So, this morning my friend Robin sent me a link to a cartoonist’s blog name Jon Birch. I spent a few minutes looking over some of his past posts; chuckling at times, thinking at times, and even getting a little irritated. His work is definitely thought provoking and very difficult to dismiss. You should check it out!
One of his cartoons caught my eye and made me think about a conversation I had with my friend Tim a few weeks ago. Read more…
"Suffer not the little children..."
There’s been a lot of talk, and writing, and blogging lately about the whole idea of missional church. I am one of those that believes that while the church in North America is not the great whore of Babylon, it may have drifted a little from what it was initially called to be. For that reason, I have been wrestling, as a pastor, and church leader, with some of the missional concepts and also with some of the questions that need to help us understand how we got here in the first place. As I’ve been reading, and talking with others on the missional journey, I have noticed a disturbing gap in the thinking and theorizing that’s been done so far. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of talk about what children’s ministry might look like in this missional paradigm. In fact, it seems to me that a lot of the churches that might be considered to be missional are actually undermining themselves in their children’s ministry. While the adult congregation is coming to see church as something that you are, their children are still being trained to see church as somewhere that you go. So last night we decided to tackle this issue in a little brainstorming session. Read more…
Categories: Church, How To Tags: Church, Evangelicalism, Faith in Action, Jesus, Learning, Missiology, Missional, Redwood Barrie, Relationships, Spiritual Practices
What Not To Wear
I was surfing through the channels the other day and I ran across a show I used to watch all the time: What Not To Wear! Lately, I’ve put on a few pounds and have outgrown some of my favorite outfits, so I was thinking how much I would love to win a $5000.00 shopping spree in New York. My friend and I have even talked about buying a bunch of ugly used clothes and trying to pretend that they’re my normal clothes to see if I can get on the show. :) I even went on the show’s website and did some of the quizzes. I’m proud to say I did so well I scored a “Shut up! You’re so fashion forward” from Stacey. Not bad, if I do say so myself. The truth is, one of the reasons I like the show so much is that they try to find an image that works well for the person they’re working with, rather than just trying to shove something else on them. It’s not about a random image, or fashion trend, but, instead, it’s about figuring out what image best suits the individual. Read more…
Categories: Church, God Thoughts, Reading Tags: Books, Church, Evangelicalism, Faith in Action, God, Image of God, Jesus, Missional, Questions
Why Worry?
I woke up last night at about 4:00 am with my head spinning. You see I’m the pastor of a small church here in Barrie, but we’re a small church with BIG dreams. The problem is that BIG dreams often take BIG money, and that’s not something we have in abundance. The down turn in the economy has definitely been felt by our congregation and we’ve seen a few of our family lose their jobs in the last few months. This is worrisome. Don’t get me wrong. For such a small congregation, we are very sacrificial givers, especially when it means helping someone else out of a tight spot. What has been keeping me up is how we’re going to be able to really move forward and see some of our BIG dreams come to fruition. So I worry.
I guess I’ve also found myself thinking about whether or not I will be enough as a leader to see our BIG dreams happen? Do I have the skills it will take? Do I have the confidence, the wisdom, the energy it will take? These are all questions that I worry about.
So today I opened up my bible and turned to Matthew chapter six and started reading. For ten verses Jesus goes on to talk about the foolishness of worry, culminating in a rather blunt statement:
“Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I guess the truth is, all my worrying doesn’t accomplish much at all really, except to make me tired today. Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t exactly the kind of place that God likes to keep us just so we always remember that it’s God who does the work anyways. Yesterday I was reading the book, “Plan B” by Anne Lamott and she says, “that God loves to use the impossible because it requires the miraculous.” Well, if that’s the case, then God is going to love using me.
