I have a confession to make.

I am not who I believe I should be.  I am not who I want to be.  I am not who my wife thinks I ought to be.  But most of all, I am not who God made me to be.

I say all that to simply admit that I do make mistakes; mistakes in actions, in reactions, in words and in deeds.  I have to admit that it is even possible that my opinions and conclusions may be wrong sometimes.  But thankfully I usually try to admit that I could be wrong about those.  I am loud, passionate, and overbearing sometimes in my attitude and delivery.  I am human.  For that I apologize.

I have also been challenged more this past year about what it means to be Christlike than ever before.  I in turn have grown uncomfortable in my role in the mission Jesus left with us all.  I have tried to take the lazy way out and tell myself that my job was to discern and instruct, to study and to share.  But I realize that is not enough.  The time I spend trying to herd others onto the path I see, instead of taking the first steps onto that path myself, is wasteful.  And if there is one thing I know, it is that time is running out.

Our goal is to be a disciple and our mission is to go and make disciples.  Discipleship at its simplest is to become like the Master.  A lot of us are already working on the goal, including myself, but not so much on the mission.  It does seem that the vast majority of even steady, faithful, church goers are not ready to take those first steps.  I have been hesitant myself for too long and it grieves me more each day.  I know that the frustration that is building in me is starting to come out in ways that do the vision a disservice.  And it is not very Christlike at the same time.

I know that changes must come if the Kingdom is going to advance.  Changes in the way we have been looking at the mission.  Changes in the way we look at Church, denominational institutions, and leadership.  Changes in the way we present the love of Jesus to the world.  Changes in the way we relate to all of those around us.  Changes in the way we see ourselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  Changes in our worldly nationalistic pride.  Changes in our tacit acceptance of our own evil agendas.  Changes in our hate filled grandiloquence towards those that we see as beneath us good Christians.  Changes that have to be realized and actualized if we are to show our Father we really are on board with Him.

I have desperately tried to relay this, just waiting for someone to take those first steps. What I did not see was that maybe I need to take them.  There are about to be changes in my life.  I am going to step up and step out.  I just have to remind myself the first steps are the hardest.

Love you all

Tags: Believe, Christlike, Church, confession, frustration, Kingdom, Leadership, mission, Self, Service

I don’t like animals in my house.  Pets are just not something I care for at all.  It was not always like this though.  For a period of about five years, starting about twenty years ago, I experimented with all kinds of pets.  Like almost everything I do, I went way overboard.  At one time I ended up with a dog, two cats, a rabbit, two snakes, two iguanas, five turtles, a newt, four geckos, and two aquariums.  Oh yeah, my wife and I also had six kids.

I was out of my mind.  I admit to the insanity that I was going through at that time in my life.

The aquariums were the most fun and the remembrance of setting up these miniature landscapes is what led me to write this.  The turtles, snakes, iguanas and fish allowed me to be creative in building and establishing the habitats that I designed.  It wasn’t as much about the animals as it was those mini creations that I found fascinating.

I learned something about fish, especially goldfish.  The aquariums led to outdoor creations called water gardens.  I have built four of those over the years.  We lived without an abundance of financial resources, as you might imagine, so I looked for ways to do things on the cheap.  I found that I could go to Wal-Mart and buy “feeder” goldfish for about a dime in those days.  So I would pick up about twenty and put them in one of my little ten gallon worlds and see what happened.  These goldfish were not very hardy since they were only bred as food, but some would surprise me and live a while.  But they never got very big.

When I constructed my first water garden I did the same thing.  I stocked it with about forty of those little fish.  It was early spring.  By the end of that summer, one of the goldfish that had started out about an inch and a half long had grown to at least eight inches.  The kids and I called it Moby Dick.  Moby froze that winter and I looked in sadness sometimes at him locked in a block of ice.  But the next spring, when he thawed, that fish was still alive and grew another couple of inches before it just disappeared.  Probably eaten by a bird, I guessed.

Jesus implied that we are like fish when He called the disciples to follow Him and become fishers of men.  The thing that has gone through my mind as I have pondered this brings me to another conclusion about our growth as the church, the people of God.  As our focus has become so inward instead of outward we are becoming like those goldfish that are locked in an aquarium.

The reason Moby grew so big was because of his surroundings.  When you put fish, especially goldfish in a small environment they stay small.  By putting them in a larger one like my water garden they are free to grow like they are meant to.  As Christ followers, we are to be fishers of men also.  We are to go out into the great big world and grow large as we are fed by the Spirit of God and our mission.  But a lot of us are locked into our own aquariums, our church buildings, our programs, our ministries to those in the aquarium with us, and we have stunted our growth.

Let’s get out into the wild, deep waters of the world and become really big fish.  We might become big enough to be used by God to even swallow up reluctant men of God and erring prophets like Jonah.  And like that first freeze showed me concerning Moby, nothing can stop us.

And one more thing; let’s pray that our leaders become more than just aquarium keepers.

Love you all

Tags: aquariums, Christ, christ followers, Church, Creation, fun, geckos, God, goldfish, insanity, little fish, mission, spirit, wal mart, water garden, world

In September of 2007 I went from working 70 to 80 hours a week to about that same amount every month.  It has gotten even worse since then.  Back when I was so busy I barely had enough time to read some news, check television schedules and pay my bills while online.  I had heard of bulletin boards, forums, blogs, and other forms of communication on the internet but had never read or participated in them.  When the work schedule changed so drastically, I started reading more but I also started stumbling across blogs and forums and such.  Sometimes I wish I had not.

One of the first things I stumbled across was a site where a lot of ministers in my own denomination hung out.  It was also right before the General Assembly which is when the Church of God votes on change of leadership and other important issues.  I learned way too much.  I read a lot of things that ministers were saying and are saying and it makes me just want to run.  I want out of my denomination, out of my church and sometimes wish I was even out of the Kingdom.  If it truly could just be about me and Jesus, all would be fine.  But it can’t.  It is about relationship, community and the mission.

What I see coming from most Christians though is that it is about them.  Or for some, it is about their denomination.  If I hear another minister say how great a man of God someone is because they have did so much for the Church of God denomination instead of for the Lord of all the Church, I think I may explode.  I love the COG, it has done so much for me, how can you not love this grand old institution; these are a few of the many types of things some, and sadly they are usually the older ministers, say to anyone that questions the corruption that is so evident from the facts.  The corruption I am speaking about is the corruption of the mission.  But there is obviously even more.

I just finished reading Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch.  He wrote the following statement in it.

“In catering to the religious needs of some (largely the insiders) it has as a consequence failed to respond to the wider spiritual hunger of not-yet-Christians.”

He is referring to the institutional church; the denominations, the buildings, the hierarchy, the dogma, and the self-righteousness of our religion in conservative American Christianity.  We do not seem to want to do much more than token mission anymore.  We do enough to feel good about ourselves and even then, we ask those that need us to come to us instead of us going to them.  My own denominations problems seem to bear Hirsch’s thoughts out exactly.  The leaders at a certain level seem to only care about themselves and the continuance of the institution that caters to their aggrandizement.

This book has opened my eyes to a lot of things that I was already seeing and feeling.  I was just too busy to notice it until about the last year and a half.  The book is about becoming missional again.  The early church was missional but some of the older people in the COG seem to think this is some new spiritual fad or something and that we just need to get back to the old ways.  They don’t know how wrong and how right they are.  They are wrong about missional being a fad and right about needing to get back to the old ways.  But the old ways are much older than they think.  They are pre-Contantinian.  The early, persecuted church had it right.  So that is pretty old ways.

I think all ministers should be required to read this book and see if it does not check their spirit.  It has my own and I am nothing but a layman.  I am just so tired of seeing the people of God the same way I saw them when I was an atheist.  And I am not forgetting that I am one of them now.  I am going to figure out a way to be the person God needs me to be in His Kingdom today.  If it means changes are in store, then that is what will happen.  I wish more would join me in this endeavor to become what God meant for us to be.

One of the first things that I wish would be gotten rid of is this almost idolatrous view of “my” church, “my” denomination, “my” leaders, “my” ministry, and anything else we are so proud of because we see it as “ours”.  All of these things belong to Jesus, if they should really even exist.

I am sorry if anyone takes offense at anything I have written.  I know there may even be repercussions if I keep on saying some of the things I am saying.  But I am more concerned with the eternal repercussions if I keep quiet.

We do seem to have forgotten that it is not about us.  It is not about our comfort, our contentedness, or even our happiness.  Church is not an institution.  Church is a living, breathing, organism that is gasping for the breath of life because that breath, the Holy Spirit, seems to be slowly being pushed away by our inward instead of an outward focus.

Get the book.  Read it.  Come back and let me know if it woke anything in you.  It certainly has in me.  And not everyone will like it.

Love you all

Tags: America, atheist, Blogs, Christian, Christians, Church, Church of God, Conservative, denomination, forum, God, Holy Spirit, Kingdom, Leadership, ministry, mission, Righteousness, Self, spiritual hunger, War

There has recently been a lot of discussion generated by my questions about the creation account.  It has been fascinating and frustrating at the same time.  Some find these things to be an unnecessary discussion and some see it as part of the mission.  Personally, I just like to read the evidence that others have for their views.  I don’t believe any of my main readers are experts in some of these things and I know I am not.

We can all learn something and we definitely need to know why we believe what we do.  These discussions are not just to argue.  They are to help all of us think.  God gave us a brain and unfortunately very few seem to use it for the advancement of the Kingdom.  Instead we seem to trust whatever persons views already line up with our own.  I want to invite all to discuss the issue today.  And I would especially like to hear form any who have a Background or training in these areas.

The last heavy discussions lead to some comments about the age of the earth.

How old do you think the earth is?

What evidence do you have for your answer?

How are you able to justify your dismissal of the other side?

And once again, does it really matter in the light of God’s grace and mercy in the reconciliation of mankind to Himself?

I also love the increase in commentary so if you are tired of reading and discussing these things, comment on some of the other posts that have largely went ignored.

Love you all

Tags: Creation, creation account, Discussion, God, Kingdom, Mercy, mission, Personal, town hall, Tuesday