The Church Pendulum

The Pendulum swings back and forth in the church.

Back in the day it was called “The Social Gospel” and it was more about meeting physical needs than preaching the gospel. Don’t read into what I’m not saying. I’m not saying thats not important, just saying that there should be balance.

Then later it became all preaching the gospel and very little if any meeting of needs.

Fast forward to modern day 21st Century American Christianity. Social justice is more en vogue than ever before. While I am a huge fan of many of the amazing groups out there pulling people out of sex slavery, digging wells and what not, we cannot neglect the preaching of the gospel.

We don’t need one and not the other, we always need both.

Leadership vs. Loving God

I know the two are not mutually exclusive. But here is my thought.

I would rather be an average leader who is completely fascinated and in love with the person of Jesus Christ than a great leader who is  average in his relationship with God.

Words Fall Short

Just finished A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy. One of the things that stuck out to me was how he talked about language.

What’s amazing is that there is no language on the planet that can even come close to describing God. Our words fall short, very short, of even giving to description to who God is, its just an amazing thought to me. We are bound by our language in the description of God.

When you look at Ezekiel or John when they were having heavenly vision’s, they began to have trouble even describing what it looked like. They would say things like, “it looked like….” They compared it to something else they were familiar with because language itself could not contain the vastness of God or explain what it was they were experiencing.

The more you get to know God, the more you realize you don’t know Him and I believe it will take an eternity to figure out who He is.

The Infamous “Open Door”

I think many times in Christianity because of our deep insecurities and need to be validated, we make stuff sound better than it really is. One of the most infamous ways of doing this is talking about, “the open door.”

Nobody has gotten saved, no one is getting discipled, transformation is not happening, but regardless of that we put it in the hype machine called “the open door.”

Here’ my two cents. I’m all for open doors, but why don’t we talk about them after something significant actually happens instead of trying to hype stuff up and get people excited by talking about how many “open doors” we have. My guesses are the “open door” will pale in comparison and it won’t get mentioned at all.

I just don’t remember Jesus giving a testimony about “open doors”, aka, something that hasn’t happened yet. I remember Jesus’ disciples talking a lot about what He did do, not about what hadn’t happened yet.

It seems like sometimes half of our testimonies are about open doors and not about transformation. That doesn’t seem right to me. I may be over reacting, I’m just a little tired of hearing about open doors that end up getting shut later. But they sure were fun to tell at conferences.

God’s Art

I’m a firm believer in using the creative arts to communicate the gospel to people. I also believe God is the most creative being ever. The creator created creativity after all. I also believe that sometimes God does things just for his own enjoyment and sometimes we as humans just happen to stumble across them.

Here are two examples of moments when I think God peels back his creative curtain and allows us to see the incredible creativity that is within him.

These are two simple things, one website is just pictures of snowflakes, magnified. It is mezmorizing. Thanks to Sam Febres for pointing both of these out.

The second is a video of birds that were sitting on some power lines that a guy saw out his window and decided to put to music based on where they were sitting on the power lines. Sounds weird. It was amazing.

I wonder how many times we walk by art that God has created right under our noses that we just do not have the eyes to see, yet he is sitting on His throne, finding pleasure in little masterpieces that are all over creation.

The Human Psyche

One thing I love to see unfold before my eyes everyday is my kids personality. Its amazing. I never told them how to act, they just act, and they act differently. I’m fascinated by how God wires the human psyche. Its wild.

Aiden has certain personality quirks and things that he does that make him unique and amazing. Eli is now starting to get to that age where his personality is really starting to come out and its so much fun to watch them develop.

The infinite creativity of God continually amazes me.

Thoughts On The AMA’s

I feel like music in America on the pop culture side is more of a machine than ever before. I mean look what they are doing to Carrie Underwood. I don’t even like country music but she was surrounded by dancers doing some weird fusion between hip hop and line dancing. She is currently fully controlled by the machine. I feel bad for her, she probably can’t even control it. She didn’t even look that excited at the end of her performance. To me her face said, this is just what I have to do.

Unfortunately in the American music industry, the music and the craft is not the focus, it is the incredible over production and pyrotechnics that is the focus. Take J Lo’s performance. Anybody could have done that, she is just a face and a celebrity that executives can stick in the machine and make money.

The over sexualization and sensuality is so unoriginal and uncreative aside from what it is doing to us in terms of the erosion of morals and modesty in our nation. It’s incredibly non artistic and non creative. Its just white noise filler for uncreative producers who obviously have no original thoughts.

I appreciate artists who are actually talented and creative. I like production when it’s original and creative and not just some pyrotechnics and scantily clad women and flashing lights.

We need an overhaul of mainstream American music and I doubt it will ever come. The silver lining here is that the stage has never been set better for the church to be the most creative place on the planet.

A Day In The Life

Every day I Metro in to work. (That’s D.C. for Subway) I get off at the Capitol South stop and walk to work @ NCC. This is a longer walk than it would be to take a different route, but I love it.

I have the Capitol  on my left and the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court on my right. Its become my prayer walk everyday. I pray for our politicians and judges to use wisdom and to not seek there own interests (pretty big faith I have in this city:) but rather be true servants to the people of the United States. I pray that they would encounter Jesus in their lives and surrender their lives to him.

I’ve always prayed for our politicians, but honestly, its a lot cooler to walk between all these buildings and pray for them. It makes it more real.

Do you do anything like this? Maybe you should walk up and down the streets of your city or campuses you study on and pray (not weirdly of course) for them, you might find it a refreshing, unique way to intercede for your city.

I’m All By Myself

We can put on a front at work or at church, even at home sometimes. But it’s just this simple. You are who you are when your by yourself.

When no one is looking. Just you and God.

Government Hypocrisy

Isn’t it hilarious how our federal government punishes CEO’s that run their companies into the ground. We bring them to Capitol Hill, rebuke them for flying in company jets and taking big bonuses while taking bailout money, but yet that same standard doesn’t apply to our politicians.

Nancy Pelosi wants a brand new jet for her to galavant across America in that is significantly larger than her predecessors, which cost more money for gas and further reinforces the hypocrisy of leaving a smaller carbon footprint that the left so strongly advocates for.

And the latest, we are trillions of dollars in debt and we decide to approve a healthcare bill that will cost us another 1.1 trillion dollars. We need cutbacks everywhere and yet we continue to spend like we have as much money in the bank as Apple. Its funny how our government chastises others for being fiscally irresponsible but when it comes to them, money just seems to grow on trees, there is absolutely no limit to how much money we will spend. Meanwhile, we take one more step to our country financially imploding on itself.  Don’t deceive yourself that we live in the great superpower of the United States of America where the sun will never set on the history of our mighty empire. It will happen.

If you ask me, its about 5′o clock in the afternoon.