Unchurched Next Door

I just finished a book entitled The Unchurched Next Door. (<--Link brings up amazon's listing). It is based on a research project which sought to gain insights into the thoughts and attitudes of our nation's unchurched population. The team categorized these non-Christians based on their level of receptiveness to the gospel. Then they tried to find common threads in these groups that would help you and I in our efforts to witness to the lost. That is one area that I am woefully weak, and I know alot of you are as well. I don't even know who you are. I just know you're weak in witnessing. The overarching point of the book is this: say something. There are numerous stories from poeple who were searching for someone to share with them, or to just invite them to church. It is difficult to read accounts of these people dropping hints to their coworkers, hoping they would invite them, or just explain the whole Jesus thing to them. The overwhelming majority of the interview sample said that they were at least somewhat likely to come to church if someone invited them, and either picked them up or met them there. Most are just too intimidated to enter a church for the first time. I was intimidated visiting unfamiliar churches here in Fort Worth... and I'm in seminary! Anyway, it's an easy read that really opens your eyes to what's going on in the heads of those we're not reaching. Check it out

Humble

Seminary is really humbling. I'm in these classes with people who make me look silly. Silly is definitely the right word choice. Its good because I spend a good deal of my time with high school students. Comparing that context to the seminary context is like comparing a swimming pool to the middle of the ocean. I guess that fits. I don't really have time to think about it because I have to go be humbled through studying for a Greek quiz. People actually know that language. Isn't that crazy? I wish you could know how crazy that is.

Concert Pics from August

You may want to hit the maximize button in the bottom right hand corner.

Concert Video - David Crowder

Youth Camp

Youth camp was this past weekend. I had the opportunity to hang out with a few guys who really reminded me of myself right at the beginning of my walk. A pivotal point for me was a camp when I was 15. This weekend I remembered a conversation that I had after getting home from that camp. It was with a girl I was dating at the time. I must have talked for nearly an hour, explaining everything that had happened, that I had learned, that God had done. She was nearly silent. Then she sort-of laughed. I asked what she was laughing about and she said it was just weird how excited about I was about "that stuff." That moment was the first glimmer of the thought that I might wind up in full time ministry.

Chan

Jessica and I went to YouthLab tonight. Francis Chan spoke. Then we went directly to a breakout session where he spoke again. Right now, I'm not even going to try to use my fingers to type out the ways that God used the guy to speak to both Jessica and I. But we left before the 2nd breakout session because we didn't think we could possibly handle hearing another word from anyone. God choose to hit us powerfully.
Really.

Here's a link to Chan's video podcast. You'll have to have itunes for it to work... but you need that anyway right?

Marriage (continued)

I'm moving this from the comments section into the main blog in hopes that someone will see it... so read the comments from the first Marriage blog below, and (hopefully) respond somewhere.

-From the Comments-
I'm glad yall get where I'm coming from. I hate that the analogy of a messy car (kudos to the DP mention) fits my walk, cause my car is a mess way more than its clean. I hate admitting that thats true much of the time.

And I think that doing all the stuff that we do as Christians does often outweigh, or even wind up substituting the real relational work of getting to know God (any part) better.

Rachel mentioned the word steady, and thats how I feel a good deal of the time. But not steadily working hard in my walk like Jessica was talking about. Its more like floating around in the lake not really doing anything (also common in marriage).

Once the honeymoon period is over, is determination what drives you to push deeper, to stretch... to love better? Is it commitment? I'm not sure right now.

Little help?

Ambition

At some point before I was hired at Lake Arlington I had lunch with the youth pastor and the spiritual development pastor out there. I think it was a part of the interview process. Being hired at a church is a convoluted process. Anyway, the spiritual development guy's name is Eric. That is quicker to type. So Eric had some really good questions for me. I'm still thinking about some of them. Somewhere in the conversation, I asked about the dynamics between staff members at LABC. I probably wanted to take a bite of my delicious potato soup and needed someone else to talk for a minute. Somewhere in there he made the statement that alot of the guys on staff there were pretty ambitious.

I think ambition is good. I think aspiring to do great things is much better than the alternative of aspiring to do whats always been done, to never change, to be static and stagnant. But I've been chewing on the concept of ambition in ministry for a few months now. Its like a piece of over cooked steak that I'm not making much progress with.

Career is important for most people. Guys find alot of self worth in what they do. In many ways ambition is their driving force. In a normal job, like being a lawyer or something, you work toward the bigger and better job. However, in ministry, there is something really wrong about that being your motivation.

So, in the context of vocational ministry, what does it really mean to be ambitious AND to be in God's will? What does the Bible teach about that?

Marriage

I hear that Jessica and I should be on the back side of the honeymoon phase right now. Thats funny because I'm thinking more about our actual honeymoon right now than I have since I was on it. (I really want to go back. See the previous post). But thats not what I meant to be talking about right now.

I understand that marriages/relationships begin with a period of "great excitement and the thrill of discovery" (Sacred Marriage). I see that in my marriage. We had been dating for five years before we were married. I thought we wouldn't have a honeymoon phase, but we did anyway. Its pretty great. I also understand that the excitement levels out, and the relationship deepens, puts down some roots.

It seems pretty common among folks my age to be a little confused about their relationship with God right now. We were youth group kids. We sang our brains out to "Open the Eyes of My Heart" in ninth or tenth grade with a passion for God that just hasn't been matched in intensity since. I'm thinking the two are connected.

In the marriage realm, I love Jessica much more deeply than I did when we were married, even though that super-high excitement has leveled out. What if it isn't that we loved God more or better back then? What if we were flipping out about really discovering God for the first time... a lot like a honeymoon? What if we're off that kick and not getting back on it and it has long since been time to suck it up and do the real work of pushing and growing and deepening in our relationship with God, apart from the excitement/discovery thing, just like in marriage after things level out. Hanging onto the old instead of pushing into the new.

I'm not sure, but I've got a hunch that a lot of us, myself included, didn't know there was a honeymoon phase, and to a large degree we've been waiting for God to show up and sweep us off our feet again like the first time we really met him. Just like a lot of marriages, we've floated around, not doing anything to intentionally hurt our relationship, but not doing as much as we could be to further it either, all the while thinking back to how great it used to be.

I'm thinking that some of the apathy and laziness in our walks might be tied to some bit of disappointment we've (I've) got tucked away back there from things not being the same as they were. I totally get the logical answers to this stuff, but I'm trying to understand the issues behind those answers; the "why" questions.

What do you think?

Josiah's Bay

I was thinking about (read: longing for) the island we went to on our honeymoon, and especially this stretch of beach called Josiah's Bay. Its perfect. Anyway, I found some shots that give you a glimpse into my memory.

Missions

Its missions week out here in Texas. The chapel speaker from today encouraged all of us good seminarians who go (cough...are forced) to chapel to be open to the work God has for us in international missions. He had a nicely worded sentence that was supposed to be easy for me to remember that has now escaped me, but that was the general idea. Leaving chapel, I wondered out loud to a friend of mine how to equip, encourage, prepare, involve the local church in international missions. Its an area that I feel ill prepared for. I have not yet had the opportunity to be apart of any such project. We're planning on it, and you can send me some money if you want, but as of right now I don't have much to go on. Furthermore, I'm ignorant. When missionaries give messages about the needs of the world, I am learning. That isn't really a good thing. They breeze through a grotesque list of things that I know nothing about. Today's specifically included things like kids being chained to a board that they sleep on, 1.3 billion people who had never heard Jesus' name before, and oh yes, the people of somewhere who sell their children into slavery. I don't know where most of these places are. I don't know what the people in those places are going through. I certainly don't know how to instill a sense of responsibility to help or to facilitate an ability to follow through for the members of First Church USA concerning the people of... somewhere.

I'm called to student ministry. I have a booklet thing that an IMB guy gave me today. Page 16 has a picture of a 16-17 year old girl named Nic who is apparently a skateboarder from South Carolina (go figure) holding a naked baby in Bratislava, Slovakia. I'm not really sure what to do with that.

The Bumper Project

So check out the picture set of my bumper project over on the right

New Bike

The newest addition to the bike shop we've started in our apartment (a Trek 4300). We're currently the proud owners of this one, another trek, a specialized, a giant, and a cannondale. I think we have our bases covered.

P.S. we really don't have a bike shop.