i miss you and dread you

A few years ago, Christian researcher George Barna published a controversial book entitled Revolution. Drawing on observations from his years as a pollster, Barna described what he believed to be the emergence of a new type of Christian. Calling them “revolutionaries”, he described them as “…devout followers of Jesus Christ who are serious about their faith, who are constantly worshipping and interacting with God, and whose lives are centered on their belief in Christ, [with] complete dedication to being thoroughly Christian by viewing every moment of life through a spiritual lens…making every decision in light of Biblical principles. These are individuals who are determined to glorify God every day through every thought, word, and deed in their lives.”

How is this any different than what a Christian is supposed to be? It’s not…but that wasn’t what made Revolution controversial. Barna observed that this group, numbering in the millions, was leaving the church to preserve their faith. Not rejecting megachurches in favor of organic house church models, not embracing ancient-future emergent conversational churches, not joining new monastic structures, or any of the other trends present in Christianity today. Just leaving.

When I first read this book, I had major problems with Barna’s analysis that this is a positive expression of faith, and that they are simply rejecting archaic and corrupted structure, not Jesus. Sure, I thought, these people may love Jesus and say they are worshipping him, but leaving the church is like having a best friend but walking out of the room the second his wife walks in. It may work once, but if he loves his wife, after awhile he’ll begin to wonder whether the problem is really his wife or if it’s you. Scripture tells us to not forsake the assembly, and that faith is something to be experienced communally (Paul became a church planter, not a self-help guru or a desert hermit). I still hold to that position, I promise. I don’t think you can be a growing Christian if you are not involved in a community of other believers, strengthening each other, holding each other accountable, learning under the authority of Godly elders, sharing communion and baptism, and following a vision for spreading Christ’s name everywhere.

But I can see their point.

Right now, I’m struggling with many aspects of my faith. Most of them can be traced back to my various experiences with the church:

-Churches that grow because they are a mile wide and a quarter of an inch deep
-Praise music that sounds as if it were written by Oprah
-Visions for church growth that involve building enough buildings to earn a separate zip code
-Corporate prayer sessions that become mini-sermon series about everyone else’s problems
-Doing things a certain way because ‘it’s worked in the past’
-Church programming that exhausts its members, muddles the vision of the church, and guilt- trips people into thinking that a GOOD Christian is in church whenever the doors are open, instead of living a life of witness in front of the world
-Church softball
-The lack of quality in everything with Jesus’ name on it
-The belief that such cheap cultural rip-offs will convince teenagers that Christianity is ‘cool’
-Children’s ministry that majors on games, hand-motion led songs, prizes, badges, and musicals instead of the Gospel

This morning I told Krissi I missed church very much…and dreaded it just as much. Coming from someone who has dedicated his life to serving the God of the universe THROUGH that same church, that sucks.

what scares me about what i believe...

I found this in Slate magazine today. Telling?

Pop Goes Christianity
The deep contradictions of Christian popular culture.
By Hanna Rosin

One night, a couple of years ago, I walked in on a group of evangelical college boys sitting on a bed watching The Daily Show. I felt alarmed, and embarrassed, as if I had caught them reading Playboy or something else they had to be shielded from. Jon Stewart, after all, spends at least one-quarter of his show making fun of people like them. But they eagerly invited me in. I soon learned that they watched the show every night it was on, finals or no finals. So strong was their devotion to Jon Stewart that I was tempted to ask: If Jesus came back on a Tuesday night at 11, would you get off the bed?

Over time, I came to understand this as a symptom of a larger phenomenon: evangelicals' deeply neurotic relationship with popular culture. Whether or not they were the butt of all of Stewart's jokes seemed irrelevant to them. The point was that the high priest of political comedy spent a lot of time thinking about them. Once, after I'd met Jon Stewart, they all crowded around and asked the same question: What does he really think of us?

At this point in history, American evangelicals resemble the Israelites at various dangerous moments in the Old Testament: They are blending into the surrounding heathen culture, and having ever more trouble figuring out where it ends and they begin. In politics, and in business, they've mostly gone ahead and joined the existing networks. With pop culture, they've instead created their own enormous "parallel universe," as Daniel Radosh calls it in his rich exploration of the realm, Rapture Ready! A Christian can now buy books, movies, music—and anything else lowbrow to middlebrow—tailor-made for his or her sensibilities. Worried that American popular culture leads people—and especially teenagers—astray, the Christian version is designed to satisfy all the same needs in a cleaner form.

The problem is that purity boundaries are hard to police in the Internet age. Show a kid a Christian comedian, and soon he's likely to discover that the guy is a pale imitation of this much funnier guy—Jon Stewart—who's not a Christian at all, and doesn't even like Christians. Which might then lead to a whole new set of anxieties, such as: Why are Christians so constitutionally unfunny? And, what is the point of Christian culture, anyway?

In the '80s, Christians were known as the boycotters, refusing to see movies or buy products that offended them. They felt about commercial culture much the way a Marxist might: that it was a decadent glorification of money and meaningless human relationships. Then, sometime during the '90s, when conservative evangelicals started coming out of their shells, they took a different tack. The boycotters became coopters and embarked on the curious quest to enlist America's crassest material culture in the service of spiritual growth.

Most non-Christians are aware that there is something called Christian rock. We've all had the slightly unsettling experience of pausing the car radio on a pleasant, unfamiliar ballad until we realized … Ahhh. That's not her boyfriend she's mooning over! But few of us have any idea of how truly extensive this so-called subculture is. Reading Radosh's book is like coming across another planet hidden somewhere on Earth where everything is just exactly like it is here except blue or made out of plastic. Every American pop phenomenon has its Christian equivalent, no matter how improbable. And Radosh seems to have experienced them all.

At a Christian retail show Radosh attends, there are rip-off trinkets of every kind—a Christian version of My Little Pony and the mood ring and the boardwalk T-shirt ("Friends don't let friends go to hell"). There is Christian Harlequin and Christian chick lit and Bibleman, hero of spiritual warfare. There are Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno, which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words. There are Christian comedians who put on a Christian version of Punk'd, called Prank 3:16. There are Christian sex-advice sites where you can read the biblical case for a strap-on dildo or bondage (liberation through submission). There's a Christian planetarium, telling you the true age of the universe, and my personal favorite—Christian professional wrestling, where, by the last round, "Outlaw" Todd Zane sees the beauty of salvation.

At some point, Radosh asks the obvious question: Didn't Jesus chase the money changers out of the temple? In other words, isn't there something wrong with so thoroughly commercializing all aspects of faith? For this, the Christian pop-culture industry has a ready answer. Evangelizing and commercializing have much in common. In the "spiritual marketplace" (as it's called), Christianity is a brand that seeks to dominate. Like Coke, it wants to hold onto its followers and also win over new converts. As with advertisers, the most important audience is young people and teenagers, who are generally brand loyalists. Hence, Bibleman and Christian rock are the spiritual equivalent of New Coke. Christian trinkets—a WWJD bracelet, a "God is my DJ" T-shirt—function more like Coca-Cola T-shirts or those cute stuffed polar bears. They telegraph to the community that the wearer is a proud Christian and that this is a cool thing to be—which should, in theory, invite eager curiosity.

Straightforward, if somewhat crude, merchandizing so far. But there is also another level of questions, which the creators of Christian culture have a much harder time answering: What does commercializing do to the substance of belief, and what does an infusion of belief do to the product? When you make loving Christ sound just like loving your boyfriend, you can do damage to both your faith and your ballad. That's true when you create a sanitized version of bands like Nirvana or artists like Jay-Z, too: You shoehorn a message that's essentially about obeying authority into a genre that's rebellious and nihilistic, and the result can be ugly, fake, or just limp.
The Christian rockers Radosh interviews are always torn between the pressure not to lead their young audience astray and the drive to make good music. Mark Allan Powell, a professor who teaches a class on contemporary Christian music at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, describes the predicament for Radosh: Imagine the Good Rubber Tire Co. came out with an awesome rock song that just happened to be about tires. Musicians wouldn't want to play it because they'd think, "We're being used," Powell explains. Creative Christian types find themselves in a similar bind: They want to make good, authentic music. But they are also enlisted in a specific mission which confines their art.

The entertainers in Radosh's book complain about watchdog groups that count the number of times a song mentions Jesus or about the lockstep political agenda a Christian audience expects. They complain about promoting an "adolescent theology" of Christian rock, as one calls it, where they "just can't get over how darned cool it was that Jesus sacrificed himself." In his interview with Radosh, Powell pulled out an imitation of a 1982 New Wave pop song with the lyrics; "You'll have to excuse us/ We're in love with Jesus." This, he explained, was the equivalent of a black-velvet painting of Elvis. Only it's more offensive, because it's asking the listener to base his whole life around an insipid message and terrible quality music.

For faith, the results can be dangerous. A young Christian can get the idea that her religion is a tinny, desperate thing that can't compete with the secular culture. A Christian friend who'd grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: "Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear," he wrote. "Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal insistence on the sanitization of reality."

Striking a balance between reverence and hip relevance can be a near-impossible feat. Christian comedians, for example, border on subversive, especially when making fun of themselves. In one episode of Prank 3:16, the pranksters fake the Rapture and throw their victim into a panic because she's afraid she's been left behind. With true comedic flair, they're flirting with opposition and doubt, and even cruelty. But "the Christian is supposed to be secure in the loving hand of the almighty God," one of them tells Radosh. So, even if they don't sanitize, they're afraid to step over into the brutal, dirty truth comedy thrives on.

The new generation of Christians is likely to be a different kind of audience. Raised on iPods and downloadable music, they find it difficult truly to commit to the idea of a separate Christian pop culture. They might watch Jon Stewart or Pulp Fiction and also listen to the Christian band Jars of Clay, assuming the next album is any good. They are much more critical consumers and excellent spotters of schlock. The creators of Christian pop culture may just adapt and ease up on the Jesus-per-minute count, and artistic quality might show some improvement. But in my experience, where young souls are at stake, Christian creators tend to balk. It's always been a stretch to defend Christian pop culture as the path to eternal salvation. Now, they may have to face up to the fact that it's more like an eternal oxymoron.

whiteboard envy and teaching-preaching

This is Rob Bell, best known for his Nooma videos and book Velvet Elvis. Some of his theology can be shaky at times. However, I have seen few people who have such an awesome teaching approach as Bell.

2 examples:

The previously mentioned Nooma videos are a phenomenon that must be seen to believed. These mini-sermons on DVD feature Bell speaking for 8-15 minutes. The amazing thing is that they are the epitome of a sermon illustration. Bell is often observing or participating in the environment, culture, or activity used as the illustration, complete with flawless editing and music. Topics range from Christianity to creation to everyday activity, but almost all include Bell's trademark (if controversial) immersion in Hebrew scholarship and narrative theology. Bell ends each talk, which only has enough time to cover one topic anyway, with a summary statement/challenge. The finished product is a message that drips with understanding.

On the other side of the coin, Bell's recent Everything Spiritual speaking tour (viewed above) is literally him onstage with a massive whiteboard and nothing else for close to 2 hours. The fact that a man can captivate a young audience with theology for 2 hours using notes scribbled on a whitebaord is astounding. It speaks to his ability to structure things in a narrative style. It is this style that gives me whiteboard envy.

Some observations from Bell's board:

• You can't see this from the picture, but when I say massive whiteboard, I mean massive (stretching the entire length of the stage). Bell begins at the left, writes something to the right of center, but is careful to link the ideas using what he scribbles between them. This allows someone to read the completed whiteboard (a copy of which is packaged in the DVD version of the talk) with little explanation. On one hand, you must have good handwriting/write big/know your structure beforehand. However, this lets someone keep up with the entire train of thought, without losing you or asking if you can go back a few Powerpoint slides.
• Bell uses pictures, arrows, circles, underlines, etc. These things help to emphasize points during the lesson, but because he is the one doing the emphasizing, and not a Powerpoint programmed slide, there is much more spontinaity and originality seen by the hearers.
• Going back to seeing the complete narrative on a board: Bell is able to gesture using the enitre narrative, instead of having to isolate himself to a certain time period/set of events/point.
• He doesn't stand in one place or look like a traditional "wandering" pastor.

Teaching with a large whiteboard is something I would like to try. Again, it has its drawbacks (my major concerns are my handwriting and the ability to see it from the back of the church), but the potential is awesome - it fits into something I am passionate about: that a part of worship should involve teaching-preaching as opposed to I-already-know-this-preaching or self-help-preaching. The latter two require little learning curve. But the former requires a created environment that facilitates learning.

What I mean: On any given Sunday in many churches, the pastor preaches to a congregation who were mostly unaware of what his topic/text would be. In an attempt to not alienate visitors/move quickly, the pastor will rarely reference his previous sermons. He will preach no longer than 20-30 minutes, and will use an outline-style format often alliterated for easy notetaking. In my own experience, this produces church-goers who have listened to sermons for years and taken copious notes, yet who have gained little real growth in the knowledge of God.

My passion stems from my own growth at the listening to preachers such as Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, John Piper, Tim Keller, Darrin Patrick, and others. Each of these men preaches from 40 - 120 minutes, yet few complain about having to go to a late lunch. Why? Beacuse in each of their churches, there is an environment that has been cultivated for teaching-preaching. They often spend months (in Piper's case, 12 years) on a single book, and spend more time than the average pastor teaching background information. They provide their church members with an understanding of greater church history. These systematic approaches, combined with usable-yet-not-repetitive outlines and illustrations gleaned from personal experience and culture rather than in the form of "pastor jokes", provide congregations with a foundation for developing theology. Plus, these churches normally upload their sermons online in audio, video, manuscript, or a combination of forms. This allows hearers to relisten to something, look at the pastor's notes (esp. if they preach multiple services), or listen to a week's message if they are absent.

There are arguments against this concept:

• Chiefly, the time. However, again, these pastors rarely field complaints in this area, leading em to believe that if such an environment (expectation) is created, it ceases to be an issue
• Theology is too deep/unnecessary/isn't Christianity simple/we're not speaking to all church goers/etc. This is a pet peeve of mine. Theology influences all the practices and activities and structures of the church - therefore it is immensely necessary. One common misunderstanding is that to teach theology, one will be using big words and concepts (often in greek or hebrew), when in reality, the important part is simply to define words, and keep on defining them so that people don't fall behind. Working slowly is a good thing.
• Teaching isn't evangelistic. While this can sometimes be true, normally a thorough exposition of a text points to Jesus. Plus, this argument is used primarily by people who aren't seeking to tell people about Jesus through doing ministry (ministry that is greatly aided by an understanding of theology) - they want the pastor to fulfill this role.

I think Bell's abilities in both using deep, meaningful illustrations, and being simplistic yet amazingly organized, reflect the example of Jesus, who kept crowds for long periods of time without regard to hunger (and then he fed them), taught perplexing spiritual truths his own disciples couldn't understand, and used the environment around him as means for teaching...and he didn't even have a whiteboard.

an old man and his wife grow roses

“Roses” by Caedmon’s Call

High above the valley of Quito

An old man and his bride grow roses

Red and yellow, white and golden,

To him they are precious as children

Their daughter, she moved to America

One more break in the Tower of Babel

She has a son that they've never seen at all

They're praying that they raised her well

On the mountain high

They will live and die

As time just slips away

And the children grow

In the God they know

As time just slips away

A man, his bride, his children, and his roses

Planted in faith

And watered in tears

Honey, that's all they have And they're happier here

Than any of my friends back home

They met Jesus and they really know Him

Now I'm back at home

All alone

And I'm trying to find my thoughts

Of that old man so inspiring

And the TV's always on

And the phone, it won't stop ringing

These bills, they keep on screaming

I'm paying for the things We never really need

Wonder what he's doing right now?

Maybe walking through his simple field

Thinking about how

God has blessed him so

A man, his bride, his children, and his roses…

Caedmon’s Call released one of my favorite albums of all time in 2004, "Share the Well", based on their missions experiences the previous year to Ecuador and India. It didn’t hurt that I first heard the album driving through the Nicaraguan mountainside; after I arrived stateside I immediately rushed out and bough the album. I still marvel over the use of instruments from other cultures interspersed with traditional American folk and contemporary pop. The song above, "Roses", is from that album. While I liked the song (I like the entire album), it was not one of my favorites until I played the album for the woman who will become my wife later this year. She loves it, which made me re-listen to it. It is now a song that both inspires and haunts me.

You see, I knew my own “old man” in Nicaragua, Santos Emilio - the man whom I helped deliver Bibles to small houses dotting the mountainside. He was in his late 50s, and had taken off work for a week to help our team and his church – this is huge, as they don’t get vacation benefits in the mountains. He wore a California Angels hat and a Tampa Bay Buccaneers shirt all week. Yet he had such joy as he travelled from house to house, delivering the Word of Truth to his people. I was little more than a mule on these trips, as my gift of gab doesn’t work in a nation that doesn’t speak English. Yet what a happy mule I was! He would take handfuls of books from my backpack, and when he had delivered them all he looked back at me, hungry for more. We couldn’t speak words to each other, but smiles and laughter were all the language we needed.

I never was able to really speak to Emilio; I know nothing about his family save the few moments I smiled at his wife; I’m sure he is human and has difficulties just as I do. Yet in those moments, this song came true. Here was a man, sold out to Christ, lacking the distractions and “to-do” lists that plague so many of our lives. It is as if we have all joined a cult of productivity, attempting to stay afloat in a world that is continually increasing its speed.

Why do we do this? I think it all boils down to our definition of the word “ambition”. We have ambition in many ways because we cannot seem to rest on the laurels of our parents – and sometimes this is a good thing. We pursue innovation, exploration, and creativity. However, we also become trapped in the cycle of trumping those before us out of a fear of being insignificant; our pride will not let us be anything less than excellent at everything.

I’ve posted my goals for 2008 on this site, and I still stand by them. I think it is a good thing to have something to pursue, to improve upon oneself. Yet I can’t help but think of that man and his roses – he is improving on himself, also, growing in love, faith, happiness. My house is a wreck now, with stuff strewn everywhere by a number of events and projects…and I feel as though I wade through garbage, a myriad of things that no longer produce their expected joy. That man has pride, pride in creation, in family, in hope. I know I serve a God who provides such things, who hears me and desires to laugh with me, who wants me to fall in love with Him and His creation and His people. But there are so many distractions…

Maybe I should have an eleventh goal for 2008: to become a humbler, quieter man.

it comes for us all

Every once in a while, you begin to ponder things much bigger than yourself. I hope that you do this weekly (it’s called ‘worship’). But I take that for granted as much as the next guy. This month, I’ve had to ponder something related that has hit me much harder than I first realized.

When you’re young, you are indestructible. You live forever. You have no concept of life being finite, even as you profess belief in afterlife or have family or friends pass away. I don’t know, something about preparing to get married and enter ‘the real world’…but those feelings are leaving me.

A close friend of my family, Tim Stevens, died earlier this month. I saw him for the first and last time since he had gotten sick on Christmas Eve. Tim was a strong, hearty man, and I was blown away by how withered he was when I saw him. Last Tuesday, Heath Ledger, a popular actor, died of an apparent drug interaction. He was only 7 years older than I. And the guy in the photo is my friend Caleb.

Caleb found out on Friday that he’s got lymphoma. Cancer.

He’s 19.

Suddenly death becomes all too real, and its ‘unknown’ quality becomes VERY present. No matter what you believe about where you go when you die, there is a hint of fear, a hint of darkness, of finality, about death. No one in modern times has ever come back.

I know I’m a Christian; I believe Christ died to cover my sins and to reconcile me before God, and I will exist after this life in a life fuller than I can ever imagine. But I wish that faith was stronger, that it could drive out the slight chill you feel when you realize you might have said goodbye to a friend last night…and that the goodbye you said might just very well be that – goodbye.

Pray for Caleb, and I’ll be updating this again soon. Pray for me, too – my prayer is as the dead girl’s father, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

like a fried egg

This morning my head exploded.

Seriously. If you were one of the unfortunate souls to have read this blog this morning, you might have thought I was ready to become Buddhist and hope my next life was that of a cockroach, because it would have at least been one step above this one.

(since I’m typing this I’m sure you’ve figured out that I happen to be addicted to hyperbole – don’t worry; I’m on the patch)

Krissi and I went on a cruise a week ago, and it was wonderful. I got the sleep I have needed for some time. Going back to work on Tuesday was a different matter. The combination of 10 days of peace followed by homework, my job, and the other stresses of life hit me like a sledgehammer. Do you know what happens to an ice cube when it’s put in a glass of hot liquid?

It cracks.

And Krissi is even worse. Her large class load has made getting together for anything other than damage control (one/both of us venting/crying/collapsing/yelling). These have been some hard, hard days for our relationship, and our lives in general. This morning, except for the knowledge that God’s grace is sufficient to cover even my stupidity, I would have questioned the whole enchilada.

Thankfully, I know God works in seasons. However, much in me wants to adopt an old jock mentality (keep your head down and run until your legs fall off, play hurt) instead of throwing myself before God’s mercy. Why? It sounds harder, but actually, it’s easier. Because I don’t just sit at God’s feet and wait for Him to say, “Mercy has been granted! You may now resume your less-stressful life!” I have to keep moving.

I know I’ll get through this. We will get through this. But I never want to live this way again.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

genesis

It's a new year, and as such, is one of the two or three times a year where I attempt to take on new habits. In many places, the idea of "new year's resolutions" has somewhat gone out of vogue, citing their self-centered nature and almost laughable seriousness - even so, with January being the start of a new calendar year AND the beginning of my last semester of college, my last semester as a single man, my last semester of having things paid for by my family, etc., its a good time for me to address a number of things in my life.

I probably have a billion things I could improve in my life - I seem to have a habit of having many good habits countered with many bad habits. For example - I enjoy exercising, but I can eat an entire box of oreos with the best of them; I can be both passionately productive and zone out for 4 hours watching made-for-TV movies in the same day.

My goals for the next year (not in order of importance):

1. Run a 5k.

A 5k? (I can hear the laughter from here) Yes, a 5k. In middle school, I was the kid who didn't even try to run, simply because I hated to watch everyone else effortlessly beat me (I once tried to WALK the mile run, thinking a non-stop brisk walk would be faster than my out-of-breath running). In high school, I tried and failed, able to run a mile in a pitiful 9 minutes. To this day I cannot jog for one mile nonstop. 5k is a good goal, and if I reach that by my birthday, we'll look at the 10k. How am I doing this? By going to the gym for a serious workout 3 times a week, and jogging on the off days to a lake behind my house. I hope these things also help me take quiet time to reflect and pray as well.

2. Read through the whole Bible.

People often make this a resolution as well. They get a plan, or a One-Year Bible with it broken up into days, etc. These things have never worked for me. I think I'm allergic to plans that are tight; I just can't seem to get into something where I have to read this portion, or check off that box. No, what this resolution is about is deeper...me developing a love for Scripture. I want to consume the Word, not just analyze specific passages. I'll take sparse notes and analyze later. Of course, this one has a catch - if God moves me, I might re-read a book or three, so the resolution isn't as much about consuming all of Scripture, but rather ending the year still having a passion for devouring chunks of God's Word.

3. Finish my Honor's Thesis and graduate FSU.

My honor's thesis will be a major accomplishment for me in that not only will it allow me to graduate FSU, but it will instill in me the academic disciplines I need to go into grad school in seminary.

4. Get married and take my WIFE on an awesome honeymoon.

Again, sounds like a given (don't worry, I am marrying Krissi James; it isn't just a goal), but having a ceremony that doesn't break the bank/drive us insane and that honors God is important. Also, I am a huge honeymoon proponant - and not just for the obvious reasons. Not that I've ever been married before, but from what I gather, getting married is an extremely public affair. Yes, you stare into the other person's eyes and make lifelong vows and dance and cut cake and drive off into the sunset, but everything up until that point is done for and in front of hundreds of people. But the honeymoon - I think it is a tangible gesture of a man's love for his wife. Just as the ring does not have to be extravagent but rather should reflect the personality and tastes of the woman wearing it, so should the honeymoon be a gift of love to a man's wife. Krissi's gonna love hers...and I'm not telling her until the wedding day!!! It's a goal because it will cost some money, and as such I need to be very careful with my spending habits so that I have the money to take her on the trip of her dreams.

5. Become a photographer.

Lately, mostly because of the influence of both my job and a seemingly never-ending quest to find a wedding photographer, I have become intrigued and awed by the beauty of photography, in all its forms. Abstracts and nudes bring me back to my days working in the art museum, nature brings out my longing for a connection with creation, fashion makes me want to take pictures of Krissi, and street/documentary photography brings back up what I wanted to do in Panama but never finished - using art to tell the stories of people who cannot speak for themselves to people who wouldn't otherwise listen. My goal is to buy a Nikon D40 and learn to shoot digital photography, culminating in getting to use my skills to document a missions experience for a church.

6. Raft the Ocoee.

Most guys let their groomsmen plan their bachlor party. Not me. In 9th grade, I got to go on a church white water rafting trip, and it was the time of my life. I was scared to even go in the water, and completely self-concious of the fact that I was the weekling in the boat - yet I had a great time. Now, 8 years later, I get to go back, and take on the river again. I want to go with a group of guys who each have meant something to me in life, and who together can worship with me and prepare me mentally for becoming a husband.

7. Bench Press 150 lbs.

Also a physical goal that goes along with the 5k, I've always been a weekling at pretty much anything physical - I have trouble lifting heavy boxes and equiptment, and have little to no endurance. That needs to change. Currently I work out with 100 pounds. Being able to bench my weight is a huge goal for me.

8. Memorize a book of the Bible.

I once knew a guy who had memorized the entire book of Romans. This is awesome. It's not about performing it in front of anyone (if it becomes that, this one gets stricken from the list), but rather the continuation of a passion for the Word - not only to devour it but to make it a part of you. Muslims honor those who can quote the Koran, and Hebrew boys once learned the entire Torah before becoming Rabbis...a man who wishes to become a pastor should do all he can to hide the Word in his heart.

9. Go on a mission trip.

Krissi and I had planned to go to India this summer, but with getting married, graduating, and work schedules we decided to postpone our trip. However, I still want to go serve somewhere this year. We've looked at the winter as an option.

10. Write in a journal.

Off and on, I've tried to keep a journal ever since 10th grade. This year, I want to continue to habit, and do so without large gaps. My goal is not to write in it every night or even every week, but in a year to be able to look on my journal and see content that records a year's worth of experiences, and to still be writing in that journal (or another one if that one is filled up!).

So there you go, Steve's 10 goals for this year. Perhaps next year I'll report on the success/failure of each. Regardless, may they all come to pass if the Lord wills, and all for His glory.

when does family stop becoming family?

One of the things I have fought for since being called to vocational ministry has been my continual allegiance to my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Regardless of my changing theological and methodological views, I steadfastly believe in the principles and values of the SBC. Why?

• The SBC has the Cooperative Fund, arguably one of the best missions-funding programs in existence
• The SBC has a great seminary system
• The SBC is amazing at providing children and students with missions education and opportunities
• The SBC values the local, autonomous church

Again, though some of my beilefs have changed over the years, I love these qualities of my denomination. Secondly, I love the people. I believe there is a vast group of people within the SBC who could blow the top off this world for the gospel if the Spirit moved among them...besides, these are the same people who raised me, who love me, who still go to the churches I have come to know and love. They are my family, my friends...I want them to have the passion for God's glory that I feel.

Yesterday was the first time I have truly questioned my calling to stay within the SBC. On Tuesday, the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) passed a resolution effective January 1st, 2008, ceasing Cooperative Program funding to all church plants affiliated with the Acts29 church planting network. Let me explain the circumstances surrounding this, and why I am shaken.

• The Journey is a church plant pastored by Darrin Patrick. Beginning in the early 2000s, the Journey grew from 30 to over 1200. The Journey is part of the Acts29 church Planting Network (of which Patrick is heavily involved in leadership).
• Acts29 is a trans-denominational church plant networking system that helps to direct funding for chruch plants from other local churches. They provide assesment services and training. They are Reformed in theology.
• The Journey recieved a $200,000 loan from the MBC to help fund their church plant.

Now the issue:

• The Journey began a program called Theology at the Bottleworks, which is exactly as it sounds: a theological discussion over drinks.
• MBC objected to this, to the point of calling for professor Mark DeVine of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to do a profile of the emrging church movement, of which they find Acts29 to be a member
• DeVine's paper can be found online, and his conclusions found Acts29 to be on the conservative side of the emerging church movement
• MBC then passed resolutions which obviously ignored DeVine's findings, associating Acts29 with streams within the emerging church movement which deny the substitutionary atonement of Christ
• This path has now led to the MBC denying funding to all Acts29-associated churches beginning January 1, 2008

Why do I have some issues with this? Shouldn't the MBC be able to decide to whom they give thier funding to?

The answer is yes. It's not that I have a problem with people choosing where to send funding. It is the why they make their choices that troubles me. DeVine's paper is spot on. I can do(and have done) the research myself the know that his conclusions are valid. And I cannot see within his paper how someone can make such resolutions. This makes me wonder: what is the real issue? Alcohol? I still don't agree with the decision, but why punish all the churches in the MBC for The Journey's choices (as Acts29's president has stated)? Is it about theological differences? If so, why the political war?

It is the ignorance that scares me. I hesitate to write this, because I am only 21, and arrogance and judgement can easily slip in here (though I pray this comes out of my passion for the SBC, and not to cause devision). But if a 21 year old can do the research necessary to see that churches affiliated with Acts29 are not a hinderance to but rather an asset to the SBC, I question why such decisions are upheld. I have not even mentioned the fact that Acts29 has a 99% success rate for planting churches (higher than NAMB's 70% rate), or that Dr. Ed Stetzer, Lifeway's chief missiologist, is on Acts29's board of directors.

At what point will the SBC stop being inclusive? When will we see the Word of God as our final standard, and the fruit of discipleship-making, new-believer baptizing, church-planting churches as our litmus test? I fear that someday the SBC may have no place for those who wish to engage our culture for the gospel. Including me.

i miss being old

This is The Favorite by Georgios Iakovidis. Today, after a hard day, I miss my grandfathers. I'm not sure if you had them, but mine were great. They weren't perfect by any means - in fact, often they were downright awnry - but something about them, maybe their smell, made me feel wiser for knowing them.

Yep, it's definitely the smell. Grandaddy (my father's father) lived 5 minutes up the road from me. He always wore Arimas aftershave and a plaid dress shirt, often with a mesh trucker cap (before they were cool). These clothes smelled of Arimas mixed with sweat and dust, which was the constant companion of anyone who attended the local flea-market religiously and refinished old furniture and tools. Grandaddy was quiet, yet he always had a hearty laugh and a good story ready. Through him I learned to fish, to cut grass, to buy things cheap and haggle for them if they weren't. He taught me to dress sharp, and to keep a handkerchief in my pocket. Jen, if you ever read this, you can thank Grandaddy for that handkerchief. Grandaddy was also a quiet pillar of our church, a deacon with a passion for going to visit people in the hospital who never seemed to speak out loud except when he was called on, at which point he would deliver the calmest and most collected speech of anyone in the building. There was almost something magical about him.

Papa (my mom’s father) was a rascal. Tested by harsh winters he endured as a naval mechanic at the South Pole, he was often bitter and cynical, speaking of things he had no knowledge of as if he were a Harvard professor, and with the assurance that he was right. Yet he was a pillar in his own right, the lynchpin that held a chaotic family together through the hardest struggles one must endure. I said this at his funeral, and it is no less true today than the first time I spoke it. I remember Papa’s hands. If Grandaddy’s aftershave was Arimas, Papa’s was sawdust. As a side job, Papa cut wood for people all over their small town. I’ve never seen someone that old in that good shape, regardless of what the doctors told him. He would, day after long day, haul wood from wherever to the side of his house, split logs three times his size with an assortment of chainsaws and aged machinery, and then take it back again. His language was peppered with bits of wisdom wound in jokes and orders, like “Eat your beans (or rice) – they put hair on your chest”. At that age, I dreaded the eventual hair that would put me at odds with the female-attracting portion of my gender, so much so that I shaved it off for years. You’d be proud of me, Papa.

That last sentence gives me pause, though. Would he? Would either of them, especially if they knew all of me - the parts that they themselves wouldn’t admit to anyone they had? I can be cynical with the best of them, and selfish to boot. Grandaddy’s quiet nature fell on deaf (or already talking) ears – I long to be someone who will shut up long enough to listen again. And Grandaddy had long bouts with depression, too. I never understood them until I started having them.

Look at the picture. A child has no reason to learn about pipes, and her parents probably weren’t jumping for joy at this newfound fascination. But that’s what grandpas are for. Somehow, getting old pushes them past the wall of being correct, or safe, or accepted. It gives them wisdom, the wisdom that comes from seeing things from the other side, from knowing that life is closing in on them. Grandaddy was an artist, and his pictures hung around his house – though no one else knew. Papa wasn’t great with money (and this illustrates that) but he bought a motorcycle at 70 and swore he’d ride it if it killed him. And he never stopped dreaming of that WWII Jeep he always wanted.

Part of me misses being old. Not the old of authority, or power, or status. No, I miss what I haven’t tasted yet – holding hands with my wife and telling her she’s still the prettiest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, smelling the cold of the morning and the age of my things, teaching my grandson in days what it took me a lifetime to master. To look on life and say it is good.