It’s Christmas!
Presents are opened . . . dinner has stuffed us . . . family has been called . . . it’s now time for desert.
But let’s not forget about Jesus!
Merry Christmas!
Yeah, Emily and I are NOT home for Christmas. And, I am NOT going to my parents’ home for Christmas. This year, we got to make the long treck across the SouthEast to Austin to visit with Emily’s family. We left yesterday after church, drove until about 9pm, and then finished the trek about 3:30 today.
This is the second time we’ve had Christmas in Austin. Her family has very different traditions than my family. We’re having the traditional mexican meal for Christmas Eve tonight. Not a tradition my family ever did. I love mexican food, so this new tradition is definitely cool with me.
Emily has already demonstrated her 3-days worth of guitar-learning to everybody . . . I have to admit, I am abundantly impressed with my wife’s ability to learn music stuff so quickly. She’s doing a great job. I married quite well, if I do say so myself.
As I sit here in front of the TV writing my blog, the whole family is now gatherered around me, talking and catching up. The food is almost ready, so I’m going to sign-off with a hearty MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I’m still working through the Gospels . . . my simple “reaquainted with Jesus” thing I’ve been doing for several months. It’s taking forever. I do a chapter ever couple of days, but it still seems like its taking forever . . .
Anyway, I was in Matthew 18 this morning. It talks about forgiveness.
As Christ followers, we learn to understand the value of forgiveness. We learn to forgive other people. But the last three words of the chapter hit me pretty hard this morning: “forgive your brother from your heart.”
Those three words can make all the difference in the world.
Sometimes we learn to “forgive” people because we know we have to . . . but we don’t really want to, and our hearts definitely don’t agree. But, God loves us no matter how much we’ve strayed from His plan for our life. No matter what we have done and no matter how much we have hated Him, he still loves us and is still totally willing to forgive us. His heart is always willing to forgive. In fact, the Bible tells us “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) The whole story of Jesus is about God forgiving us from the heart even while we were far from Him and had no desire to have anything to do with Him.
If we are really going to be Christ-followers, we need to learn to have the same attitude. In fact, that’s the whole point of Matthew 18. The rest of the verse (18:35) tells us that God forgives us when we are willing to forgive others. Our unwillingness to forgive others puts our faith in God up for debate! Ouch!
Well, that’s it for my last day of work before Christmas! I’m looking forward to a trip to Texas to be with Emily’s family. It’s going to be fun. Now, we’re off to Bass Pro Shops . . . our office is having our Christmas lunch at the restaurant. We like to do things just a little different around here.
Merry Christmas!
Did I mention that my mother-in-law got to ride a train all the way from Austin, TX to the wonderful city of Baltimore (before heading over to DC)?
The choir at her church gets to sing at the White House Christmas.
How cool is that?
I finally finished Why Men Hate Going To Church by David Murrow
I’ve been extremely crazy busy lately, so I haven’t been reading quite as much . . . PLUS . . .
THIS BOOK ROCKED MY WORLD. You see, I grew up in church . . . I am much more a part of church culture than I would like to admit. So much so that I never really had any significant rebellion against God or the Church. I love the Church. God loves the Church. I love God. I want to love the things God loves.
Sure, the church has treated me horribly at times. Sure, I’ve wanted to rant and rave and storm out of a church because of stupid things they were doing. But, just because I wanted to walk out of a particular church, I have never stopped loving the Church.
With all that being said, Why Men Hate Going To Church really challenged me to evaluate everything I think about church . . . and evaluate some of the things I personally do and say . . . and ask myself the question, “Is this scaring men away?” Or, “Have I bought into a sissified version of Church?” Or, “How does knowing this about most men’s perspective going to change the way I do church or communicate about church?”
One example . . . I’ve already mentioned that our Growth Groups are going to follow up with “challenge questions” instead of “application questions.” Symantics? Somewhat. But, I’ve been thinking and praying about it for a couple of months and I think it might make a big difference in the conversations that happen in the groups. Our goal is to format the questions a little differently to accomplish life change in a practical way that men can be involved with.
I’m going to go back through this book again later and take some notes and think a little more in-depth. It will be worth it.
Click HERE to buy the book . . . you’ll support Transformation in the process.
My next book is unChristian by David Kinnaman.
I think it’s a good next book . . . .sort of a “variation on a theme.”
Anyone want to read it along with me?
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas time. If you haven’t noticed, you must not be going into any store anywhere nearby. However, Christmas in Auburn is an interesting phenomenon . . .
Auburn is generally a VERY tradition-oriented town. From rolling TigerWalk to rolling Toomer’s Corner . . . There are so many traditions around this town that it is difficult to keep track of them all. Christmas is the one time of year everyone seems to focus on tradition . . . yet Auburn isn’t a real big Christmas town. Auburn is a college town . . . and college towns tend to become ghost towns during holidays. Auburn finals finished up this past week, so the town is getting less and less populated. By the end of this week, even a large number of “permanent residents” will be heading off to visit family somewhere else.
Emily and I decided to go drive around looking at Christmas lights tonight. We drove a lot . There’s just not a whole lot of Christmas Lights up in Auburn. There’s a few hot-spots that everyone knows to go look at every year . . . but overall there’s just not a lot out there. Too many people leave town and just don’t bother. What a tragedy for tradition!
In church circles, Christmas is usually a big time of year. In church planting, there’s talk of becoming a “destination church” where people will come during the holidays . . . intead of being the church people go somewhere else from to visit. In the Auburn area, there’s a few churches that are well known and well established as “destination churches.” BUT, even those churches don’t count on big crowds for Christmas. There’s no such thing as a destination church around here for the holidays. There’s nobody here to receive. It’s just an interesting phenomenon to deal with.
Despite this reality . . . we had a great day at Journey today! Most of our college folks and a large number of our other regulars were already gone . . . but our attendence was just slightly below normal, because we had over 25% first time guests this week! YES, you read that right! Over 25% of the people at Journey this week were first-time guests! That is incredible! Oh, and thank you, Journey, for the special gift for each of the leadership team. We really appreciate the gift. Our effort throughout the year is a joy and an honor, and I would say I would do it for free . . . but reality is, I do, and love it.
I’m looking forward to our “unplugged family worship” experience next Sunday. We are expecting even less people in town, so we’re bringing everybody together in one room and having a family Christmas worship experience. Emily and I were out of town last year, so this is our first chance to be a part of this. It’s going to be great!
Is anyone else amazed that 2007 is almost history? CRAZY!
Well, off to score some husband points by watching some Christmas TV with Emily!
This is probably going to be one of my cerebral posts . . . but I’m going to keep it short, so please read on . . .
The title of this post is “inevitable vs. immanent.” Both interesting words with very powerful meaning. I actually brought both of these words up in a conversation with Emily last night. We were talking about my relationship to my career in architecture. When I graduated from seminary, I had thought I would go directly into church planting, but God had other things in mind. I wound up taking a job in architecture to fill the gap until God led me into ministry. At the time, I knew it was inevitable for me to wind up in ministry. At the same time, I had a sense that a ministry position was immanent, it would happen at any time.
Four years later, the desire for minstry never left . . . deep down, a move to ministry was still inevitable. However, I didn’t have a sense that it could happen at any moment. Immanence gave way to a form of complacency.
Over the past year and a half, several things have happened to regnite my passion and desire to plant a church. The inevitable was rekindling immanence. Once again, my move to ministry could happen at any time. I’m pumped, excited, and working toward the end goal.
As Christ-followers, the Bible teaches us to live with an attitude that Jesus will one day return to fulfill the remaining prophecies in Scripture . . . the inevitable return of Christ. But the Bible also teaches us that this return could happen at any time . . . the immanent return of Christ. So often we let the passion of our task leak away because we loose sight of the immanence of the end of the Age. Sometimes we even lose sight that it will inddeed happen — the inevitable end of the Age.
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this month, let’s not forget that the incarnation set the stage for the redemption story that will be fulfilled one day . . . maybe soon!
I haven’t blogged in a coupe of days because I’ve been living in computer confusion. I got an unexpected little early Christmas present this week. So, this is my first blog entry from my new computer!
I know you Mac freaks out there are disappointed to find out that I am using yet another Dell. Well, sorry, but the architecture industry generally works from AutoCAD, and AutoDesk doesn’t support Macs . . . so as long as I’m in this industry, I’ll either have to stick with a PC, or dual-boot a Mac, which is not something I want to do anytime soon.
So, here’s to my first blog entry from my new computer!
Emily finally got a chance to listen to my message from Nov 25. Her first comment was, “Do you know how long that message was?”
To be totally honest, I kinda had a feeling it was a little long . . . but it was actually 50 minutes long! Yikes! I’m sorry, Journey folks! I figured it was in the 35-40 minute range, which is a little longer than our messages usually are . . . But 50 minutes is crazy! I’m surprised nobody said anything to me about it being long before. Eric took it with him on his iPod going to Jamaica, so I’ll probably get feedback from him when he gets back. Oh well, I got some good feedback from the Journey folks about the things I said, so I guess the 50 minutes gave a little bit for everybody.
That’s one of the big struggles I have in preaching. I don’t have a lot of experience, so it’s hard for me to gauge how long a message is going to take. I’ve tried “practicing” my messages in the past, but they always come out on Sundays so different than how I practiced them that it didn’t make any difference. Additionally, right now, I’m transitioning my preaching style a little bit to be a whole lot more application-oriented. This transition will help people put the information into practice in life, but it requires a more careful selection of “information” to be shared. I’m thankful to Eric and the Journey folks for giving me an opportunity to “practice” on them while we get ready to Transform Baltimore. Hopefully I’ll be able to refine the process a little more as Eric give me more chances to teach in the coming year (Right, Eric?)
BTW — Emily did give me some good positive feedback on the message. I’m thankful I have a wife that can both encourage me and be honest with me at the same time.
For those of you who missed Sunday Night Live, you missed our ”The Office” spoof video. You can now see it on YouTube:
Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOiIYMGu4ac
Pass it to all your friends!
 | In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day By Mark Batterson |
 | Launch Starting a New Church from Scratch By Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas |
 | I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt By Vince Antonucci |
 | Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century By Aubrey Malphurs |
 | Dangerous Surrender By Kay Warren |
| unChristian By David Kinnaman |
| Why Men Hate Going to Church By David Murrow |
 | Starting a New Church: The Planter's Guide to Success By Ralph Moore |
 | Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples By Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger |
 | 7 Practices of Effective Ministry By Andy Stanley, Reggie Joiner & Lane Jones |
 | The Big Idea: Focus the Message, Multiply the Impact By Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson & Eric Bramlett |
 | Creating Community: 5 Keys to Building a Small-Group Culture By Andy Stanley & Bill Willits |
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