caffeine, please.

Quotable friends

In my opinion, it is good to have quotable friends.  People who say profound things.  This is particularly important if you are not quotable.  You can borrow the Quotability Quotient (QQ) of others (as long as you employ footnotes--not sure how that works in conversation.)  Yesterday I had several quotable friends.

In our discussion of the importance of "the meeting before the meeting" under the Law of EF Hutton, Kyle shared: 

• The most important meeting before the meeting happens for me early in the morning with Jesus.  When I meet with him before all my meetings, all my meetings go better.

Powerful insight.  Jesus is the real influencer/leader in every meeting and experience so being on the same page with Him is the most critical prep for any meeting.

Speaking of being on the same page... I think its overrated.  I'd rather be on the right page than the same page.  And sometimes you have to be on the right page all alone before you can lead people to be on the same right page.  Anyway...

Nate shared in prayer during our staff meeting an idea that I had heard expressed before but it just struck me with his simple elloquence in saying it.  He prayed, "God, thank you that our plan B was your plan A on Sunday" (referring to our Church in the Building (our plan B) v. Church in the Street (our plan A).  Well put. 

Sometimes the best thing that can happen to my desires and prayers is that God doesn't meet them.  Wow. 

Great blog and a great video

I just added a new blog, The Missional Challenge, to the "blogs you should be reading instead of mine" list in the left hand column.  The blog turned me on to this powerful message from Michael Frost, a buddy of Alan Hirsch.  If you have 51 minutes, I highly recommend the vid.

Weekend reflections

So this past weekend we were supposed to have Church on the Street.  Instead we had Church in the Building.  Revolutionary. 

Great thing is, it was a great worship celebration anyway.  Several people responding to an invitation to surrender to Jesus, worship that seemed to raise the roof and a touching testimony and baptism.  All things considered, getting derailed was no big deal.  And next week we'll try Church in the Street again.

Big props to Tony O., EJ, Mike H., Nate, Freddy, Hector, the worship team, and a big team of volunteers who were there very early to make the outdoor service (not) happen and then to reengage worship in the building.

Excited for this coming Sunday at 10:45am out on the street!

Brand and franchise?

This article didn't sit well with me.  I realize the WSJ is a business paper and the article was highlighting the business and expansion plans of multi-site churches.  But the quotes from pastors in this article left a bad taste in my mouth.  I felt like Jesus would be pounding his fist as he read it. 

I think we need to be a little more self-critical and discerning in how we use words like "branding", "franchise" and "growth" or we may simply fall into the commodities pit at the futures market with little to distinguish us from other "markets". 

Take a look and give me your thoughts...

The good, the shack, and the ugly

I read The Shack.

I'm not sure you should.  But I did.  This book is catching fire and selling lots of copies. 

Here's what I found admirable about the book:

• It expresses God as emotionally engaged and individually concerned.
• It pictures God redeeming pain for His glory and peoples' good.
• It faces harsh, harsh realities rather than running from them with platitudes.
• It pictures the possibility of real healing.
• The chapter where the main character wrestles with judgment is deeply insightful about human nature.

Here's what I found impossible to accept or overlook about the book:

• It distorts rather than clarifies God's Trinitarian nature as revealed in Scripture.
• It presents God as needing to masquerade, ala Satan, in order to reach and heal people.
• It is highly speculative in an area where speculation is most dangerous--i.e. the nature and communion of God within Himself.
• It presents the idea that interaction with the dead for the sake of reconciliation is normative and helpful.  In fact, key to the healing of the main character are his two interactions with his dead loved ones.  Scary.
• It tries to get some things right while at the same time getting some things hopelessly wrong--the most dangerous kind of lie is the one that has a good bit of truth in it.
• It compromises the clear identity of the first person of the Trinity, the Father, as Father for much of the book. 
• It represents the Father and the Spirit as human women rather than as Spirit.  It makes a graven image of God.  And make no mistake--people are worshiping this image.  Spoken to one of our pastors this past Sunday:  "The god of The Shack, that's my god."  Yikes.
• It casts submission and hierarchy into a category of sin and invention when Scripture reveals these concepts to be part of the very nature and inner communion of God.
• It is highly dismissive of the church, suggesting that a few people hanging out and skipping rocks with Jesus is really what He intended with the Church.
• The prose is pretty preachy and not terribly well written in my opinion.

Note to "Christian authors:  feel free to play around with non-essential areas of theology like the rapture or imagined dialog between Paul and his companions while planting churches in the first century. 

But please.  Please.  Leave the Trinitarian nature of God alone.  People have a hard enough time with the nature of God without you making it harder.

Men and leadership, summertime edition

This morning was the first gathering of a 7 week men's small group I'm leading this summer.  Pretty awesome to have 15 men come together at 6:30am at our Lincoln Park location to "raise their leadership lid" as followers of Jesus.

The group has 3 main components:

• Men memorizing scripture related to leadership each week.
• Men learning and discussing the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell (3 per week)
• Men praying for each other in small prayer clusters each week.

My prayer for this group of men?  Well obviously, that each man would grow as a Jesus-following leader.  And more specifically that 3 pairs of men would step and lead 3 different men's small groups this coming fall.  I definitely love working with men and wrestling with leadership issues to help men grow as leaders.  Feels like a power spot for me.

Now boarding...

I met with a couple yesterday afternoon from one of our locations.  He resides in England.  She's moving to England.  Welcome to Union Station. 

She has a Christian background.  He has a nominal Hindu background, is not yet a Christian and enjoys coming to New Life when he is in town.  What a privilege to be able to point him toward some next steps in his journey toward redemption and life with Jesus and to give them some relationship counsel. 

My counsel to him was:

• Read the Gospels.  A lot.  No substitute for first hand interaction with the life of Jesus.  Also suggested buying an mp3 version like the Bible Experience.
• Look up an Alpha group when you get back home to London.  Alpha is a great group for introducing the basics of Christianity to an interested seeker.
• Resist the temptation to overstate your spiritual progress to your girlfriend in order to keep her.  Be gut-level honest at every step.

And to them was:

• Be sexually celibate.
• Get premarital counsel.
• Find a good church.  And go each Sunday--listen to the truth and be impacted by community and worship.
• Don't pursue marriage if you're not both Christians.

One of the toughest parts of my job is to tell people what they may not want to hear.  There is no escaping it though--truth always cuts against life and I deal with both daily.  But I am convinced that truth can always be given with grace.  My hope is that my responses are "seasoned with grace" and motivated by love.

Nugget

I asked my son, Tyce, as I was tucking him in last night, "how was God at work in your day today?"  I shared an example from my day and then waited for him.

"...when I took the playground toy from Olivia and I confessed and asked for her forgiveness." 

Beautiful!  God shows up when we humble ourselves and reconcile with people we've sinned against.  Happiest fathering moments are these.

The gospel expressed through pain

Laura is a sophomore in college ministering this summer with Christ's Hope International in Kisumu, Kenya.  I spent time with the Christ's Hope team in Kisumu on my first trip to Kenya in August of 2006.  (Tangentially, Kisumu is the home town of Barak Obama's father.) 

Laura shared this story about a very recent occurrence while serving there:

GRACE LIKE RAIN...

Wednesday, June 4th, I was about an hour out of Kisumu when I got a phone call from another volunteer, Desmond, saying I needed to come back immediately... our friend Solomon had a boy in the hospital who was dying, and there was no blood in the hospital.  I had the same blood type as he did, and I needed to get back there if there was any chance for him to live.

A writer

Jaley is a writer.  Its as clear as anything to me that whatever she may do in her future, writing will be a part of it.  At 10 years old she already has a unique voice and she knows how to craft a story with a beginning middle and end that engage the reader.  I guess I'm shocked by it because I couldn't put two sentences together at 10 years old. 

Here's a poem from her 4th grade writing anthology:

Tickle

I softly tickle
my brother's foot.
His response
is a scream.
An absolutely expected
scream.

If you tickle
his stomach, neck,
leg, back--he'll scream.
Almost his whole body is ticklish.

It is funny
to think
about what disaster
would happen
if someone lightly laid
their fingers on him
in a restaurant
or if a napkin accidentally
got brushed over his neck
on his first date.

What if
a shell gently
got brushed over his foot
at the beach?

Without his scream
he wouldn't be as unique.
He wouldn't be as funny.
I'd be disappointed
if his scream
ever went away.

M Night Shyamalan and that uncooperative will

Shyamalan has a movie coming out today. Its supposed to be scary.  I'm not really concerned one way or another.  I've not seen his movies but it seems to me that he is an important story teller in this generation.

In a brief write up in the Red Eye (does the RE have any other type of article?) the author reveals that Shyamalan has had a hard time dealing with recent "failures" (i.e. movies that only gross between 70 and 250 million dollars.) 

"I'm surprised at how unnecessarily unhappy I've always made myself.  If it ended right now, man, I've had the best career.  But I was upset the whole way.  About what?  What a stupid way to go about life.  You miss it all."

But now, "Shyamalan seems to have arrived at an oasis of gratitude and acceptance."  The writer points out, though, that if reviews for this latest movie don't pan out, his "Zen-like detachment could quickly vanish."

And then Shyamalan says, "I can see the right way to think about things.  I just can't always maintain it."

Sounds a lot like Paul in Romans 7.  "I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out."

What was Paul's answer to this trouble?  This challenge of merging what he knows and wants with what he does?

"Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Good theology

This is theology expressed powerfully.  Michael Ovey writes in God's Power to Save:

To say that God is simple is not saying that God is somehow simple-minded, or that he is a primitive prototype as against later and more advance models.  To say that God is simple is to say, first, that in God all his attributes are essential.  There are no optional extras in God, something added on to the basic product.  It is not the case with God that some attributes are primary, some secondary...  Simplicity minimizes the desiergner-deity tendency humans have, the urge to pick and mix the attributes we personally like the best...  Second, simplicity means that all God's attributes are integrated.  God is not a mixture or composition of more basic principles, into which he can be divided...  As all the attributes are equally essential, so all the attributes are inseparable.  So simplicity means we cannot set God's attributes in opposition to each other:  his is a pitying truth and a truthful pity. 

Affirmed

My dad called me tonight.  My dad is the hardest working man I know.  And not just on his job.  He works hard at everything.  He's worked hard all his life.  I respect my dad a ton.

My dad called me tonight... for advice.  Its not the first time.  The details don't matter.  He just wanted some spiritual input about a family situation and I was the one he turned to.  After we talked I prayed for him as he has to make a decision.  It felt like God met with us as we talked.  It was a holy moment.

There's probably nothing that makes me feel more affirmed as a man of God than the fact that I have my dad's respect.  He knows everything foolish thing I said or did for the first 18 years of my life.  He's watched me make mistakes as an adult.  He's had a front row seat to my life.

And after all that my dad knows about me and has seen in me, he wants to hear what I have to say.  He trusts me.  That really is something.  I'm emotional as I write because it really hits me deep.  I think what it tells me is that my dad believes in me.  And that is the core of what affirmation does--it says, "I believe in you."  And asking for someone's help can be a powerful means of affirmation.

Leadership convictions

I'm preparing to lead a 7 week men's leadership small group staring Wednesday, June 18 at 6:30am.  In preparation I've been going over leadership lessons I've learned and reviewing material that has helped me grow as a leader.  I'm processing that material and intertwining it with John Maxwell's 21 Laws of Leadership for 7 weeks of teaching and interaction that I believe is going to help men increase their JLQ (Jesus-leadership quotient). 

I'm passionate about men understanding and acting on their leadership calling.  And as a result, I'm wanting to invest more time in the growth of leaders.  My personal mission statement is to Incite and Harness Kingdom Transformation.  In other words, I want to lead people to be leaders who make a difference for Jesus.

I have a growing personal conviction related to leadership.  Its a generalization but I believe it is true:

Women can exercise leadership.
Men must exercise leadership.

I believe there is a built in need inside of a man to lead people.  I think that is why marital research has unearthed that the #1 emotional need of husbands is to be respected by his wife.  Respect is a leadership concept.  Men want to know that in their sphere of leadership, they are leading well. 

Men are called to many different types and spheres of leadership, but deep inside of a man is a need to fulfill a leadership mandate.  It touches a deep part of his identity.  And can I say also that I believe the church in this generation is starving for men who are strong, effective, Jesus-following leaders?  Men who don't fear going first, being holy, taking risks, laying down their lives and advancing the Kingdom? 

I'm getting psyched to be teaching toward the core of what excites me and I'm praying for a group of men that have a catalytic leadership experience together in this small group this summer.

Friday fun with a spoonful of insight

This video appears as a companion piece to a hilarious and insightful Slate article.  Worth the 8 minute investment...

Connective tissue

Meeting with Tom Barrett (one of the pastors at Holy Trinity Church) this morning brought that image to my mind.  The body needs a skeleton and organs but it also needs soft connective tissue--ligaments, tendons, skin--that bind the different parts together and give the body have form and flexibility. 

I think it is God's heart that all the different expressions of church community in a particular region would have lots of connective tissue.  That churches bearing different names but the same Jesus would be full of attachments and connections. 

It was good to get up to speed with what Holy Trinity is doing during this season and to share some of our journey.  Life-giving churches communicate, bless and cooperate with fellow churches and leaders.   I'm grateful that this has always been New Life's legacy. 

Opraytunity, follow up

We had a good meeting with the Bethel leadership council last night.  We were able to share our restart journey and let them know how we could be one of the options they consider at this crossroads for the church.

The emotion for leaders in a church that is figuring out if it should continue ministry or pass the baton are very sensitive and raw.  Even with a lot of grace, it can be dicey.  I think Pastor Mark pastored the moment well.  I was also grateful that Chuck McWherther was there to share with them since he is a man who has walked in their same shoes.  He was a blessing.

Our prayer is that the West Humboldt Park community would have a life-giving, Jesus-centered church ministering in the Bethel space for the next 100 years.  Beyond that, who it is doesn't matter.  Pray for the council and pastor as they pray, plan and decide what to do.

In the blogosphere...

Here's a quick link to blog entry at Multi-site Revolution...

Urban ministry

Every now and then I get back to my ministry alma mater, Inner City Impact, and speak in chapel.  This week is their annual summer missionary orientation and and they asked me back to speak to the staff. 

It brought back memories.  10 years ago, I was one of the full time staff welcoming the new summer workers.  Good to catch up with old friends and also to meet the newer staff and summer staff.  Also several members of ICI's team are beginning a new work in Cicero and are a part of our New Life Cicero location--very cool.

My talk was on "keys to urban ministry"--which gave me a good opportunity to review my own history in Chicago and think through what I've learned and what has been most important in my growth process.  Here are the bullet points of what I shared (most of which I related back to Acts 17, my favorite "missional" chapter in the New Testament):

• Stay constantly engaged as a student and learner.
• Do things you're not supposed to do—always experiment.
• Be gospel-centered AND contextualized.
• Get some “Holy Stubbornness”.
• • Most of urban ministry fruitfulness involves things anyone can do but few people actually accomplish.
• Work in an interdependent team or die.
• Sabbath.
• Expand your vision--see God's heart for the whole city.

I needed this laugh

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

Opraytunity

Tomorrow evening Pastor Mark and I will be meeting with the leadership council of Bethel Lutheran Church in West Humboldt Park.  Bethel was founded in 1894--same year as New Life Lakeview (then Galilee Baptist.)  The church has struggled to reach the community over the last era and they are looking at options for the future of the church.

We connected with their team through a strange route--another pastor's children were taught by the wife of the lead elder.  (You might need your toes and fingers to calculate that one.)  We've had a couple initial meetings with the pastor and elder but this meeting will be more of a formal proposal.  Two other ministries will also be presenting proposals to the church council. 

This is an Opraytunity (not to be confused with an Oprahtunity.)  Something we crossed paths with by Divine accident and which we are pursuing with an open-hand.  "God, this could be an opportunity you want us to pursue or it might not be.  Please confirm your heart and allow us to walk forward with generous passion."

Will you join us in praying?  Thanks.

Generational gap

My kids are freaking me out.  I thought I was pretty up-to-date with technology and culture.  Yesterday, through my kids, I realized I will be hopelessly out-of-date pretty soon.  Pretty much, I'm the guy in the "I'm a Mac" commercials representing "PC".

Yesterday, Gil and I were at a wedding and Jackie, our incredible singing friend, was with our kids.  She and Jaley conspired to write a song using Mac's Garage Band program.  Jackie provided vocal help and worked on the lyrics.  Jaley, my 10-year-old, put together the multiple audio tracks on her own to produce the song.  Who taught her the Garage Band program?  My 8 year old son, Tyce. 

Give it a listen...