  Security was achieved or so it seemed.  The only problem was that during the first hundred years of the wall’s existence, China was invaded three times.  Was the wall a failure?  Not really – for not once did barbarians climb over the wall, break it down, or go around it.

     How then did they get into China?  The answer lies in human nature.  They simply bribed a gatekeeper and then marched right in through a gate.  The fatal flaw in the Chinese defense was placing too much reliance on a wall and not putting enough effort into building character into the gatekeeper.

 

“The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.”  (Proverbs 10:9)

 

A Big Wow!

Last Sunday was huge!  TrueNorth Church had its first service in the North Augusta High School gym with a near record crowd.  I've told many people how TNC is a dream come true for me.  Back in the 80's I used to dream about having church in NA featuring contemporary Christian music in a casual, relaxed atmosphere with relevant, passionate Bible teaching that would reach across all socio-economic groups.  In my mind, the only place I knew of in NA that could hold a crowd like I had imagined was the NAHS gymnasium.  On Sunday morning, that dream came true. 

 

I thought that Stevens Creek Church was as close as I would ever get to seeing that dream become a reality in the CSRA.  As I posted a few weeks ago, the adventure at SCC was awesome and I thank God for that experience.  But Sunday morning was almost too much.  I can't tell you how many times I have envisioned in my mind what actually took place at TNC on September 10, 2006.  It was a surreal experience for me. 

 

I praise God for Steve Davis and the core leaders who started this ministry just over 2 years ago.  It is incredible to see what God is doing.  As my former pastor and boss used to say, "The best is yet to come!"  I truly believe that and I can't wait to see what God is going to continue to do at TNC.

Selfless Service

This comes from an email passed along to me this morning. Maybe this explains why Team USA is dominating in the World Basketball Tournament.

This video link features Coach K and the Team USA basketball team as they were visited by Col. Bob Brown and some of his soldiers. Of course, in the video you can see Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony and other NBA stars, moved by the story of selfless service. One of Bob Brown's lieutenants was severely wounded in combat in Iraq but continues to serve even though he was blinded by his wounds. This lieutenant is featured in this video. Take a look. You will be inspired.

http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/nba/pinnacle/usab_army_mh_final.asx

Jesus Christ, Stand-up Comedian

Lately I've been revisiting a book titled The Humor of Christ by Elton Trueblood. I first read it about 20 years ago when I checked it out of the seminary library and have thought about it many times over the years. I recently found a used copy of it online. (Click the title to get yours on Amazon.)

Anyway, it's interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it's the only book I am aware of that addresses the subject. I wish someone would write another one with a more contemporary tone to it. Trueblood's book was written in 1964 and is a little more of an academic approach. Second, we don't often note Christ's humor when we read the red letters. He used a lot of irony and sarcasm. Jesus was a little bit of a smart-aleck - but in a godly way, of course. I tend to be sarcastic and smart-alecky sometimes so maybe I'm more Christlike than I think!

Jesus inserted a lot of humor in The Sermon on the Mount, for example. Grab your sword and look up Matthew 6:2, 5, 16, 34; 7:6, 12, 34. Now these passages probably won't have you ROTFLOL (rolling on the floor laughing out loud) but keep in mind that Hebrew humor was different than humor today. Jesus was no slapstick comedian but he did know that exaggeration and irony would get a few chuckles. Like when he said that it is easier for a camel to go through the needle's eye - (A small gate available to latecomers at night when the main gates of Jerusalem were closed. A camel had to get down on it's knees and crawl through. Not impossible, just a little more difficult than normal.) - than for a rich man to get into heaven. I don't care who you are - watching a camel crawl on his knees has to be a funny sight.

Trueblood notes over 30 passages in the Gospels where Jesus used a humorous approach. I love to laugh and I like to make people laugh so it's refreshing to know that Jesus was the same way. We need to laugh more, I think. I'm glad I attend a church where laughter is welcome. Church doesn't have to be stuffy. The sooner Christians learn that, the better off we'll be

Turn The Page

This week marks a new chapter in our lives as we transition from one church to another. A couple of weeks ago, I accepted the position of Associate Pastor of TrueNorth Church, a fast-growing new church in our city. For over 20 years, Beth and I had dreamed of seeing a contemporary, relevant ministry in our hometown. In fact, we made a feeble effort at starting such in 1998 but God had other plans.

We discovered Stevens Creek Community Church in August 1998 and fell in love with it. SCCC was the only contemporary church in the metro Augusta area so we decided to jump on board with them. At the time, they met in an elementary school cafeteria and had 200-250 in attendance. I joined the staff in May 2000 and it has been a great ride! Last Sunday, we had 1041. Pretty good growth in 8 years.

Today was our last day at SCCC and tomorrow I report to the offices of TrueNorth. It's been a little surreal the last couple of weeks. We didn't really see this coming but we know that God has orchestrated this all along. We are sad to say goodbye to so many dear friends at SCCC and yet we are excited about the new friends we are going to make at TNC. We are moving from one great church to another great church and from one great staff to another great staff. Our experiences at SCCC will help us minister at TNC.

We can't wait to see what God is going to continue to do as we turn the page and began a new chapter in our lives.

Killing Your Heart

How often do you find yourself in a hurry?  Do you feel like your days are nothing but rushing from one thing to the other?  Do you find yourself mindlessly and habitually cocking your wrist into your face to check your watch every ten minutes?  Do you always drive in the fast lane?  Do you stomp on the gas when the light turns green?  Do you get angry when the person driving in front of you doesn't seem to be in a hurry and you can't imagine a world where anyone would not be?  

 

For me, it's more often than I want to admit....

 

The Chinese symbol for busyness is two characters joined together as one: heart and killing.  Busyness kills your heart.  There is an old saying that idleness is the devil's workshop.  That may be true.  But I also believe that busyness is the devil's workshop too.

 

"Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should." (Psalm 90:12)

 

 

 

Christian TV At Its Finest

I posted this story on www.theooze.com message board last night and thought I'd post it here too.  I thought it was pretty funny...and sad.

As I am reading the message boards on www.theooze.com I can overhear my daughter, Bailey, in the next room watching "America's Got Talent" on TV. As you know, these stupid reality talent shows are getting really irritating and the talent is sometimes miserably poor. We heard a vocalist doing a terrible job singing and my wife and I both yelled into the den, "That's awful!" Unbeknownst to us, Bailey was changing channels. She said, "That's not 'America's Got Talent,' it's the Christian station."

Aaaaaargh! Christian TV strikes again.  I'm convinced that TBN is a tool of the devil.

 

 

 

 

 

deathclock.com

On Wednesday, September 18, 2052, I will die.  That's what deathclock.com says anyway.

 

I've got 46 years to make an impact.  46 years to influence.  46 years to love.  46 years to demonstrate to others the difference that knowing Christ can make in one's life.

 

What are you doing with the time you have left?

 

 

Costa Rica

Flew in yesterday morning after a 9 day mission trip to Costa Rica.  Everything went great.  We ministered primarily in a precario in the capital city of San Jose.  A precario is a shanty town filled with small homes made of scrap wood, metal, and block built by illegal squatters.  The average home is a room or two that totals about 300 square feet.  This particular precario is a 3 acre site with about 1700 people...mostly Nicarauguan refugees. We cooked 500 hotdogs and gave them away in the precario on Saturday (July 1).  That evening we worshiped at a church in Alajuela where I was invited to preach.  Sunday morning we walked through the precario and cleaned up the area and prepared it for ministry.

Each day we hosted a Vacation Bible School for approximately 200 kids.  They watched a puppet show and did crafts.  They also enjoyed face painting, jump rope, bubbles, etc. while they waited to get into the puppet show.  A medical team treated 349 people.  This ministry was very much needed.  I was really glad we could offer the medical ministry this year.  We also showed the Jesus film Friday night.

We experienced lots of laughs and lots of tears.  The first day in the precario is always the
toughest for the new ones.  When we finished with the cookout Saturday, Joy, one of the missionaries, gave me two used margarine tubs that we ordinarily wouldn't think twice about
throwing away.  She told me to give them to someone.  I asked her how to say, "Would you like this?" in Spanish.  I turned toward the crowd and asked the first two ladies that I saw.  They graciously took them like I'd given them a $100 bill.  I looked at my wife, Beth, and said, "Even used margarine tubs are considered something of value here."  She couldn't take it.  She'd been fighting tears all day and that incident brought out the tears.  Even Pedro, our translator, who was there for his third time, was moved to tears by a situation that the doctor was helping with.  It's unreal how poor those people are.

This team will never be the same.  God moved in many hearts...Costa Ricans, Nicaraguans, and Gringos.

 

Donald Miller notes

Recently I read Donald Miller's latest book

Searching For God Knows What on vacation. I think I liked it better than his best seller Blue Like Jazz.

Miller says that we tend to take the Bible and create formulas for everything. (Think alliterated, three point sermons - five steps to... and eight ways to...) But the Bible isn't a book of formulas. It's a book about relationships. People who have called on God and people who have run from God. We learn how to have a relationship with God through the relational experiences that others have had with him in the past.

Here are a few quotes and thoughts:

"If the gospel of Jesus is just some formula I obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on a nice list, then it doesn't meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn't interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather, obvious) language we are all speaking. But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring humanity back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind." p. 45

Becoming a Christian is more like falling in love than agreeing with a list of principles. p. 46

"The battle we are in (i.e., the cultural battle in the US between conservatives and liberals) is a battle against the principalities of darkness, not against the people who are different from us. In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage." p. 190 (italics mine)

Jesus says there will be people who will heal other people, but when they die he is going to say he didn't know them. It is somewhat amazing to me that all of Christianity, all our grids and mathematics and truths and different groups subscribing to different theological ideas, boils down to our knowing Jesus and his knowing us. p. 200 (GJ's note: Paul stated that nothing was more important than knowing Christ - Philippians 2:9)

The Slowskies

Comcast has a TV commercial about a turtle couple called the Slowskies. They don't like high-speed internet. They are completely satisfied with their dial-up service because they don't like for things to happen too fast.

I feel like the Slowskies sometimes because it feels like it is taking forever to get my second book going. But I'm making progress. I have the first 3 chapters and the proposal almost complete so that my agent can begin shopping it to publishers. The working title for now is Your Greatest Challenge and subtitled Selfless Living in a Selfish World. Maybe we'll get moving on this thing when a publisher bites on it.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate your taking a look at my first book Timely Words. It's a great gift book - men especially seem to like it because it has a lot of quick reads.

You are rich!

Go to this link.  It will take you less than 30 seconds to see how incredibly blessed we are in this country. 

 

 

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

 

 

Addendum 06/20/06: A friend of mine emailed today to thank me for this link and to say that he just returned from a mission trip to Guatemala. According to him, the average annual salary there is $650.

Change Your Life!

The following is a quote from Story by Steven James:

“Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about conferences, seminars, books, and DVDs that will change my life. ‘This (fill in the blank) will change your life! Attend this life-changing (fill in the blank) and you’ll never be the same again! It’ll be life changing!’”

“On the back of one Christian book I recently picked up were three separate quotes by Christian celebrities, all of which promised, ‘This book will change your life!’”

“A hernia will change your life. Swallowing two pounds of Ex-Lax will change your life. Getting bitten by a rabid dog will change your life. So will going bankrupt, joining a cult, or getting a tapeworm. All of these things are very life changing.”

“Change is not always a good thing. What I need isn’t change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God’s transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me to have all along.”

“That transformation is what awaits all who will dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2).”

 

 

Click this link to get your copy of Story

Writer's Conference Debriefing

The Writer's Conference was great.  I thought I'd go through my notes and post some notes and quotes here.

 

From McNair Wilson:

 

"Art history books are full of art created by people between the ages of 40 and 60."

 

"For me not to be the person God created me to be is blasphemy to God."

 

"Don't worry about trying to be larger than life.  Just be actual size."

 

"Do what you love.  The reason you love it is because God put it there."

 

 

"No one has ever hit a homerun from the dugout." (Alton Gansky on risk tasking)

 

"We judge others based on their actions.  We judge ourselves based on our motives." (Jonathan Clements)

 

What God Did On The Final Day

 

Before I left Ridgecrest, I climbed the mountain and hit some trails. I didn't have a chance to do it earlier in the week and I had done nothing but eat and sit the entire conference so I felt like I'd gained 10 pounds and needed to exercise.

 

I hit the trail and spent some time talking to God about what I'd heard this week, how I felt about my writing career, my ministry, etc.  So I had one of those familiar conversations with God about his will and what he wanted me to do with my life.

 

I sat in the middle of the woods in a soft rain for quite some time.  I gave everything to God (again) and said, "Talk to me.  You've given me clear directions before...I need to hear from you today.  Do you want me to pursue writing or not?"

 

It was quiet.  No revelations.

 

I drove home for the first hour in silence.  I just wanted to listen.  I pulled out my conference notes and reviewed them while doing 70 mph down I-26.  I finally put a CD in, got some music on and thought about writing the rest of the way home.

 

Fast forward to that night.  As I'm opening a stack of mail 13" high.  I see what looked like another invoice from my distributor who warehouses and distributes my book.  I dreaded opening the envelope from the distributor because I figured they were billing me for the dust sitting on the cases of my books in their warehouse. 

 

Guess what?  It was a check.  I haven't received a commission check from them in over two years.  The check was only for $193.50 so I won't "quit my day job."  But I was excited to actually get a check from them for a change.

 

Then it dawned on me.  This was God's answer to my prayer.  I don't think it's a coincidence that I received that rare check on the same day that I asked God to speak to me about my writing.  He's reminded me that he is the one that put the passion in me to write and I must pursue that passion.  If not, as speaker McNair Wilson said earlier in the day, it's blasphemy to God to not be who he has created me to be.

 

 

Motivation Mountain

I'm attending the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writer's Conference at Ridgecrest Conference Center in Black Mountain, NC this week.  Hopefully the mountains will motivate me to write more - and maybe even blog more than once a month!

 

Heard a guy named McNair Wilson speak this morning.  He is an incredibly talented and funny speaker.  He spent 10 years as an Imagineer with Disney.  Wish you could have experienced the hour we had with him.  You can learn more about him at his website www.mcnairwilson.com.

 

I'm taking a class in the morning on writing adult non-fiction and a fiction class in the afternoon.  So far so good.

 

Gotta go.  It's time for supper.

 

 

Thoughts on Prayer

It has been said, “Prayer is the key which unlocks the door of God’s treasure house.”  In the classic book, The Kneeling Christian, the author (unknown) prefaced the book saying, “It is not too much to say that all real growth in the spiritual life depends upon the practice of prayer.”  Later he wrote,

 

The greatest thing we can do for God or for man is to pray.  We can accomplish far more by our prayers than by our work.  Prayer is omnipotent.  It can do anything that God can do!  When we pray God works.  All fruitfulness in service is the outcome of prayer – of the worker’s prayers, or of those who are holding up holy hands on his behalf.

 

Guess I'm getting old...

I had an awful revelation today.  I used to consider myself a dumb jock.  But I'm not much of a jock anymore.  That makes me just plain dumb.

Your Dash

What are you doing with your dash?  No, not the dashboard on your car.  The dash between your birth year and your death year.  One day there will be a headstone with your name on it in a cemetery.  It will have your name and the beginning and ending years of your life.  In between, there will be a dash.  The dash may represent 80 years or more.  Regardless of the years represented, the question remains, “What are you doing with your dash?”

    

Are you accomplishing your purpose in life?  Do you have one?  Are you making a life or making a living?  Are you leaving a positive impression on those around you or are you leaving them in depression?

 

These are hard questions yet it is a hard reality.  Consider the life of King David of Old Testament fame.  The Bible simply says that “when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep,” (i.e. he died).   You have a purpose for your generation.  How are you doing with your dash? (Timely Words, p. 17)

 

 

How Christians Get A Bad Name

This was a response I wrote to a post on www.theooze.com.  Someone posted that some bookstore owners complain that Christians are bad customers due to the fact that they bounce checks, don't pay on time, etc. etc.

 

I came up with this Top 10 list and thought I would post it here too.  I'm hoping David Letterman will see it and hire me as writer for his show.

 

Top 10 Other Ways Christians Get a Bad Name:

10. Spending a gazallion dollars taking over a humongous sports arena.
9. Saying that we should assassinate the President of a certain South American country.
8. Wearing entirely too much eye shadow.
7. Wearing a white suit and slinging your hair from one side of your head to the other to cover up your baldspot.
6. Shooting your quail hunting partner. (Oh wait, that's another way that Vice Presidents get a bad name.)
5. Having a clip from your religious program shown on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
4. Having a fish on the back of your car...especially the fish eating the Darwin thing.
3. Having a divorce rate higher than the rest of the country.
2. Letting fundamentalists like the preacher dude at www.godhatesfags.com actually represent Christ-followers.
1. Playing the church game and not fleshing out what it truly means to be a Christ-follower.

Quotes

"If you're trying to be relevant, you are already behind. We are agents of change creating the future that God is imagining." -- Erwin McManus


"Let's play pirates like the good ole' days. Let's laugh so hard we pee in our pants. Let's go to Canada and go bowling, just so we can say "remember that time we went bowling in Canada?" Then Thank the King for our playfulness. Live today - out loud and hilariously!"