Dunk

The blogging has been really intense lately. I am seeing a need to make it even more so. Something that has been on my mind and heart lately is the dunkability of the average cookie. This is the result, for me, of a great deal of Research and Development resources. The following is my list of the top 5 best cookies for dunking in a tall, cold glass of milk:

• #5 - Girl Scout "Thanks-a-Lot" Cookies - this cookie has undergone a number of face changes and different manifestations, but the concept remains the same: shortbread that soaks up the milk, half covered with a fudge that deflects the milk. Mmmmm.
• #4 - The Keebler Fudge Stripe ring cookie - Similar in theme to the above, but with the added fun of being able to put your finger through the middle.
• #3 - The Nilla Wafer - Dunking them until they are soggy and starting to fall apart means that you can throw a number of them in your mouth at one time.
• #2 - The Original Chips Ahoy - It has to be the original, because they now come in sleeves of like 25 cookies, which I could eat in one sitting. Awesome!
• #1 - The Double Stuff Oreo - The absolute KING of dunkability. It is to other cookies what the Star Wars Trilogy is to all other movies.

I am sure some people will have opinions on this list, but I know my list is absolutely true. I suggest getting some cookies and indulging today. I find some alone time with a package of cookies is like a spiritual retreat. Good luck and happy dunking!

AHHHHHHH!!!!

I am such a dumbass. I spend all of this time trying to help people and even counseling people in their marriages. Then, I fall on my face with my wife Teresa, treating her horribly. She was feeling a lot of stuff because of the holidays, because of a great deal of dysfunction and pain from this time of year in her childhood. She was acting out of that, and was complaining. I was tired and crabby, and I was sick of the holiday myself. Rather than listen to her and support her, I got defensive and told her, basically, that she needed to stop her whining. Then I compounded the problem by hiding behind some kind of moral and relational superiority by stating that I was just trying to challenge her, as if it were for her own good. God, who is gracious and merciful, let me know that I am a dumbass.

I have no idea what it will take to retrain myself. I need to reorient my entire thinking process, so that when I am in situations like that, I can make better choices. Afterward, it is easy to see the whole stupid path I took, but in the moment, I do not deal with my wife in some kind of vacuum. She and I are intimately involved in each other's lives, and it is near impossible to break away from that. There has to be a way, though, to be involved emotionally with her, but to still choose to serve my wife lovingly.

The most important thing I can do for her is to help her feel important, safe, and loved. I don't want to do the opposite any longer. I hear people say, Dude, you're just a guy, and that's what guys do. I simply don't accept that. I want to put on the new man and do away with the old. I am tired of settling in my marriage. I want to be an exceptional man and an exceptional husband. Any less would be selling myself short of who God created me to be.

Give It All Up?

Well, tomorrow's my birthday. I am finally turning 21. Okay, I'm a little older than that. Teresa and I went out with Greg and Lora, my mom, and our kids for pizza. It is a tradition for my birthday to go to this one place for pizza every year. I love the place.

I'm getting tired of it all, however. I have done many of the same traditions for many years with my birthday and Christmas, and they are all starting to feel contrived to me. I am going to race to bake cookies, race to buy presents, race to decorate the house, race to work, race to prepare church, and race to find my sanity, as I contemplate going postal. I have some Torah-observant friends who do not do Christmas. I used to think they were nuts, but now I think they are on to something. When I was a kid, this time of year was magical, with my birthday and Christmas all thrown together in a huge cacophony of lights and sounds, hope, magic, and anticipation. Now it feels like something I have to survive.

Tonight was awesome, though, because we were with friends. That was the difference. I really don't care about presents at all, but I love the excuse to connect with friends. I am struggling with balancing all of this stuff with my kids. I want them to have a sense of magic and wonder, without falling into the disillusionment of the darker side of this time of year. I am trying right now to emphasize the people stuff, rather than the stuff...stuff.

I want the awe and wonder back, and I don't want my kids to ever lose it.

Mmmmm......Church.

I have really enjoyed church lately. It wasn't always that way. As a matter of fact, there was a time where I was driving home every Sunday in tears, cussing under my breath because of how much I hated church. I was still the pastor then, too! It wasn't the people, but it was the culture of the church. It felt so corporate and contrived. Everything seemed to feel like a play. We were play-acting for one another, never really connecting with other people or with God. It was extremely difficult. It was difficult to the point of Teresa and I shutting down the plant and taking an entire year to pray about the direction of the church. We changed the whole identity of the church to Adullam Vineyard, and we moved forward.

So here we are, things are going great. We have some of the best friends, very natural friendships, that we have ever had. Most people have no idea how hard it is to have natural friendships as a minister. It is so easy to slip into seeing people as projects, to have strategic relationships in order to try to recruit people to the growing church or to be constantly trying to pastor them.

I have been a professional minister for 17 years, and I have never experienced anything like what I am enjoying now with Adullam. I get to be a person, a fellow adventurer on this journey of faith with many good people. These people are incredible! They love me and relate with me as friends. We are all becoming better people. It is so strange, because we have just recently started this thing, yet it feels like the community and the relationships have existed for years.

There is a part of me that is still resists all of this, because I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I love the friendships, yet, in moments of doubt, I expect people to leave en mass. Yet it seems different this time. The lack of control that I have is good, because it keeps me humble. It keeps my pride from taking over, thinking I am some great pastor, bringing all of these people into the church. God has planted a vision in Adullam, and some really great people have risen to the occasion to buy into that vision. I am going to enjoy the ride for however long our visions line up. I have realized that I am a blessed man.

Pressure to Blog

Lora, I don't know what to say.

Emergent, Po Mo, Organic, Vintage, Revolution, and Relevant

I am sick to death of the vernacular of my culture. By my culture, I mean those of us who are out on the front lines trying to do church as well as all of those who want to be a part of my culture, those who are thinking about my culture, those who are conversing about my culture, and even those who are rejecting my culture. There is an entire lexicon of new language and terms that have risen up to define and describe church in this day and age. It is very common for me to hear statements like: "I have been a contributor to the emergent dialogue and a strong proponent of de-constructing the systemic paradigms that resist the revolutionary, organic movement to reclaim a vintage, epic understanding of how to traverse the postmodern landscape and be intentional in bringing our ancient-future faith to all people in a way that is counter-cultural and relevant."

Praise the Lord, Brother. I have no idea what you are talking about, and neither do you, but Praise the Lord, anyhow. You Generation X'ers are pretty cool!

Look, I am in no way slamming the movement of people called "Emergent". We are working to change church and make it a true expression of our faith to which people can connect. I am completely in favor of these efforts. I just struggle with the language stuff. I believe in making sure people really grow in their faith and relationship with God and one another. I believe in educating people and giving them a language for dealing with all of this complicated faith stuff. When I teach and dialogue with my community on Sunday mornings, I do not dumb things down. I want people to have a healthy approach to Scripture, faith, community, and God. I avoid "Christianese" and trite Evangelical sayings that only alienate people. This does not mean that I avoid theology or theological terms with which people of faith should grow to be familiar. I do believe, however, that "cutting-edge" terms that really have no basis in reality and were made up simply to be "cutting-edge" and to make their users look "cutting-edge" have no value and should be discarded. Much of this language has been developed to supposedly replace Christianese and to be more accessible to the average seeker of truth. As anyone can see by the statement I wrote above, this language is even less accessible than the "Praise the Lord, Brother" stuff I wrote right after it. It's a sham and another example of the kind of consumer Christianity that the Emergent culture is trying to reject.

Language is a tricky thing, because it is difficult to talk about God. God is so far beyond our language and so mysterious, that our arbitrary sets of phonetic arrangements don't begin to touch the Absolute. This does not mean, however, that we should stop talking. We are limited, but we have to keep trying, as long as we can live in the mystery. Our language can never contain God, but that's a good thing. If we could define or explain God linguistically, He would cease to be God. What I propose is that we stop trying to be cool and start trying to connect to God and each other.

Is my church an emergent church? Yes, if that term is defined as: "different from the traditional Evangelical model of church". Did I set out to build an emergent church for the purpose of being able to call it "Emergent"? No. I suck at following God by myself. I started a church to surround myself with people who are on a similar journey of faith and discovery. They walk this out with me. We are simply trying to build the church we like. A church where we connect to each other and collectively touch the Sacred. So, join us sometime for some foot-stompin', snake-handlin, Praise the Lord fun! Bring your shofar and your Holy Spirit tambourine as we wave flags, flop on the floor, and attempt to organically reconstruct our gatherings for relevant interfacing with this postmodern culture. Hallelujah, my emergent brother/sister!

A Small Conversion of My Heart

I was having a hard day today. First of all, I screwed up royally at work. I turned my phone off while I was having lunch with my wife at the hospital. (Don't go praying for my wife for some illness. She works at a hospital as a chaplain. If you are going to pray for her for anything, pray that she will be able to survive marriage to me.) I turned it off, because you are not supposed to use cell phones ever in a hospital. EVER!! I never really understood that. I mean, I can see it on a flight during take off and landing, because it could interfere with traffic control, and suddenly, instead of talking to your buddy about how much fun you had on your trip to Holland, and how into clogging you now are, and how you met a midget ostrich wrangler named Eustance who collects stamps, but only Elvis ones, you are now in charge of bringing a 747 in at a normal rate of speed and with the correct side up. WOW. Sorry. At any rate, I could never figure out why it was so wrong in a hospital. I am not sure if it is like a helium balloon thing. Every time you release a helium balloon a dolphin dies somewhere in the world, and when you fire up your cell phone in a hospital the guy on the vent on floor three suddenly loses his life support. I never turned it back on. Of course, I am back at the office and all afternoon my boss is trying to get in touch with me. I got a small lecture about keeping my phone on. I work hard and aim to please, and this was a stupid mistake.

One thing I cannot tolerate in myself is a stupid mistake. I make them all the time, and I am far from perfect, but I still struggle with letting myself off the hook for them. I will punish and berate myself repeatedly for the smallest stuff. It was just so boneheaded, and I could not let it go. I am really unfair to myself in that way. Then, later in the evening, I go to get a simple rope chew toy for my gigantic dog, so she will stop eating the full grown maple in the back yard. Yes, she is actually chewing the tree. Anyway, my card gets declined. Then my next card gets declined. I was far too embarrassed at that point to leave the rope there. I now owe the church $10 for this stupid chew toy, just because I felt so stupid. It was a humbling day. On my way home from the store, I started crying out to God, yelling about how sick I am of being poor. I have done everything he asked me to do, without hesitation. Why, in his name, could I not just have a taste of my inheritance?

Then, we went to the home of a couple who live up the street from us. We had an incredible, deep, and powerful conversation about God, faith, and the Church. It was awesome! This is not a couple we are trying to get into the church. In fact, we don't approach anyone that way. We are looking for friendships. God has made us dissatisfied with church relationships we have formed in the past. We look for friendships. We love our friends, and we want to seek God with those friends and worship with them. You share those important parts of your life with friends. These people up the street are becoming friends, but we don't use them to fill our church. We love them already, and we love just hanging out with them. This way of living is so refreshing.

On my walk home from their house, God spoke to me very clearly. He told me that in relationships like the ones Teresa and I formed with that couple, I would find my inheritance. I won't need to be perfect. I won't need to be all shiny and cleaned up. It's okay if I'm too po to buy chew toys right now. I just have to be real and transparent. Through friendships like that, I will taste and see the goodness of the Lord. He fulfills his promises and is faithful to complete his work in us. I don't want to be shortsighted and miss him doing exactly that through the people I love.

Fall From Grace

Ted Haggard, now former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, or as I am fond of calling them, "NAkEd", was outed by a man claiming to have had a number of drug-filled, sexual encounters with Haggard. Haggard is an outspoken radical conservative moralist who has condemned some people as hell-bound sinners, especially homosexuals. C'mon! Can you look at the man's hair and fake tan and not realize that he is as straight as an arrow? Ted, gay? No way! (That's good! "Ted gay? No Way!" is going to be the new bumper sticker and picket sign campaign that I will launch in his defense!)

Actually, and quite seriously, this whole thing makes me sad. When news first came out, and the Haggard camp started to deny, deny, deny, I wanted to believe they were telling the truth. I mean, the timing of the release of this thing was no accident, considering that there are tight and important gubernatorial and congressional races going on all over the country right now. I also wanted to believe that Democrats, the side of the aisle I identify with most closely right now, would not stoop so low as to destroy a man's life, family, and reputation to win some seats. Yes, I am a naive and innocent blossom who wants his world to be a place where the good guys always win, the truth always shines in the darkness and is never painful, and all the children of the world join hands and sing a song. Yes, it's hokey and dumb, but there is a part of me that still wants it like that.

But, as always, the inevitable admissions started to come out. First, he was resigning so as to let the board and the people involved do their jobs, but he did nothing wrong. His accuser was an obvious madman with an agenda. Then came: ok, so I had a massage from him. That's no crime. There was no sex and no drug use.......Ok, so we did buy some drugs, but I didn't inhale. Next will be the admission that he brought the drugs with him, then will come the admission of an extended affair, then a whole life of wanton deviance, pornography, prostitution, and debauchery will open before our wondering eyes.

I am embarrassed to be a Christian. I am not judging the man. He has to answer to God. I don't envy him that. He was a religious leader and a moral dictator. People associated his moralistic fundamentalism with his faith. When the curtain gets pulled back to reveal the true Oz, however, we vacillate between feelings of shock and disappointment. That's how I feel as a believer on this journey of faith. I can't imagine what this does to people who have not discovered the work of God in their lives yet, many of whom have been judged and torn apart by this man and preachers like him in the past. It makes me want to vomit.

Look, I am a realist. As soon as I say I do not envy him in his future appearance before the judgment seat of God, I know that he would neither envy me mine. I fall from grace daily. My own struggles with the daily myriad of pride, lust, rage, sloth, greed, envy, and gluttony are more than I can bear myself much of the time. I commit most of that list before getting out of bed in the morning!

There is a difference, however, and there is no getting past this truth. What is expected of us? We are to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. I am not the beacon of light in the world; God is! I weep for people who are completely lost. I weep for Ted Haggard. I weep for myself. My lament is that, though I long for the stuff of God, I never quite get there. I get glimpses as the Kingdom of God breaks into life around me, but the beauty of that vision and the pain in its lack of fulfillment are beyond description. Yet, that is my reality as I work out my salvation with fear and trembling, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I walk constantly on the edge of sin, but I am not afraid, because he will transform my sin and my pride. Does that mean I should sin more to receive more grace? By no means! Rather, because I am justified, I look to the cross and lay my sins there. Then I go and walk this out with the other poor sinners around me just seeking the stuff of God. We're a sorry lot, and we don't have the wavy, feathered hair, but we belong to the King.

I am not making any statement about homosexuality being right or wrong. I am not making any statement about Christians and politics. I am not even condemning Ted Haggard. I can't imagine the tortured life of lies that man has had to live. All I know is that moral condemnation does not bring life, but death. We are called to be real and true about sin, repenting to God, ouselves, and those around us. Living a life like that is what marks me as a child of God, and I receive his daily grace. That's enough for me.

Mmmm....afternoon tv.

I got sucked in yesterday. I couldn’t help it. My wife, her friends, and all of our male, homosexual friends have been addicted to this American phenomenon for a long time. I, for my part, have avoided it like the plague. The “crack cocaine” of mid-afternoon television to which I refer is none other than Oprah.

Most of the time I find her show to be nothing but nonsensical, emotional drivel with no real meat or substance. She got in trouble in Texas for being anti-meat, as a matter of fact. She pushes a kind of feel-good, pseudo-spirituality that has no real basis in reality on no real impact on the lives of its adherents. We get nothing from her but flowery statements of “feed your spirit”, “live for tomorrow”, and other such fodder for framed inspirational posters in office cubicles where people have no hope of escape and no direction for their lives. That stuff makes sense to them as they rush home to watch their favorite “afternoon prophet”, Tivo’d earlier in the day. They sit on their couches, chain smoking cigarettes, petting their 15 cats, and eating a bag of Oreos covered in ½ gallon of ice cream. Am I generalizing? Yes. Am I exaggerating? Yes. But only a bit. She represents an American Dream that can be summed up in an hour talk show. I find any dream like that to be suspicious at best and downright dangerous at its worst.

That said, there are bright points where an episode stands out as both relevant and powerful. My wife was watching a Tivo’d episode yesterday, featuring Ellie Weisel and a number of high school essayists. The students had all won a contest organized by Oprah in which they had to write an essay about the impact of Ellie Weisel’s novel, Night, on today’s society. Night has been one of my favorite novels for a long time. At the very least, there is probably no novel that has impacted me more. The essays were excellent. She even had two students from American schools who had survived the slaughter in Rwanda. As small children, younger than my 7-year-old daughter, they had seen their families slaughtered, other children hacked apart, women raped and killed, and other such heinous atrocities. One of the young girls was convinced her family was dead. Oprah reunited them on her show. They had not seen one another in 12 years, since the daughter had escaped to a refugee camp. I will admit, it was too much for me. I cried very hard.

I also found myself becoming very angry. Ellie Weisel has been speaking and writing for years to help the people of the world to declare, “Never Again!” to the slaughter of innocents. Yet, the slaughter continues. We have not learned. I also felt convicted. I am focused on trying to finish my basement, planning for a vacation, going camping, working to make more money, and other such trivial pursuits, while people all over the world are dying from murder, AIDS, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and the ignorance and apathy of the rest of the world. The Vineyard Churches have recently dissolved their International Consortium for no better reason than that they couldn’t get along. WOW! I am a Vineyard pastor, and I love my family, but this is inexcusable. Yes, I know, there are people in the trenches doing good work, but we need to have a visible, global presence as the Church of God. I am not only speaking to Vineyard, but to the Church. How can the Kingdom advance? We speak of the Father’s Heart for the Nations, but we seem to be very far from the heart of the Father on this issue. It took Oprah to show me the light. World missions is about standing between the innocent and their attackers, between the woman and the machete. Whether she is rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, black or white, we have to step in to be salt and light. We have to reconcile with our brothers before bringing the sacrifice of praise to the altar. How can we be a worshipping church, when we can’t even get along with other believing leaders?

We all need to start watching Oprah. She will show us the way. But seriously, the Spirit is moving right now through the world. When that girl was reunited with her family on the show, she raised her hands in praise to Jesus. What a statement from someone who’s concerns for the Kingdom of God in the world are much more profound than ours seem to be.