The family watched The Gameplan tonight starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a pro football player (not a huge stretch considering he was a great player at Miami). The movie was pretty good and at the end as the credits rolled my 6 year old son looked at me and said, "I knew they would win the Championship. If they didn't, it wouldn't be a good story."
Almost all of us are suckers for happy endings. That is one of the great things about being a Christ follower. We have an opportunity to walk with Christ here on earth and write a new page to our story every day. God sent his son to bring redemption. His story is still being written and we have a part in that story. I truly believe this is a story with a happy ending.
What is the story that you are writing with your life? The decisions you make every day are telling a story. Will it be one of self or selflessness? Does it point people to Christ? Are you living out the Shalom that Christ came to bring?
In the words of my good friend Samurai Jack, "Get out of the seat and into the story".
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Why men don't go to church???
I ran across this post and although it quotes Mark Driscoll, who is one of the biggest theological flip floppers of all time, who has an interesting idea on why more men aren't going to church. Your thoughts?
http://theresurgence.com/the_right_hand_of_fellowship
http://theresurgence.com/the_right_hand_of_fellowship
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Preparing for something big!
It's a catchy title for sure. Once upon a time it would have been followed by some story of grand visions of revival or tons of salvations. The longer I'm alive, the more I realize that God has big plans for us that usually include a lot of small (seemingly insignificant) actions. I'm reminded of a quote by Shane Claiborne who said, “Get ready, friends…God is preparing us for something really, really-small.” There is something (evil) in all of us that tells us that if we aren't over achieving and leading the pack, we are worthless. We have to have big buildings and tons of conversions. It seems like many are looking for this "revival" or "awakening" where God sweeps in and saves a bunch of people. I wonder why? Could it be that we are not wanting to go through the inconvenience of having to truly live out a sacrificial life committed to the Kingdom of God? We want God to do it for us. God forbid we actually have to get out there and take responsibility for our part in God's story.
I think all of it comes from a distorted view of Christ and His gospel. If we truly believe that we were created for a life in relationship with God and others, we will see the calling to follow Christ as more than punching a ticket to Heaven. We will see that Christ died so that, as John 10:10 tells us, "...you might have life and life more abundantly". We are called/claimed/saved for far more than a ticket to Heaven. A historical look at this "good news" of the gospel shows us that Jesus had much more than salvation in mind for us. He was calling them to realign their allegiance from following the king of the times and his plans to a new and different life of sacrifice, grace, justice and compassion.
Prepare for something big. Just don't be surprised if your something big is a conversation with someone that is hurting and needs an encouraging word. God might just give you an opportunity to feed or cloth someone who needs it. Keep your eyes open for something big! Many times it will look like "the least of these" and be something so seemingly insignificant that you might be tempted to fly right past it for something bigger.
Do something small for the Kingdom.
I think all of it comes from a distorted view of Christ and His gospel. If we truly believe that we were created for a life in relationship with God and others, we will see the calling to follow Christ as more than punching a ticket to Heaven. We will see that Christ died so that, as John 10:10 tells us, "...you might have life and life more abundantly". We are called/claimed/saved for far more than a ticket to Heaven. A historical look at this "good news" of the gospel shows us that Jesus had much more than salvation in mind for us. He was calling them to realign their allegiance from following the king of the times and his plans to a new and different life of sacrifice, grace, justice and compassion.
Prepare for something big. Just don't be surprised if your something big is a conversation with someone that is hurting and needs an encouraging word. God might just give you an opportunity to feed or cloth someone who needs it. Keep your eyes open for something big! Many times it will look like "the least of these" and be something so seemingly insignificant that you might be tempted to fly right past it for something bigger.
Do something small for the Kingdom.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Great quote
"The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideas or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline in that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.” - Stanley Hauerwas
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
III:Text IRL
I just got back from 4 days in the desert. It was equal parts exhilarating and exhausting. We had some spectacular down time of food and fellowship mixed in with around 15 hours of intense conversation over two days. Some recap mixed with some new and stretching material. Myself and a few of my friends convened in Anthem, Arizona to finish up our Fall '07 semester of III:Text. I really had little idea of how the IRL ("in real life") was going to go. This is the second go around for us on this "online learning community" experiment that we are all struggling to describe to our friends and family. III:Text (pronounced "three text") is the brainchild of one Dr. Ron Martoia, Transformational Architect.
What is III:Text? It is a great question. One that, frankly, we are all having some difficulty "defining". First and foremost for me, it is a God thing. Does that mean that we spent the last 4 months online and all 15 hours of our IRL studying scripture? No. One of the things that we who are taking part have in common is that we all see the need for doing ministry differently. That can mean a lot of different things to different people. Speaking of different people, we had 20 to 30 that signed up for this go around and 10 of us were blessed to be able to attend the IRL. We are from diverse Christian backgrounds: Methodist, Assembly of God, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Non denominational just to name the ones I can think of. Back to my thought about doing ministry differently. To many of us, it just isn't enough to "tweak and adjust" the same model that has led us to a place where the top words used to describe Christians by 16 to 29 year olds are "anti-homosexual", "judgmental" and "hypocritical".
We have committed to engaging three different texts: the Biblical text, the context and the human text. Dr. Martoia usually pairs 2 books at a time that we read and discuss online. This is the aspect that we (right now) are calling the "resource" part of the equation. The result of our reading/discussion many times is a disruption of our mental models. That is the aspect that makes us question how we are currently doing things and points out (unfortunately) many times that we are doing things that are more based on comfort levels or familiarity than on true Godly or scriptural principles.
The second aspect we have identified we are (right now) calling "container". This is the environment that is created when everyone comes together with the intent to contribute to the conversation. No one has all the answers but we value everyone's input equally. This creates an environment of trust. We know that we will not be judged but accepted by others. The bottom line is always to have the freedom to question (who, what, where, when and why) the things we are believing and doing. Not change for the sake of change but change for the sake of leading effectively.
The third and final aspect we continue to experience and believe is the aspect of the God in us. We are all doing our best to live out our faith in our own context and trust that God is leading us in His way. We continue to experience God's grace and trust Him to lead us as we discuss His truths. We experienced an amazing portion of God's grace in our IRL. He brought together a group of 10 people from different backgrounds and allowed us to experience a level of grace, cooperation and love that most of us could have never expected.
Thanks to everyone that was involved. Thanks to Ron for being our fearless leader and continuing to stretch us to be all that we were created to be. Thanks to Ted, John and the rest of the Fellowship Anthem crew for hosting us and doing an amazing job of helping create the "container" that led to such great conversation. Thanks to Nancy for all of her hard work in administrating III:Text and continuing to bug the crap out of all of us who need it. Thanks to everyone who took part in the conversation....it was amazing and truly profitable! And a special thanks to "Super" Dave Wahlstedt for allowing me to back out of our golf game on Tuesday without saying a negative word to anyone about it:)
Much Love,
Paul Baird
What is III:Text? It is a great question. One that, frankly, we are all having some difficulty "defining". First and foremost for me, it is a God thing. Does that mean that we spent the last 4 months online and all 15 hours of our IRL studying scripture? No. One of the things that we who are taking part have in common is that we all see the need for doing ministry differently. That can mean a lot of different things to different people. Speaking of different people, we had 20 to 30 that signed up for this go around and 10 of us were blessed to be able to attend the IRL. We are from diverse Christian backgrounds: Methodist, Assembly of God, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Non denominational just to name the ones I can think of. Back to my thought about doing ministry differently. To many of us, it just isn't enough to "tweak and adjust" the same model that has led us to a place where the top words used to describe Christians by 16 to 29 year olds are "anti-homosexual", "judgmental" and "hypocritical".
We have committed to engaging three different texts: the Biblical text, the context and the human text. Dr. Martoia usually pairs 2 books at a time that we read and discuss online. This is the aspect that we (right now) are calling the "resource" part of the equation. The result of our reading/discussion many times is a disruption of our mental models. That is the aspect that makes us question how we are currently doing things and points out (unfortunately) many times that we are doing things that are more based on comfort levels or familiarity than on true Godly or scriptural principles.
The second aspect we have identified we are (right now) calling "container". This is the environment that is created when everyone comes together with the intent to contribute to the conversation. No one has all the answers but we value everyone's input equally. This creates an environment of trust. We know that we will not be judged but accepted by others. The bottom line is always to have the freedom to question (who, what, where, when and why) the things we are believing and doing. Not change for the sake of change but change for the sake of leading effectively.
The third and final aspect we continue to experience and believe is the aspect of the God in us. We are all doing our best to live out our faith in our own context and trust that God is leading us in His way. We continue to experience God's grace and trust Him to lead us as we discuss His truths. We experienced an amazing portion of God's grace in our IRL. He brought together a group of 10 people from different backgrounds and allowed us to experience a level of grace, cooperation and love that most of us could have never expected.
Thanks to everyone that was involved. Thanks to Ron for being our fearless leader and continuing to stretch us to be all that we were created to be. Thanks to Ted, John and the rest of the Fellowship Anthem crew for hosting us and doing an amazing job of helping create the "container" that led to such great conversation. Thanks to Nancy for all of her hard work in administrating III:Text and continuing to bug the crap out of all of us who need it. Thanks to everyone who took part in the conversation....it was amazing and truly profitable! And a special thanks to "Super" Dave Wahlstedt for allowing me to back out of our golf game on Tuesday without saying a negative word to anyone about it:)
Much Love,
Paul Baird
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