My World

I shared this last night:

“We aim to persuade people so that they will accept the truth of the gospel. It is not surprising that, like apologetics, persuasion is also frowned upon in regard to religion as an expression of intolerance and of disrespect for others. This is strange because, as Donald McGavran reminds us, persuasion is “the basis of all learning, progress, and commerce.” For example, it lies at the heart of marketing and political campaigning. In reality, persuasion is an expression of our respect of individuals and our belief in their potential under God. If we know that someone who has the potential of receiving eternal life is holding to a false belief that is hindering that life, we will seek to persuade that person about the truth. But we will do so in a way that reflects the respect we have for the individual.” - Ajith Fernando

• What a relief
• Thank you so much to everybody who helped to pack up this week and load the truck tonight, a huge THANK YOU!!!
• We seriously have the best volunteers!!
• The truck is loaded, the only thing left is to sign papers on Tuesday and unload the truck on Thursday
• If you are available to help unload/unpack on Thursday at 5pm, let us know
• My mother-in-law was there tonight from Chicago, always fun to preach in front of family
• We’re going hiking tomorrow morning for Mother’s day. I asked Katie what she wanted to do and she said hiking, can’t wait to hang out with her and the kids tomorrow
• I hope we get it, imagine if Revolution was filled with missionaries who wanted to help people in Tucson find their way back to God
• Can’t wait until next week and I can say, “Welcome to Revolution”
• I mentioned Taize tonight, here is the website
• Tonight for our sacred space, we did “Praying through the Psalms” here is a book on it if you are interested and a site to walk you through how to do it on your own (or you can google praying through the psalms and find a whole bunch of info on it, good stuff)
• My prayer, “Break us as a church so that what breaks your heart (people going to hell) would break our hearts”
• That because Revolution exists, it would be hard to go to hell from Tucson

Saturday night will be our last night at our current meeting space and our last night as Beginnings Church. Read more about that here. We are talking about how missions works for ordinary people. Often, when we think of missions, we think of super Christians, jungles, being uncomfortable, making your own clothes, something that we aren’t. The point is, it is supposed to be something very natural, something that fits who we are and our personality and ironically, that is possible. Really excited about this week, but I am even for excited about next week. We just got our new logos in from Dave Short and they look awesome. Can’t wait! See you Saturday at 5.

Just read The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, great read with some great and not-so great authors. I love John Piper, Voddie Baucham Jr. (who is one of the best communicators on the planet), Tim Keller & Mark Driscoll. I don’t know very much about David Wells, although he wrote a great chapter. Even D.A. Carson chapter was actually better than I expected. It is hard to pick a favorite, they were all great.

The book was born out of a conference a few years ago, which you can see the talks here. You can also download the book for free here.

The book fit in to several sermons that I am working on for our series we are starting in August called “No Perfect People Allowed“, as well as my sermon for May 17th on “The Language of Culture” from Acts 17.

Here are a few things that jumped out:

• Church talk about “reaching” the culture turns, almost inevitably, into a discussion about tactics and methodology, not about worldviews. It is only about tactics and not about strategy. It is about seduction and not about truth, about success and not about confrontation. However, without strategy, the tactics inevitably fail; without truth, all of the arts of seduction that the churches are practicing sooner or later are seen for what they are - an empty charade; and because the emerging worldview is not being engaged, the church has little it can really say. Indeed, one has to ask how much it actually wants to say…The final verdict may not be in, but it seems quite apparent that while the culture is burning, the evangelical church is fiddling precisely because it has decided it must be so like the culture to be successful.
• North America is perhaps the most challenging mission field yet, because no one has ever had to evangelize on a large scale a society that used to be Christian.
• You might be able to get an A on your justification-by-faith test, but if there is not radical, concrete growth in humble love toward everyone (even your enemies), you don’t really know you are a sinner saved by grace. And if there is not radical concrete growth in confidence and joy (even in difficulties), you don’t really know you are a sinner saved by grace.
• We have to recognize that the gospel is a transforming thing, and we simply are not very transformed by it. It’s not enough to say to postmodern people:  “You don’t like absolute truth? Well, then, we’re going to give you even more of it!” But people who balk so much at absolute truth will need to see greater holiness of life, practical grace, gospel character, and virtue, if they are going to believe.
• When I talk to someone who insists that no one’s view on spiritual reality (faith) is superior to others, I always respond that that is a view of spiritual reality and a claim that the world would be a better place if others adopted it. Everyone unavoidably has “exclusive” views. To insist no one should make a truth claim is a truth claim. So the real question is not Do you think you have the truth? (Everybody does.) The real question is:  Which set of exclusive truth claims will lead to a humble, peaceful, non-superior attitude toward people with whom you deeply differ? At the center of the Christian truth claim is a man on a cross, dying for his enemies, praying for their forgiveness. Anyone who thinks out the implications of that will be led to love and respect even their opponents.
• No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way - but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.

All in all, a great read. Definitely worth checking, but then, anything with Piper, Baucham, Keller & Driscoll is worthwhile in my mind.

I often get asked about the boundaries that Katie and I have for our relationships with the opposite sex in our church. In fact, it has caused some people to not understand and to get upset at me. But as a pastor, I have seen too many church leaders who did not have boundaries or discretion fall in ministry, lose their wife and kids and lose the call God had on their life. I refuse for that to happen, all of those things are way to important for me.

When we were in Wisconsin, it was winter and probably about 5 degrees outside. We were having some of our leaders over and a single woman was the first one there and Katie was at the store. I was alone with Ava. So I gave Ava to this leader to hold, grabbed my jacket and went outside to wait for someone else to get there. Some people scratch their heads at this, but it shows to Katie and to my church, my integrity, my marriage is really important.

Pastors, your integrity is more important than anything. I have never read a book on leadership that didn’t say something to this effect, “Lose your integrity, lose your leadership and following.” (Usually, more elegant than that)

Saddleback Church in California has what they call their 10 Commandments and it has been incredibly helpful for me over the years. Now as a Lead Pastor with people under me, this is how all pastors at Revolution (now and in the future) will interact with the opposite sex. Here they are:

1. Thou shalt not go to lunch alone with the opposite sex.*
2. Thou shalt not have the opposite sex pick you up or drive you places when it is just the two of you.*
3. Thou shalt not kiss any attender of the opposite sex or show affection that could be questioned.*
4. Thou shalt not visit the opposite sex alone at home.*
5. Thou shalt not counsel the opposite sex alone at the office, and thou shalt not counsel the opposite sex more than once without that person’s mate. Refer them.
6. Thou shalt not discuss detailed sexual problems with the opposite sex in counseling. Refer them.
7. Thou shalt not discuss your marriage problems with an attender of the opposite sex.
8. Thou shalt be careful in answering emails, instant messages, chatrooms, cards or letters from the opposite sex.
9. Thou shalt make your co-worker your protective ally.
10. Thou shalt pray for the integrity of other staff members.

(*The first four do not apply to unmarried staff.)

Thanks for the link Ed.

We will be finishing our series “The Irresistible Revolution” on the book of Acts at the end of June. In July we are doing a series that I am so excited about. I don’t want to give it away yet, but needless to say, this series is going to rock. I’ll reveal it in a few weeks, but we just settled on it the other day and I am so excited about it.

I came across a fascinating site the other day titled “Dear God.” It is a place for people to share prayers (regardless of religious beliefs) and some amazingly powerful pics. Just a word of warning, the site is incredibly honest and there are a few graphic pics, just so you are aware. Check it out here.

I got an e-mail from a pastor the other day about my preaching. He asked “When you write your sermon, who is it for, who is in your head when you write it?” Every preacher writes for a certain person when they preach. The words they use, the stories, examples all relate to a certain person. Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers ever, used to read his sermons to an 8th grader before he preached them. In his opinion, if an 8th grader could understand it, anyone he was preaching to would understand it.

For our church, our target is 20 - 40 year old men. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about people outside of that age range or women, that isn’t the case at all. It is just proven that if you reach a man, you reach the family and statistically, men are the least likely to attend church. When I write a sermon, think through a series, a series title, a sermon title, I think through this lens.

I also think of others when I write a sermon:  I think of the college student, a single 30 year old, someone who is divorced, an empty nester. I actually picture people in my church and ask, when it comes to this topic, this passage, what do they need to hear? Not what do they want to hear, but what do they need to hear. This is a challenge, because often, what a married person needs to hear on a topic, the single person sitting next to them can’t relate to and vice versa.

One of the advantages that I have discovered is preaching through books of the Bible. It gives me incredible freedom to walk through a book and share what it is about, as opposed to trying to make the Bible say something. I am not saying that’s what happens with topical, because we do some topical preaching, I just know that is my challenge.

Another thing when it comes to preaching, I don’t see it as my job to be the primary feeder in my church’s life. Many churches equate Jesus telling Peter to “feed my sheep” in John 21 that it is the Pastor’s job to be the primary feeder in the church’s life. If you think that, I am sorry to say that you are wrong. When I preach, my goal is to create questions in your mind and give you the tools and resources to wrestle through that. Everyone who hears me preach has some huge questions, problems going on in their lives, I will not be able to answer them all in 40 minutes. I want people to leave our gathering hungry to dive into the topic even more when they go home.

I shared this quote last night from A.W. Tozer:

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God…Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man…” 

• I love preaching on God’s will and hearing from God, it is one of my favorite things to talk about because it gets me fired up to think what could happen in our church if we were on the same track with God
• Here is the list I shared at the end about how to know God’s will
• Katie had to stay home tonight, both of our kids have the flu, so I was exhausted from being up with them
• Please keep Ava & Gavin in your prayers as they both have some kind of flu, not fun
• Every pastor knows this, if Satan is going to attack your family, it is going to be the day before and the day of church
• For our spiritual practice tonight, we did the Ignatian Examen, which you can do online each day here, this is how I start each day
• We were going to go to Scottsdale tomorrow to hang with family, but now we are going to have pajama day at home because of everyone being sick, not a bad trade off
• It was great to celebrate Katie’s birthday yesterday, 58 Degrees was awesome, I had a great Cabernet wine, WOW!
• Tuesday is my birthday, hint, hint
• Had an elder meeting after church, I love being with those guys, we have an awesome board leading our community
• Lots of exciting things coming up as we move where we meet, I can’t wait until we are in Mt. View on May 17th
• Oswald Chambers said, “Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him…The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a call to do something for Him.”

In case you missed them, here are the posts that generated the most traffic last month:

1. Planting Missional Churches
2. Becoming Revolution: An Open Letter to Beginnings Church
3. New Pics
4. How to Break Growth Barriers
5. Tattoo
6. The Best Service is no Service at All
7. Changing How we do Church: An Open Letter to Beginnings Church
8. Why I do What I Do
9. Vintage Jesus
10. Slaves, Women & Homosexuals

Today is Katie’s 2_ birthday! Make sure to wish her a happy birthday tomorrow night at church or drop her a line. If you are thinking of a last minute gift, gift cards are always good. Right now, she is looking for new clothes after having Gavin, so she likes American Eagle and stores like that, hint hint. For her birthday, a friend is taking us to 58 Degrees tonight, really looking forward to it.

I am so blessed to have her in my life. I am blown away everyday that she actually said yes to me almost 7 years ago. Most people don’t know this, but our church would probably not exist if it wasn’t for her strength and standing beside me in the good and bad times.

This summer will mark knowing Katie for 13 years and she is hotter today than when she pushed me down and stole the ball from me on the soccer field. I was hooked immediately.

Tonight we had some people over for dinner who have recently found our community. I love hearing how people have found our community, the journey God has brought them on and what God is stirring in them as we move forward as Revolution. Nights like tonight make me glad I am a pastor.

I’m off to bed now, looking forward to having a day off tomorrow and hanging with Katie and the kids. Phone & computer off, it is really nice.

Right now, I have the biggest sense of relief. I just put a package in the mail with all of my assignments for my D.Min. class. It was a lot harder than I thought to write a 15 page research paper, makes me not excited about my dissertation in 3 years, but we’ll work up to it. I know I said I would post the paper here to read, but because it involves some of the history of my current church I am not going to do that. Why? Because it is my opinion of what happened before I got here (right or wrong), but my opinion. If you are curious to read how we are transitioning right now from a seeker - sensitive church to a missional community and want to read it, leave a comment and I will e-mail it to you and you can give me some feedback.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am always on the lookout for good tunes. Below are some videos of some recent favorites. I am really excited by the fact that “Christian” bands are starting to get creative and make videos worth watching.

The Glorious Unseen - “Close to Your Heart” (this song & album is amazing)

Hawk Nelson - “Friend Like That”

The Classic Crime - “Seattle”