It has been way too long! Instead of writing a post about a specific subject, I want to highlight a few articles I have been reading latley. I read alot of articles and different blogs regularly; so here you go!

• It was Father’s Day yesterday and for many people it isn’t the most celebrated day of the year. Relevant posted a article on a documentary by Justin Hunt called Absent. After watching the preview, I really want to see this documentary.
• I enjoy reading The Resurgence. This blog is through Mars Hill Church in Seattle. One of the things I appreciate about Mark Driscoll is his passion to see men be men. Here is a post on How To Honor Your Wife. Ladies, would you agree with what he is saying?
• I am a highly organized person. One program I use is evernote. I am not sure what I would do without it. Michael Hyatt is the chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers and he loves evernote just like me. If you really want to get organized read his thoughts. Follow the links at the top of the post for the most relevant posts.
• Do you enjoy reading on your smart phone? This article was featured on CNN, I feel it raises a lot of great questions for the next generation of the church.
• I have really been enjoying some older authors books that were written years ago. As a staff, we read this book and there is so much good stuff to take away from it. Andrew Murray was a pastor and wrote many books. This short read is called Humility.

Well that’s all I will post right now. I could post a lot more, but for your sake I will wait and save it for next time!

I recently finished the book ‘Radical’ by David Platt. This is a book I wish the church in America would read. If you go to Grace Chapel, many of the things brought up in the book won’t be anything new or shocking. In fact, while reading through this book I thought the content and arguments were great, but either I was personally doing them or Grace Chapel as a church is already doing those things.

Here is an excerpt from the book that really has made me ask questions and reflect about not only myself but the church as well. “Do we really believe He is worth abandoning everything for? Do you and I really believe that Jesus is so good, so satisfying, and so rewarding that we will leave all we have and all we own and all we are in order to find our fullness in Him? Do you and I believe Him enough to obey Him and follow Him wherever He leads, even when the crowds in our culture and maybe in our churches turn the other way?”

From here, Platt gets rolling. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book was the question asking. This book made me think, it made me ask questions of myself and the way I am living. Is having a church service with a bunch of flashy lights really what the church should be about? When Paul wrote his letters to the church, he was telling them to live in such a way that was so radical and so different from the people in their culture. If Paul were to write a letter to the American church, what would he say? What things would he want us not to do? Would there be certain movies he would not want us to watch? TV shows? Lifestyle choices?

Some of the statements in the book could side track readers, but the purpose and the heart of the book shouldn’t. In no way do I feel that Platt is trying to frustrate believers; he is just trying to get people to think beyond themselves, their wants and desires.

Platt calls to the church to ask questions, to live differently. The church has a lot to learn, grow in and continue to learn from. I look forward to the day when the church lives in such a way that is so radical from culture and so different that people will want to be apart of it.

 We have all probably been in the presence of someone who has cried. Maybe you witnessed someone crying and they apologized to you, maybe you were crying and you felt bad for crying. Why do people feel guilty for crying in front of other people?

I feel most people probably feel guilty about crying in front of someone because it is awkward. What if instead of letting someone try to hide their tears, we allowed them to just let it out.

Yet there is something in tears that holds us back from fully expressing this emotion. It would seem that as a society we should be more used to tears then ever before. Look at most reality shows on television today, they are full of emotional people in very different circumstances expressing their emotions in tears. Are we more ok watching others cry then ourselves? Have we become so used to others tears that we hide our own?

There is something beautiful in tears because it expresses so much. Think about your tears and it will bring back memories; we can remember the times we have been in tears over something. It’s like a past road map to the things that have really affected us both positive and negative.

There is…

…beauty in tears

…passion in tears

…love in tears

…pain in tears

…emotion in tears

Let the tears flow don’t be ashamed!

I was watching TV the other night and a commercial came on…I think I was doing something on my phone but the words that were said caught my attention. It was a Neutrogena makeup commercial starring Jennifer Garner. Here is what it said;

“There’s a lot of beautiful makeup out there to cover up flaws and make skin look pretty. But there is one so clever it looks better even after you take it off.”

The phrase that caught me was “makeup to cover up flaws.” How much of our life do we go along looking for things to cover up our flaws? Maybe its makeup, maybe its plastic surgery, maybe its weight loss; it could be a flaw in our personality that causes us to act differently or we act out to cover up our flaw. Addictions are another thing that people use to deal with flaws.

Seriously, think about it though; how much do we really try to cover up our flaws?? What if we took those flaws and imperfections and gave them to Jesus? After all, we are supposed to lay down all of ourselves to Him, I’m pretty sure this includes our flaws. There’s grace in Him, there is love.

There’s this song by Gungor called Beautiful Things; it simply says “you make beautiful things out of dust.” It’s not easy to just wake up one morning, look at our imperfections and say, yeah God…

God makes beautiful things; maybe there are more beautiful things out there that we see. I’m pretty sure if you asked People magazines hottest person of the year if they had flaws and imperfections, I’m sure they would give you a list. For them, Photoshop has helped cover those but at the end of the day they are still flawed and imperfect.

No matter what we do, we are all flawed and have imperfections, but we have a God who wants to cover those imperfections. Just remember there is still beauty in the imperfect.

Mark Driscoll recently wrote a great blog post on christians and culture. I feel that his response is great and the wisdom he shares is worth thinking through. Check it out!

I love learning. I love being able to think through a subject and try to understand it. Even if that subject is impossible to understand I still enjoy thinking through it.

Lately I have been learning more about sin. I believe that through our lives we learn more and more about sin as we experience victory and failure. What I have been learning in this is…

How we look at sin

We often look at sin as the problem and we want to fix the problem by managing it. When we are doing this we are only dealing with the symptom. Deep down inside of us there is something that is affecting us that is causing us to sin. Yes, there is the aspect that we all have a sinful nature, but we all have hurts and pains that we try to cope with. We cope with it by acting sin out whether that would be sex, drugs, shopping, money, porn. If you find yourself stuck in a rut of sin ask yourself if there is something deeper that is leading you to do what you are doing. If you start to figure out what the problem is you can better treat the symptom which will in the end lead to victory!

What has God been teaching you lately?

Last blog post I talked about being on mission. I hope you read it and understood a little more of what it means to be on mission! This post will specifically talk about serving.

As the church, I think service is something we really need to move towards more and more. This past weekend, instead of having church inside , we had church inside out. We met, sang, prayed and worshiped through serving the community. It was weird!  Instead of our traditional Sunday morning experience listening to a message, we were the message being lived out in a community. As odd as this was, it was refreshing to start to think through what is the church? Is church just a Sunday morning activity or is it more than that?

If we were to take a snapshot of Jesus’ ministry, I think one thing that would stand out is serving. Jesus served, and he taught others to serve as well. He served with an attitude of love. What an example we as the church can look to! More than ever I feel the church is taking a turn. As a whole, we are seeing that serving is the new street preachers of the past. People have been hurt and affected by the way the church has acted in the past; no longer will a seeker friendly service work to draw people in.

People want to see Christians not just talk about love, but living that love out. This is a huge calling, but I feel the church is ready to rise up to the occasion to show love in the communities around us.

From the church that leaves us, what are we to do as individuals who are the church?

Serve, serve, serve!

I’m sure many would disagree with me that there should be a number of things before this. But, if we are not serving, how are we meeting people? If we are not serving, how are we spreading the Gospel? I think serving is the gateway to greater conversations. If someone were to ask, why are you serving? We would be able to answer, “Because Christ calls us to love and to live out that love. We serve because Jesus loves you and He wants you to know that.” And just like that, the gospel message is opened.

Individually, take a moment and find something that is close to your heart. I heard a message once about a man who was wondering what God had for him. Through a circumstance, we saw what God called him to. God called him to minister to people in a slum out in the middle of nowhere. He brought heaven to earth for these people; a clash of two kingdoms to minister to these people. He ended his talk with asking everyone these questions

What is your Slum?

What has God called you to?

Where is the area he wants you to serve?

God has called each and every one of us to serve in some capacity. It might take work, it might change over time, but find something to plug into and serve! Through serving, I feel we eventually become less in our own eyes and Christ shines in us more.

Ascent the Hill quite possibly might have just released one of the best Hymns albums I have heard. Click the album cover to head over to the download.

Standout Track: Take the World, But Give Me Jesus, Hallelujah! What A Savior, The Love of God

As Christians, we often associate missions as the thing we do for two weeks over the summer or remote hot places of the world where people live in huts and don’t speak English. I feel that for many years this was how the mission field was looked at. Thankfully, I feel the pendulum has swung; and now the communities and work places we do life in our becoming just as much of a mission field as the remote villages on the other side of the world.

The thing about looking at our community as a mission field is really intimidating. When we have the mentality of getting on a plane and going somewhere else, we feel that people might listen to us because we are Americans and from far away. Here in our community it is different because sometimes we have no idea how to move in people’s hearts and offer them anything different.

The thing I like about the great commission is that it just didn’t call us to the nations- it called us here as well. We are all ministers of the Gospel and should reach out. It’s not just the responsibility of church leaders and missionaries to accomplish this. We are all missionaries; whether it’s in the work place, with friends, the club we are involved with, or even our sport’s team.

What is we shifted from looking at mission as something we do, and change that to who we are? You don’t need a church to send you out to minister to those people; you don’t need to raise support to reach these people. Christ sent you out with the great commission. I don’t want to rewrite the great commission but what if it was…

go therefore to the work places, clubs, sporting events, grocery stores and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And remember I am with you to the very end of the age.

Now, doing this is no easy task. Ministering to people we work with can be extremely difficult and frustrating to live a life of example. It has taken many missionaries working in remote areas for many years to see fruit from their labor. Sometimes it doesn’t even mean saying anything. When people see character and recognize things are different in them, they will ask questions. But it’s figuring out how to be bold in those situations that makes the difference. When we miss an opportunity, it is frustrating because we feel like God put us on deck and when we stepped up to bat, we struck out. Luckily, there are plenty more times to step up to the plate in one game, and be able to minister to people.

Where is God leading you to minster?

I just recently finished reading a book called Hipster Christianity. I laughed and I definitely thought a lot. This whole hipster look has taken off; you know, the tight jeans and v-necks. Whatever your definition of hipster is, I found this book to be a great read. While reading this, I was really caught with the idea of the church as “cool.”

The church has tried to be relevant. We have moved through the Jesus movement, to the seeker movement, to the emerging movement. Movement through movement the church has always tried to find the best way to be relevant and cool in the culture. Here are a few examples…

WWJD bracelets

FROG (Forever Rely On God)

Christian shirts looking like brand shirts

Church signs that say Ccontemporary Church starts at 7:45AM

CCM (contemporary Christian music) comparing non Christian bands to Christian bands; if you listen to this band then listen to this one.

If you have any other thoughts you can leave a comment below.

There is nothing wrong with the church being cool; but there is something wrong with trying to be cool. As the Church, we would say that the church is cool. To most non-believers, Christian culture is trying to ride the wave of a fad that was started by a non Christian that is not cool for example YouTube to Godtube. Are non-believers looking for the church to be cool? Are they looking for the latest in music, sound, lighting or presence on the internet and searching for the trendiest people? I can’t answer this but I am going to guess that most non Christians are not looking for the latest and greatest that culture has to offer because they can find it all around them. They can go to a concert or a club or surf the net to find all those things they can experience in the world around them. I would hope that at the end of the day, they are at a church because they want Jesus. What brings them into the door isn’t entertainment but wanting a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ.

What would it look like if the church was a spot to get away from the things of the world and find a place that isn’t texting/twitter/facebook/media driven crazy? I think that the church should have a presence in these areas, but it’s nice to put it aside and be somewhere that is free of this

Does the church need to be cool? Does the church need to have all the latest and greatest stuff? How put together and slick does a service need to be? These are good questions and I have a few thoughts, but I will not go into those here. I know that the church should be accepting of everyone, whether hipster or not. I know that being cool is being you and if that is not cool in the world eyes; than that is ok, but in God’s eyes you are cool (I know really cheesy Christian line but seriously think about it!)

In God’s eyes, worshiping Him, reading His word, praying, and having an uncontrollable dependence on Him is what he thinks is cool and He desires for His people.