organic christianity

pour out

In 1921, Lewis Lawes became the warden at Sing Sing Prison. No prison was tougher than Sing Sing during that time. But when Warden Lawes retired some 20 years later, that prison had become a humanitarian institution. Those who studied the system said credit for the change belonged to Lawes.  But when he was asked about the transformation, here’s what he said, “I owe it all to my wonderful wife, Catherine, who is buried outside the prison walls.”

Catherine Lawes was a young mother with three small children when her husband became the warden. Everybody warned her from the beginning that she should never set foot inside the prison walls, but that didn’t stop Catherine!

When the first prison basketball game was held, she walked into the gym with her three beautiful children and she sat in the stands with the inmates.

Her attitude was: “My husband and I are going to take care of these men and I believe they will take care of me! I don’t have to worry!” She insisted on getting acquainted with them and their records.

She discovered one convicted murderer was blind so she paid him a visit. Holding his hand in hers she said, “Do you read Braille?” “What’s Braille?” he asked. Then she taught him how to read.Years later he would weep in love for her.

Later, Catherine found a deaf-mute in prison. She went to school to learn how to use sign language. Many said that Catherine Lawes was the body of Jesus that came alive again in Sing Sing from 1921 to 1937.

Then, she was killed in a car accident. The next morning Lewis Lawes didn’t come to work, so the acting warden took his place. It seemed almost instantly that the prison knew something was wrong.

The following day, her body was resting in a casket in her home, three-quarters of a mile from the prison. As the acting warden took his early morning walk, he was shocked to see a large crowd of the toughest, hardest-looking criminals gathered like a herd of animals at the main gate. He came closer and noted tears of grief and sadness. He knew how much they loved Catherine.

He turned and faced the men, “All right, men you can go. Just be sure and check in tonight!” Then he opened the gate and a parade of criminals walked, without a guard, the three-quarters of a mile to stand in line to pay their final respects to Catherine Lawes.

And every one of them checked back in. Every one!

Real life change doesn't happen so much by our words but by the pouring out of our lives.  May we as Christ followers pour out our lives like Catherine Lawes did.

simple church

I just finished reading a really great book called Simple Church.  It was 252 pages, which didn't strike me as simple but anyways I still appreciated the straightforward concept.    The authors present a full-proof argument that the local church in America has become way too complex.  We have so many ministries, programs and conferences that we keep really busy but miss out on making a difference in our communities through making disciples and seeing the Kingdom of God advanced. 
They define a simple church as a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.  Statistically the church in America is shrinking and becoming more of a social club for Christians than a force in the earth.  The authors defines it as stagnant.  People come into a church get busy attending meetings and they don't mature and grow into fully-devoted followers of Christ who win people to Jesus. 
The authors clearly describe 4 principles (clarity, movement, alignment and focus) that will allow for simplicity and not complexity in our churches.  If a church decides to go simple it will be one of the most painful processes because it will require us to say NO to anything that doesn't fit in with the vision and process but the end result will prove to be worth it all. 
They have done some great research in working with 100's of churches to see what is different between a vibrant church and one that is stagnant.  The tough part about this book is it calls for church leaders to put a bunch of effort in designing a clear process, discovering what we want to see people in our church look like and run away from being programmers.  This book challenged me and I hope if you pick it up and read it too that you will join the simple revolution that is causing churches all across America to stop and think about what impact they want to make in their community. 

kyan lee

It has been a while since my last post but I have a really good excuse.  On March 3rd we had our first son, Kyan Lee, at 2:55 AM.  He has been a wonderful addition to our family and we love him so much.  We have been really busy adapting to this new lifestyle and I hope to be posting some more stuff in the near future.  For all the women out there he was 21 inches long, 7 lbs 10 oz.  Charlotte had him after a really quick labor of about 3 hours.  She did so well and baby was healthy which is all you can ask for.  Charlotte is back to coaching volleyball and if you know her that isn't much of a surprise.  Look forward to writing some more posts soon.

altars to god or monuments to self?

I ran across this blog entry by Mark Batterson.  I respect him as an author, a pastor of a growing church and a man who is leading my generation of leaders.  I hope this post challenges you as a leader in training.  If you enjoy this post I recommend you check out Mark's book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, and visit his blog, Evotional.com. 

"Altars to God or Monuments to Self?"
This morning I'm doing a session at the Evolve Conference titled The Secure Leader.  I'm going to use Saul as a case study in insecurity.  Two verses represent two defining moments in his life.

I Samuel 14:35: "And Saul built an altar to God; the first one he had ever built."  So far so good.  Saul is building altars to God.  But fast-forward one chapter.  I Samuel 15:12 says, "Saul went up to Carmel to build a monument to himself." Somewhere between those two verses, Saul stopped building altars to God and started building monuments to himself. There is a fine line between Thy Kingdom Come and My Kingdom Come.  At some point, it was no longer about God.  It was about Saul.

Here are seven habits of secure leaders:

1) Don't play the comparison game. 

No one wins! Comparison either leads to pride or jealousy!

2) Success isn't numbers

Saul got caught up in the numbers game. And David had better stats. Listen, if my children grow up to love God and everything else falls apart I'm successful. But if NCC grows to 50,000 people and I sell 10,000,000 books it means nothing if my family falls apart. Jesus was successful because he poured his life into twelve people!

3) Celebrate your failures.

Insecure people are afraid of failing. Secure people laugh at themselves.  They celebrate failure because it accentuates what God can do inspite of us!

4) Don't panic

Saul panics when his men start scattering so he makes a sacrifice instead of waiting for Samuel. Insecure people get nervous. They give up. Secure leaders hang in there no matter what.

5) Don't get defensive

How you handle criticism will make you or break you.  You need tough skin and a soft heart.  If you're insecure your defense mechanisms will get the best of you.  So instead of leading out of imagination you'll lead out of insecurity.

6) Surround yourself with the right people

Who was Saul's greatest asset? David. But if you are insecure, your greatest asset will become your greatest threat. And it will short-circuit your ability to surround yourself with a great team. And it will limit your influence.

7) Keep building altars to God

God often uses us at our point of insecurity because then He gets all the credit.   I pray for the favor of God as much as anything else because I  want God to do things for me that I cannot do for myself.   And every time we experience God's blessing we need to build an altar.  That's why we named our coffeehouse Ebenezers: hitherto the Lord has helped me.  The blessings of God either turn into pride or praise.

Are you building altars to God or monuments to yourself?

the wardrobe

Reflections of Rick McKinley's early conversion and revelation of the church after many years:

"It was like I had entered C.S. Lewis's warddrobe, full of anticipation, but instead of standing in a magical place of fawns, witches and every kind of possibility I somehow managed to walk through the wardrobe and into a dentist's office.  People sat around reading magazines asking me to calm down, to be quiet, to take a seat.  People say it very nicely, of course, like you would in a dentist's office.  The place was clean, with polite smiles everywhere and sterile smells.  What are you suppose to do in a waiting room except to try to kill the time?  I did a lot of that.  I killed time in college groups.  In church.  In Bible college.  I even have killed time as a pastor. 

But leaning back in my chair one day I realized that the walls of the waiting room were actually paper-thin.  Behind the veil of Western evangelicalism existed an untamed, revolutionary reality.  The world on the other side of the wardrobe did exist.  You just have to tear down the fake walls, kill the fake music, and let yourself go crashing newborn, wide-eyed anticipation out int the world.

And there it is all around you.  The kingdom of God."

I can't agree more whole-heartedly with Rick's description of probably what many of us go through as long-time Christians.  In my pursuit of a more organic view of Christianity I hope I rediscover the adventure of life and church beyond the fake walls we erect in church and our lives.  I hope I can become more like a child as Christ told us to.  Because being all grown-up and having a "mature" view of what church and Christianity should look can really suck from my own experience.  I sometimes desire to unlearn a lot of things I have been taught indirectly and directly by other Christians and just come to God humble, ignorant and hungry for Him to deposit in my spirit the seeds of His kingdom.  In this discovery I feel a bit like Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia, curious and anxious to see what is beyond the wardrobe.

in heaven

This last week at Generation Unleashed we were so blessed by a great pastor named Joel Stockstill.  Our youth group was touched by the message of the cross that he preached with conviction.  Not only is he the son of a famous minister but he also is a pastor of the largest youth group in America of about 6,000 students.  As a youth pastor I was encouraged by his journey of faith and willingness to not compromise and see God come through miraculously.  At the time of the conference his wife was struggling with cancer and it didn't look good.  But Joel was still full of faith and trust in God.  I was sadly informed last night that his wife passed away at the age of 24.  They had only been married for 3 years and tragedy has hit there family.  I was so impressed by how Joel and his family have been handling this impossible circumstance.  I recommend visiting www.joelstockstill.com to read the posts of how they have been processing through all this.  I hope that when I face impossible situations in my life that I will respond with the same faith and courage as Joel Stockstill has. 

different? prove it!

Instead of wearing the "sin police" badge as Christians our job is to not conform to the evil desires we had when we lived in ignorance but to strive to be holy in everything we do.  To be holy means to be "consecrated" or "set apart".  Unfortunately I don't always behave that differently from nonbelievers.  Do you?

I believe that most Christians are in the same boat as me or maybe even worse off.  Here are some statistics by the well-respected researcher George Barna. 

Who serves more-Christians or non-Christians?  If you guessed Christians you are right.  27% of non-Christians give their time to non-profit causes, compared to 29% of believers.  Christians out shined non-believers in serving by a whopping 2%.  Not exactly a convincing difference. 

48% of non-Christians said they gave in the last month to charitable organizations, compared to only 47% of Christians.  Over half of American Christ followers didn't give any money to missions, to their church, or to the poor.  This is a colossal tragedy.

The exact same percentage of Christians and non-Christians (36%) read their horoscope daily. 

27% of Christian adults have been divorced, compared to 23% of non-believers.  It seems that more people who promised God not to get divorced ended their marriage than those married by the justice of the peace.

It is time to stop spending our time scoffing at non-Christians and their lack of morality and start living differently.  The next time I hear a minister use words like "the world" or "the culture" in a derogatory way I think I will probably chuckle because chances are the church is just like them.  I don't blame non-believers who think church is judgmental and full of hypocrites because often times we are.

God calls us to be different.  Sometimes we are...in the wrong ways.  God make us different in our actions.

dissect

There is gut wrenching feeling in my stomach lately as I strive to figure out what God has in store for me.  I spend hours thinking of all the endless opportunities, plans and things that will come my way in 2008.  But it doesn't ever do anything for me except make me more anxious and confused.  I feel like I am trying to reduce an irreducible God, which is absolutely frivolous.  It is like cutting up a corpse to figure out what it is like to be human-sure, you'd end up with identifiable body parts in formaldehyde, but the wonder of pulsing human life will elude you.  Do you think you could find in the human brain clues to love or friendship, or what it means to be a child of God?  At times I feel like I am dissecting God, putting Him in jars, labeling His parts, breathing a sigh of relief because I have figured Him out, there is no more confusion and now God fits in my little box. 

God was never meant to be put into jars or explained by theological terms but to be a mystery that captivates our hearts.  I am discovering that following God and living in suspense of what the next day may bring is what is so fun about being in a relationship with Him.  I hope that we all can learn to let God be unexplainable and mysterious and learn to worship Him because of who He is rather than what He does or doesn't do for us.  Lay down our scalpels and Greek lexicons (maybe I am the only nerd who uses them) and spend some time  reflecting on God's beauty and awesome presence and let tomorrow worry about itself.