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Monthly Archives: August 2010
Serving Schools
Schools all over the country are making cutbacks because of budget restrictions forcing parents to buy more and more supplies for schools. The video below from ABC World News tells the story.
So, in a effort to serve our local schools, we have begun an initiative called CASH FOR CLASS.
The idea is simple, students, families, friends, and educators are all encouraged to dine at Java Joe’s and we will donate 10% of their purchase to local schools.
Each month we will feature a school. September’s school is Byars Dowdy.
These cards have been sent home with each student.
If you do not have a student at Byars Dowdy, but would like to bless our schools click here, print, and present it at the time of your purchase and 10% will be donated.
Splitting Wood
Seth Godin, on his blog, writes:
When using an axe to split logs, it’s awfully tempting to aim at the top of the log.
After all, if you miss the log entirely, it’s dangerous or at the very least, ineffective. One can argue that if you don’t split the top, it’s pointless—nothing else will happen.
The problem with aiming at the top is that the axe loses momentum before its work is done and you end up with a stuck axe and half a split log.
No, the best approach is to focus on splitting the bottom of the log. Split the bottom and the top takes care of itself.
Split the bottom and the top takes care of itself?
Not to think about this in terms of hierarchal leadership – I’m at the “top” because I’m the pastor – but rather multiplying from the bottom up.
What I am trying to say is (I’m thinking out loud here) that I have concerned myself over the past 2 years with multiplying leadership and all I have been left with is lost momentum and an ax stuck in a log.
Of course a church needs leadership, but what if we simply multiply the people of God and let the “top” take care of itself.
Any thoughts that could help flesh this out a bit?
The Kingdom of Heaven is like . . .
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour (Matthew 25:1-13, ESV).
Jesus said once, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” He is saying something very similar to that in the above parable: “Many are invited and will join in wait for the bridegroom, but few will actually remain to follow him to the feast when he comes.”
What is the analogy in our lives today?
What does it mean for us to have oil in reserve, for us to be ready to follow the bridegroom?
God requires one and only one thing of us: He wants us to want the coming of His Kingdom more than we want anything else in this life. This is all He asks. At the end of this age, when nothing of this world remains, if He finds that we want, from the core of our being, the Kingdom He intends to establish, then citizenship in that Kingdom is ours. But if He finds our eyes, our desires, and our affections fixed on the stuff that is passing away, then we are unworthy of His Kingdom, and His words to us will be, “I do not know you.”
I would suggest that this parable sheds some light on what we understand ourselves to be about. I sincerely hope that we are like the oil dealers mentioned in Jesus’ parable: the ones that the foolish virgins went looking for (although it was too late for them). Our desire is to persuade anyone and everyone who will listen of the surpassing value of God’s coming Kingdom in order that we might fill the flask of their desire with a hunger and thirst for that Kingdom.
We talk about a lot of different things; our interests are wide and varied; but one thing that I hope underlies everything that we do: we want to persuade those who have been foolish to get a little oil for their flask. In other words, we want to persuade them to trade in a faith that is fragile and tentative for a faith that can endure anything; to trade in a weak and fading love for God’s kingdom for a love that runs deep and strong; to trade in a casual interest in the eternal Life which God has promised for a raging hunger; and to trade in a commitment that is divided and distracted for one that is single-minded and focused.
Hipster Church
Over at the Q blog, they are asking some interesting questions in the article: Church: Marketing a Non-Commercial Message?
Here are some of the questions from the post.
⇒ But what happens to our faith when we turn it into a product to sell?
⇒ What does it mean to package Christianity in a methodical manner so as to make it salient to as wide an audience as possible?
⇒ What does Christianity lose when it becomes just one piece of a consumer transaction?
⇒ We market products, sports teams, movies, and … Jesus?
The result in marketing a non-commercial message is:
Christianity also becomes indistinguishable from any other marketed commodity. When people are “sold” Christianity in the same way that they are sold a pair of shoes or a cell phone upgrade, people will naturally think of Christianity in the same way that they do any other consumer product; that is, as a lifestyle choice and brand with which they currently identify but might easily abandon if a better offer comes down the pike. . . Converts to this gospel will likely be like the seeds on rocky soil in Matthew 13—rootless.
Read the rest of the article here.
Feel free to come back and comment.
Blank Bible Challenge
I came across this interesting campaign this morning. The Seed Company has unveiled an initiative to churches across the country designed to bring awareness for the need of Scripture translation for people groups that have never had the biblical text in their language.
The concept is that since 353 million people have no Scripture in their language—essentially, their Bible is “blank.”
Furthermore, other statistics show that 66% of professing Christians rarely or never read their Bible—essentially, their Bible is “blank” as well. So the promoters of the campaign designed it to reconnect people who probably own several Bibles in several translations with the text while bringing awareness to and raising funding for translating the more than 2,200 languages that are without even one verse of Scripture
To learn more about the Blank Bible Challenge, visit BlankBible.org.
Mission and Discipleship
Len Hjalmarson provides this great illustration on the inextricable relationship between mission and discipleship.
What do you think?
A Wandering Stranger Sam
Yesterday Sam wandered into our gathering. In the midst of our discussion around the great “Why?” of God from Psalm 67, I asked this question: What does God’s blessing look like in your life?
After some blank stares, Sam speaks up and begins to tell his story.
He replies: “God’s blessing looks like salvation to me.”
With that Sam begins telling about how he has been homeless for 10+ years. Friday night he had been standing on an interstate off ramp in Knoxville with a sign looking for handouts when a man stopped and offered to buy him a meal at the Waffle House.
While at the Waffle House, the man who picked up Sam, began to tell him of the grace of God and Sam said “I don’t know if anyone has ever gotten on their knees and prayed for God’s forgiveness inside a Waffle House, but God saved me Friday night.”
After this man and Sam parted ways, a woman pulled up beside him in her car as he made his way to bed down for the night and handed him a bag with fresh clothes, shoes that happened to be his size, some razors, a coupon for a shower at the nearby truck stop, and a Gideon’s Bible.
Sam said describing this: “God just kept on blessing me.”
He took a shower and made a phone call he had been wanting to make for 10 years. Sam called his mother in Wyoming. Sam’s mother answered the collect call and before he could begin to tell her of his recent salvation, Sam’s mother already knew before he called because, as she told him “I have been praying for you.”
God didn’t stop there. After getting off the phone with his mother, Sam vowed to be in sitting in church with his mother next Sunday. He met a trucker who dropped him off beside our space this morning who also agreed to pick him back up after being loaded and take him as far as Nebraska with him.
Sam said: “God has blessed me today with this church. I walked around and saw some of the large church buildings, but felt like I could never walk into them. Thank you for being here.”
God saved Sam in a Waffle House, so I guess Sam could fit in a church in a coffe shop.
I’m glad we could be the body of Christ for Sam today.
God’s speed to you Sam.
We are praying for you and the life in its fullest that Jesus has in store for you. I cannot wait to see you again one day and here the story of you sitting beside you mother in church Sunday.