A few weeks ago, I shared on why I'm happy to attend the Origins Conference in Los Angeles. One of the speakers, Eric Bryant, who is the Navigator Pastor at Mosaic Church is launching a new book soon called "Not Like Me." You can pre-order a copy on Amazon, and listen to this video I asked him create just for you! You can see for yourself what to do w/those peeps in our life who just happen to be not like you! :)

Go Eric!

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As I approach my 20th year of ordained ministry, I can say that my biggest mistake has been trying to will transformation in people's lives. At one point, I was so consumed by my own efforts and creative ideas to revitalize a church that I completely omitted God from the process. I was going to do it by the sheer force of my determination and work ethic.

Right. Try that. See how it works for you. I was trying to lead people towards abundant living, but I didn't know it myself. Guess what? I didn't lead them very far or very well.

Psalm 30 became a constant refrain for me as I found my heart crying "out of the depths." I had to address certain habits and ways of thinking in my own life before I was going to lead effectively towards vitality in Christ. 

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If you're climbing a rock face, the thing that spares you from death in the event of a fall is your protection (which is some sort of anchor you put in the rock that will put an end to your falling).  Of course, the higher you climb beyond your last piece of protection, the farther you'll fall if you fail.  This can have the effect of unnerving the climber, which ultimately negates the climber's skills, causing him/her to freeze with fear and eventually fall.

It's terrible irony that the very thing they fear, ends up happening, precisely because they're afraid of it happening.  "Fear" it turns out, is one of the worst enemies, just as Roosevelt, and Joshua, and the angel all said.  It has the power to strip us of our capacities, freezing out the kind of risk necessary someone's going to embody the generous, just, wall breaking, bridge building, life restoring character of Jesus.  Live too carefully, and you'll end up looking religious instead of righteous - painfully boring, and ridden with anxiety.

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I'm getting ready to study the passage for this coming Sunday about the ten virgins, five of whom had oil in their lamps and five who didn't.  On the surface of it, the whole story seems to run contrary to the golden rule. "Do for others what you'd want others to do for you."  If I was out of oil, I'd want you to give me some oil - so if I have oil, and you don't, I need to give you some oil.  That's generosity.  That's charity.  That's the gospel.

Instead, Jesus confounds things for us by having the story unfold in exactly the opposite way.  When the bridegroom came, the five who didn't have enough oil asked for help.  The answer they received was, in essence, "Get your own oil.  If we help you, none of us will have enough.  Better that some of us get into the party (i.e. we who had the good sense to prepare).

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Prayer is an example of Christian truth – it is true “all the way down.” Being true at one level, it is true at all levels, but it is not the same at each level.

Consider gravity: a child of three can comprehend that if he drops a toy, it falls to the ground; if he throws the toy up into the air, it goes up and then down. Without any comprehension of how gravity works, he can have many hours of fun tossing, bouncing, and throwing balls.

A mathematician can work out the equations that describe the effects of gravity on everything from rubber balls to entire galaxies. On the basis of minute calculations and sophisticated mathematics, a team of dedicated scientists and engineers can send a rocket soaring out of the confines of Earth’s gravity.

I'm over in Europe teaching for the next two weeks for Torchbearers Missionary Fellowship. I'll be offering regular updates from Germany, Austria, and Prague, throughout the month. I hope you'll follow me, both here, and on Twitter, as I seek to uncover some lessons we can learn from Christians in Europe, both today and historically.

As we move into the advent season, I'm looking out the window of my room, located in southern Germany, on the shores of the Bodensee lake. I'm looking south, across the lake to the shores of Switzerland, only a few short miles away.  

I'm reading, "The Shame and the Sacrifice" while here in Germany, which is the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life, the German pastor who had the chance to remain in America as WWII was beginning, but elected instead to return to his homeland in order to walk with his own people through what he anticipated would be a dark and difficult time.There's a profound sense in which Bonhoeffer's return to Germany becomes a powerful and rich example of the very thing we celebrate at this time year:  "God with us."  

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"There is a great different between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control and respectability. Fruitfulness, however comes from weakness and vulnerability.

A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another's wounds.

Let's remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness."

 

Henri Nouwen

It's snowing where I'm writing, at 8500' in a chalet in the Rockies. I'm watching it come down and land on the Pines and Firs that are just on the other side my window. The wind that's been howling relentlessly since I arrived Sunday night has finally stopped. I'm drinking a fresh pot of coffee, even though it's 3:30 in the afternoon, something I never do at home. There's a roaring fire in the massive stone fireplace, whose reflection I can see in the window. Snow, fire, coffee, trees.... "O taste and see that the Lord is good."

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When the bottom was dropping out for David, there's this little phrase that shows up where we discover that he 'strengthened himself in the Lord'. What does that mean? How does that happen?

I suppose there are many ways, but what's most important is that we find a way to do it because God knows that the bottom drops out for all of us from time to time.

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Recently, I’ve felt bursts of panic. The safe, mainstream Christianity of my childhood is starting to look more culturally dangerous than I ever believed. I think Jesus would be pleased.

First of all, somewhere during my lifetime, organized religion became a dirty word. It just sneaked up on me. I’m trying to figure out when it happened. Was it when Jim Bakker, the PT Barnum of Christian television, landed in jail? Did John Lennon get things rolling with his infinitely cool exploration of generic spirituality? Can I blame the academics for their relentless, decades-long attack on absolute truth?

And just like that—I realize that the guy who started dismantling organized religion in the first place was Jesus Christ.

I’m just as surprised as you are. And yet the way that Jesus overturned his uptight religious contemporaries is a world away from how self-proclaimed tolerant Americans are now dismissing the institutional church. We had better figure out the difference.

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