Training For Something Greater
Here they are. It has nothing to do with the number of comments or feedback on each post. It’s all about which ones I enjoyed writing.
In chronological order:
1. Why We Love Jack Bauer
2. Stella Hereford
3. Know What I Mean?
4. Slow Down
5. National Lampoon’s Mexican Vacation
6. Kindy-Garden
7. A Creative Bible Student?
8. God in the Bathroom
9. More Hall and Oates
10. Missions is the New Worship
Forget about making a donation to the Human Fund. Check out this great gift idea from Mark Moore.
I’m about to help you out here with an amazing idea for your Christmas shopping. You know that nagging problem of what to get for the person who has everything? Well, this should solve that one.
I bet they don’t have their very own tree in Uganda.
Click on this link and you can buy one, get a cool Christmas card you can plant (yes, a card you can plant when you are done) and it will grow flowers (no kidding) and you get an ornament that will have a number on it marking the GPS coordinates of your tree in Uganda. (Better click on the link if you want it to make sense.)
The Kibo Group is a non- profit that I run along with a friend named Clint Davis. You can read about Kibo at our website www.kibogroup.org. We make no money off this, take no salaries…the money goes to plant trees.
Check it out… its a pretty unique gift idea and it really can make the world better. Merry Christmas!
From How (Not) to Speak of God:
We see here that seeking God is not some provisional activity which precedes the goal of finding, but is itself evidence of having already found. Rather than being fulfilled in the presence of God, religious desire is born there. In short, a true spiritual seeking can be understood as the ultimate sign that one already has that which one seeks, or rather, that one is already grasped by that which one seeks to grasp. Consequently a genuine seeking after God is evidence of having found. Of course, much desire that appears to seek after God is nothing of the sort. For instance, to seek God for eternal life is to seek eternal life, while to seek God for a meaningful existence is to seek a meaningful existence. A true seeking after God results from an experience of God which one falls in love with for no reason other than finding God irresistibly lovable. In this way the lovers of God are the ones who are most passionately in search of God.
Missions is the new worship.
That?s what a friend said to me the other day. I think he said he?d heard it from someone else. Since what this phrase meant to its originator is lost to us, I?m going to engage in some postmodern meaning making and tell you what it means to me.
In the last two decades, as non-denominational community churches have flourished and as denominational loyalty has given way to consumerism, church hoppers and shoppers have usually been attracted to the churches with the best worship “event.” This event would include both the music and the teaching. Both have proven to be essential to growing a large church.
Now I see things changing. Missions is becoming the new worship. What I think this means is that those in search of a new church are placing just as high a priority on the “missions” segment of a church?s life as they are on the worship event. It?s not enough to have good worship anymore, you?ve also got have a dynamic missions program. By “missions program” I don?t mean simply having a bulletin board in the lobby featuring all the foreign missionaries your church supports. It?s much more than that.
It starts locally. Have you adopted a local elementary school? Does your student ministry regularly volunteer at a soup kitchen? Have you built any Habitat houses? Are you collecting coats for the poor this winter? How many of your people went to New Orleans to help out in the aftermath of Katrina?
While traditional foreign missions is still important, it?s not enough to be sending money over to an American who is trying to plant a church in Kenya. You also have to demonstrate participation in some of the more trendy mission/social justice projects. Have you adopted a village in Africa? What are you doing to address the global AIDS crisis? How many water wells have you drilled?
It doesn?t matter how good your band is or how inspired the preaching is, if you can?t demonstrate some of the above mission activity, then church hoppers and shoppers aren?t going to take you seriously.
In our American consumer church culture, missions is the new worship.
Discuss.
Do yourself a favor and download this rendition of Oh Holy Night. You won’t be sorry you did. It’s played by a group of displaced musicians from New Orleans. The link is to a free download from the Studio 60 site so you are breaking neither the laws of God nor man by snagging it.
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