Pastors say some dumb things…

Just read a tweet by a pastor that I follow, that says “journalistic integrity is an oxymoron.”  As the father of a son of the highest integrity, who’s also a journalist, this kind of statement gets my back up.  Painting an entire profession with this broad of a brush is just plain foolish… like saying “professional athletes have no integrity” or “pastors have no integrity.”Here’s the problem, for any of you pastors who might be reading this:  This is not the first time I’ve heard a pastor slam journalists in their public statements (whether from the pulpit, or through written means).  Problem is, some of you don’t realize you’ve got journalists in your audience.  How welcome are you going to feel belonging to a “family” where the leaders denigrate your profession?

Wouldn’t it be better if we had even more Christian journalists (there’s already a bunch of them–surprised?)?  How crazy would that be?  But if you keep slamming journalists from your pulpit, your youth that are listening are either going to choose another career field because you’ve turned them off, or their going to choose that career field, and leave their church behind, so they don’t have to hear pastors (and other church leaders) bash their chosen profession.

Guess what?  Pretty much any profession out there today has an integrity problem.  The problem’s not in the profession, it’s in our world.  The WORLD has an integrity problem!  So, why don’t you start preaching about integrity, instead of railing against a stereotype?

Adopt a stance of MISSION vs. ADMONITION

In this article, John Dickson provides an insightful approach to the ongoing discussion of how Christians can have a meaningful impact in the world around us.  The Church in Secular Culture | Leadership Journal.

He describes the “admonition paradigm” as churches and Christians speaking “with a sense of entitlement… You’ll want to strike back.  And people will think you’re arrogant.  Quite right, probably.”

We can’t go back to the good old days, whatever we believe them to be.  We’ve got to live in the culture we’re in, even if that’s a “post-Christian” culture.  If we’re truly living Christ-like lives, that shouldn’t be a problem.  The disciples didn’t have 200, or 2000 years of Christian influence to rely upon in their efforts to advance the Kingdom, so why should we?

The difference between honoring the call and simply volunteering

The difference between honoring the call and simply volunteering

Instead of shamelessly stealing this, I’m linking to the blog I found it on.

The short version:  It’s a heart thing.  I’ve got work to do on my heart, and that starts with being deliberate about changing the way I look at things.  I’m going to start trying to honor my call, rather than just fulfill my commitments.  How about you?

Ed Stetzer – Rick Warren Interview on Muslims, Evangelism & Missions (Responding to Recent News Reports)

Ed Stetzer – Rick Warren Interview on Muslims, Evangelism & Missions (Responding to Recent News Reports).

Good read.  Lots of noise again about Rick Warren and his allegedly compromising his Christian beliefs.

I really like some of the statements about people failing to check the facts, but my favorite quote is this one:

Our culture has accepted two huge lies: The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

I missed the original hoopla, but I believe the negative response falls into the category of a failure to “Seek 1st to understand…”

Why are we all in such a hurry to judge, that we don’t first take the time to gather enough evidence to understand what happened?

Windows 8 Beta release!

Windows 8 Beta is releasing tomorrow, 2/29/12.  I’m excited!

I’m not really a tech geek, but I tend to be an early adopter of technology that truly changes the game.  Hence my Asus Slate.  It came with Windows 7, but in October I upgraded it to the Windows 8 Developer Preview.  This is a really cool OS, that is different from whatever you’re used to.  I’m not going to pitch it a lot here; there will be all sorts of articles on the internet tomorrow.  It’s not like the Windows you’ve been running for years, and it’s different from Apple’s OS as well.

The folks at Microsoft really did a good job of starting with a blank slate, rather than updating the very worn Windows environment, that hasn’t changed all that much form-wise since Windows 95.  This OS works with the traditional forms of mouse and keyboard, but it also works very well for touch.  If you haven’t migrated to a touch environment yet, you’ll soon learn that the traditional way of laying out screens to work with a mouse doesn’t work well at all with a finger or stylus (things like scroll bars, the little red X for closing windows, etc, are all too small, and in a bad place, so that your hand blocks the screen when you’re trying to use it).  Windows 8 deals with that, very well.

Windows 8 also makes your desktop a useable place, with Live Tiles.  If you’re like me, you never saw your desktop once you started your computer, and only used the toolbar at the bottom to switch between the multiple windows you had open.  I never really found any use in the gadgets or widgets, or whatever they called the little mini-programs designed to run on your desktop, because I had to minimize 6-10 windows just to see them.  Now your “desktop” is your start menu, and it’s a swipe away, to get you to a full screen of very useful Live Tiles.  These little animated boxes will launch your different apps/programs with a click/tap, or they’ll give you summary info at a glance.  If you haven’t seen the Metro environment in Windows Phone, Live Tiles won’t make much sense from just my explanation, but I’ll give it a shot:  Imagine your “app button” on your smartphone, but instead of it being a plain button that you click to get to your email account, it is animated, showing you the number of new messages you have without even opening the app.  Or, even better, if you have a Live Tile for a contact, it provides you the current FB profile pic, their current status from whatever social media you have linked to that person (Facebook, Twitter, etc), and will indicate if you’ve received a text or a missed call from them, again, at a glance, without opening the program!  Many more apps and cool uses yet to be developed, but Microsoft has raised the bar with this one, and Apple and Google aren’t even in the game yet.

If you’re a traditionalist, or you’re overly emotionally attached to i-anything, you’re probably not going to like it.  That’s why Windows Phone is getting slammed by the comments section of any tech website, even though objective testers have come out and said that in many ways it is superior to the iPhone 4.

I’ll be updating from the Developer Preview to the Beta version of Windows 8, probably not until this weekend.  I’m not planning on turning this into a tech blog, but I’ll probably post an update or two, just to provide you with an “average guy” opinion.

But it really is cool!

Stop being binary!

The binary number system, made of two digits, o and 1, is the very basis for the computing power sitting in front of you, whether you’re reading this on your desktop or your smartphone.  I’m only smart enough with the binary number system to be able to laugh at the math-geek t-shirts that say “1 + 1 = 10”, and to be thankful that we don’t have to be able to actually use the binary system to make our computers and smartphones work.  But I do understand that binary as it applies to computers has to do with switching, either something is on or it is off.  There’s no in-between.

A lot of my studying lately has led me to a frustrating realization that too many Christians, from pew-sitters to theological heavy hitters, are living in a binary, either-or world.  It seems that no matter what the issue, there appears to be two sides, with a crisp, clean dividing line that separates them, and no room for people like me to either straddle the line, or more preferably to live on the line, exploiting the opportunity to embrace the best of both poles.

I think this polarized, yes/no, left/right, on/off attitude is a byproduct of the world we live in (Aaaughhhh!  He just said the church is influenced by the world–may it never be!).

  • Should we be culturally relevant, or hold to our traditional ways?
  • Should we be “seeker-friendly” or doctrinally sound?
  • Should we preach the gospel, or show compassion to the world?
  • Predestination or free will?
  • Faith or works?

OK, some of these are recognizably  false dichotomies (at least to me), while others might just get me branded as a heretic for even presenting them as anything other than truth/lie.  But the truth in many of these seeming opposites is that there is great opportunity to have a “yes, and” relationship!

I like the editorial in the recent Leadership Journal by Drew Dyck, where he speaks of Clark Blakeman’s desire for “Biblical Symmetry.”  Why can’t we preach the gospel AND do acts of compassion in our community?  I personally know of a great man of God who makes those who are curiously seeking something, maybe not even specifically Jesus, feel right at home, all the while preaching powerful, doctrinally sound, messages that in no way compromise the Gospel.

Are there absolutes in Scripture?  Absolutely!  But not everything is.  Is there a better way?  Is there an opportunity to find a beautiful, complex, multiplying tension between the two poles that in fact creates something more powerful than either extreme?

More on Compassion

Still ruminating (what an excellent word!  Look it up, especially the etymology, or verse 2 here) on the conference from last week.  While some might write it off as heightened awareness (what our family calls the Red Volkswagen Syndrome-right after we bought a red VW Beetle, we saw red VW Beetles everywhere) I’m going to take the risk of being labeled hyper-spiritual and claim that I see signs of God moving in the area of compassionate Christianity.

It starts with the fact that even before I knew about the conference last week, God was making me painfully aware of both a persistent and growing problem, and an obvious, Biblical solution.  The problem is what I will inadequately describe as the growing irrelevance to our world, at least from society’s perspective.  We don’t have anything to offer to society–that they can see.  If you have no clue that you’re “lost”, why would you be looking for “salvation?”  Studies of postmodern worldviews (we’re there, might as well stop fighting it, and learn to function in it) indicate that people today aren’t near as interested in what you think as they are in what you do.  So a church that expounds flawless theology, but doesn’t show any signs of making a real difference by living out love, doesn’t mean much to them.

Which brings me to my solution–OK, it’s certainly not my solution, it’s Jesus’ solution, but I can now see it–the Church needs to start loving!  How radical is that?!

Which gets me back to the point:  As this thought was starting to form in my own mind and studies, my wife pops up, out of the blue, and asks if I want to go to Baton Rouge, in two weeks.  Pretty random, but sure!  If nothing else, Louisiana in February has to be warmer than Alaska in February.  That’s when she told me about the Greater Things Conference.  “Hmm, kinda ties in with what I’ve been thinking on anyway.  It’ll be cool to get together with a handful of other folks thinking on the same thing.”  Fast forward two weeks, with over a thousand folks all in Baton Rouge in response to a call from God to love people through concrete, life-changing means!

We arrived home Friday night, and I received my first issue of the Leadership Journal.  It’s the Outreach Issue!  Then Sunday morning in worship, a team of college students from Central Bible College in Springfield are visiting to do ministry during their spring break, and they put on a powerful drama about Jesus helping break the bondage of addiction, abuse, and other hurts.  Coincidence?  Only if you don’t believe that God has a plan!

I’m excited–God’s moving, and his people are getting on board!  And, at the same time, we get to help those people who our world is running over, or casting aside.  You know, the ones Jesus kept loving on while the religious leaders were teaching theology?

I’m going to keep ruminating on what this means in my life, how I walk it out.  But our communities need us, and we can’t keep hiding in our Christian enclaves, waiting for Jesus to come.  He just might be waiting to come until we’ve brought more citizens into his Kingdom!

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?  Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. -1 John 3:17-18 

This ought to be interesting…

I just deleted my Google account.  I now no longer have a Gmail account, my Blogger identity (where my old blog was hosted), a YouTube account, Google docs…

I was surprised that Google offered a button on their account settings that let me delete my entire account, but they did!  As I posted earlier, I don’t like the way Google decided that they can link everything together without my approval.  Truth be told, I like having a lot of my online info linked together, but I want to make that decision, and not to have it done for me for the company’s marketing purposes.  So, the “Google Greg” no longer exists!

I’m going to go in the other room now and see if my dog can still see me.

Reflections and Visions

It’s been a great week here in Baton Rouge at the Greater Things Conference.  Time to reflect, and then to look ahead.

First, it’s been nice to be away from Alaska for a week.  I have to say I’m not ready to go back to snow and cold.  It’s been nice to be outside in shirtsleeves.  Driving on dry pavement has been an adjustment… the locals probably don’t get my gentle braking, and they sure don’t understand my extended following distance!

More important than my break from the snow and cold was the conference itself.  I think I heard a number of over 800 registered participants came from all over the country (we even met a pastor from Hillsong Church in Sidney, Australia there!) to talk about what the Church can do to love our communities in the real, practical ways that Jesus loved the people and communities he walked among in his ministry.  There’s a real recognition among a significant group of Church leaders that the lack of relevance the Church has in the world today is because we are focused a lot more on giving the world theology than we are in showing the world compassion.  This conference was a concrete step by those leaders to try to change that focus.  There’s way too much to try to recap, so I won’t.  If you’re interested, the leaders are setting up a website to launch Feb 29, designed to share all the resources and workshops from the conference, as well as to provide a connection point for the interchange of ideas to reach our communities, at www.hopeoutpost.com.

While I won’t recap the conference, I want to share some of the very real indicators of the problem:

Need:

  • 15% of US households struggle to put food on the table-and we’re the richest country in the world
  • 27% of children under 18 live in a home with only one parent
  • Nearly 5 children in the US dieevery day from abuse and neglect
  • 22 million Americans have a substance abuse or dependency problem
  • 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV/AIDS today
  • 1.6 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2012
  • 1 in every 200 people in the US need a place to sleep (think about that a different way, if you’re in a group of 200 average Americans, one person in your group is homeless)
  • Up to 30 million people-the equivalent of the population of Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas-are estimated to be slaves or victims of human trafficking worldwide, and 80% of them are women and children used for commercial sexual exploitation.  Around 16,000 of those victims are in the United States!

Christine Caine made a painful, but real point in her presentation:  “People suffer daily around the world because our hearts are unchanged.”  She said that what she terms as the “ordinary heart” is primarily concerned with the immediacy of our own lives.  She had another awesome quote that cuts to the quick:  “The Church has confused compassion with emotion.”  We might look at the numbers above and say “oh, that’s tragic” but what are we doing about it?

Now for the “vision” part of this post:  What am I going to do next?  If all I do is go to a conference, and then go back to my life, I need to be slapped in the back of the head for being stupid–I could have been more effective by taking what I spent on the trip and giving it instead to the local food bank.  If I want to invest that money, so that it delivers a bigger value, I need to take what I learned here and make a difference.  Much to my frustration, God didn’t give me a new job and a clear direction during this trip, but he did give me a burden that I’m not going to let go of.  Instead, I’m going to continue to pray when I get back home, that he’ll show me where he wants me to go to work.  But the old way isn’t good enough anymore.  Stay tuned for the changes in our lives…

In the meantime, I’ll ask you:  Do those numbers, or other examples of poverty, homelessness, hunger, abuse, or injustice tug at your heart at all?  Enough to make you compassionate, or just emotional?

Restart-again!

First, I just discovered that the settings on Facebook that allow this blog to post in FB were set so that it posted on my page only, so most of you probably haven’t read the past several days’ posts.  To summarize:  I have moved to a new blog host, away from the Google-based Blogger site (starting to separate myself from Google due to my disapproval of their privacy policies).

Second:  I’m in Baton Rouge, LA, where Kelli and I are attending the Greater Things Conference, a gathering of some great Church leaders with a heart for loving our community and world.  Last night we heard from Joyce Meyer as the keynote speaker.  Today was filled with some AWESOME speakers, including Mark Batterson from National Community Church and Christine Caine, leader of the A21 Campaign to fight human trafficking (YES, it’s a huge problem–did you know that there are more slaves in the world today than there have been at any other time in human history?!).  Joshua Dubois, Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships spoke about how the Church can work with the government to eradicate hunger in our communities.  Also heard from Miles McPherson, a former NFL player-turned pastor, and a phenomenal speaker.

Tonight was topped off with Matthew and Tommy Barnett, two pillars in the Church, who are changing their communities, and changing the world.  Matthew Barnett leads the Los Angeles Dream Center, an example of what the Church can do when it sets its heart on loving the community, not preaching and judging the community.

In between all the speakers we attended workshops on how the Church can practically get involved in serving the community.  I’m excited, but also concerned.  Right now, I’m ready to take on the world, but I could very easily fall back into my rut when I get back home.  I’m praying that God keeps the burden real in the future that feels like a 50# weight laying on my chest right now.  You have my permission, and even my encouragement, to challenge me in the weeks ahead to find out what I’ve done with what I’ve learned this week.  Because I don’t want to follow the pattern of too many churches and Christians in our country today–developing a lot of head knowledge, but not having any impact on the world.