Category: Uncategorized Page 59 of 71

Recently one of the questions I was asked by a family new to the area and looking for a new church home was this one:

“What are your top three book recommendations that you’ve read over the past few years?”

That’s an excellent question to ask a pastor. But I’d like to ask all of you that same question, but let me put it in these terms:

What are the top three books that you would recommend that I read?

The categories are wide open. Fiction, non-fiction, self-help (even Blogging for Dummies!), theology, children’s books, whatever.

My stack of books to read is towering, but I’m always on the lookout for hidden gems.

No need to think deeply about this, either. Give me the first three that come to your mind. You can always revisit and give me three more.

Technorati Tags: Books

A good friend of mine is a man born out of time. He is 29 and he is an connoisseur of the music I grew up with.

When he was in high school, he and his twin brother heard for the first time a Beatles song and they were captivated and started a Beatles cover band. A Beatles cover band in the 90s by a couple of high school kids. Go figure.

Over the years he has nurtured a love for all kinds of pop music. He knows more about the music of my high school days than I do, and I lived it. And now, he wants to share his knowledge, and he is having a blast doing it.

Keith has the ability to see the quality and the artistry that can exist in popular music. To pass this appreciation on, he has started a blog called Snowbot. His intention is to daily post a brief analysis of a popular song from the past fifty years. He discusses it, gives a link to where you can stream the song to hear it, and provides purchase information for those who would like to add the song to their libraries. (He is old fashioned enough to think that one should pay for his music!)

The blog is new and it is unique. I have had the joy of being introduced to music from eras with which I am unfamiliar, and of being reintroduced to music that I grew up with.

Check it out!

Good work, Keith! I’m sending all of my readers your way. Both of them.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Music

Monday of this week was one of those days. In fact, this has been a week or two for the record books. But Monday was especially tough. But three things encourage me nevertheless.

The first is friends. I have guys I can turn to in a heartbeat. Geoff at Be Thou My Vision gave recent testimony to the power of community. For a pastor, community is especially important, and yet for many, elusive. I’m grateful for what God has given me.

The second is the gospel. I do not have to despair. There is a gospel that points me to an historic reality that, contrary to all sense, God has given to me Himself through his Son. What need any of us fear losing when we have ben given such a treasure?

The third was a word given in its proper time. After dinner Monday, for family worship, I was to read Psalm 3. A more appropriate Psalm could hardly have been chosen. But I did not choose it; God did.

If I’ve had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, my wife has had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad couple of weeks (friend battling cancer, daughter suffering a miscarriage, sister diagnosed with a brain tumor). But a friend called her today. And she sees the cross. And she holds up.

God is good. He has told us there would be days like this. Weeks, too. And months. Even in Australia, and even in Bradenton.

And if you do not understand the allusions in the title and conclusion of this post, get thee to a library and find Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and read it immediately. I think you’ll find it more accessible than Crime and Punishment!

Technorati Tags: Ministry, Struggle

When driven by greed, there will be blood.

After watching the Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood the other night, I puzzled over the title. The title together with the ‘R’ rating makes one think that this movie is, as a NY Times reviewer said of Kill Bill, a ‘blood bath and beyond.’ It is not. I’m surprised, actually, by the ‘R’ rating. “So, why the title?” I wondered.

There are a number of ways that a story well told – and this is a story well told – can be redemptive. There can be in the course of a story a recognition by a character of his sin with some resultant growth or change. There is growth, there is renewal. That is redemption. But a story can have a redemptive impact as well by showing the inevitable consequences of the sinful choices we make. Greed is the idol driving the characters in this movie, and each bears the consequences of his idolatry.

Some Christians have found it hard to swallow that one of the main characters in this film is a Christian preacher, unflatteringly portrayed. Is this another Hollywood slam against Christianity? Possibly. But P.T Anderson has portrayed Christians positively as well. The power in the movie is in showing that whether we religious or not, the results of the worship of a false god are the same. The preacher and the oilman fall together. There will be blood.

Perhaps your take on this film is different. I’d like to hear. Here, though, is a work of art produced by a non-Christian which, under the oversight of the good providence of God, lays before us visually and powerfully deep truths. True, the film gives no answers. But therein is the opportunity for winsome Christian witness. P. T. Anderson has powerfully shown us the wages of sin. It is up to us to help people see the gift of life that is in Jesus.

Technorati Tags: Movies, Outreach

It’s a cliche to say “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

But in the case of this post, I absolutely could not have said this better. Even if you do not understand some of the references in the post, catch the gist of it. We can make the idea of the perfect family a destructive idol and not even know it.

Read this. Let me know what you think. I could not have said it better myself, and now that it has been so well said, I don’t have to!

Technorati Tags: Parenting

I have found a good apologetic for the importance of church membership. It is a chapter in a book called What Is a Healthy Church by Mark Dever. As far as I can tell, the chapter is not available as a separate downloadable document. However, the chapter can be read for a limited time here. If you have friends who are struggling with this issue, read this or, if you think it appropriate, forward a link to this post to them.

UPDATE: The link seems to only take you to the book and not to the chapter. The chapter in question is “Your Christianity and Your Church” on page 21.

—–

Note: This book, and the other I referred to earlier, were both given to me by a friend. Is he trying to tell me something by giving me What Is a Healthy Church? and Humility: True Greatness at the same time? If the next book he gives me is What to Do when You Are Overweight or something like that, I think I’m going to have to have a talk with him!

Technorati Tags: Church

Convicting words here from C. J. Mahaney from his little book Humility: True Greatness.

“When’s the last time you specifically and sincerely informed your child of an evidence of grace that you’ve observed in his or her life? If it’s been longer than a week, it’s been too long. You have some work to do and something to look forward to.

“If you aren’t faithful to encourage, you can be sure you will eventually exasperate your child. But if you are faithful, then when the times for necessary correction come—and they will come—the adjustment will be far more effective because the environment you’ve created isn’t correction centered, but grace centered.“ (page 107)

Helpful words for those of us who want our parenting, weak as it is, to be full of grace.

Technorati Tags: Parenting, Grace

Are we a “Contemporary” or “Traditional” church? I wish I had a dollar gallon of gasoline for each time I’ve been asked that question. I’d like to answer, “Neither” for though on the surface HPC appears very traditional, we want to break free of both categories.

Why? Well for one thing, contemporary and traditional visions of the ministry and nature of the church often intersect in ironic ways. One intersection occurs at the fundamental nature of outreach. Both the contemporary ‘seeker sensitive’ and the militantly traditional churches act as if outreach occurs when people come to church. (I know this is an oversimplification, but there is an element of truth here.) Both expect non-Christians to come to the church and both assume that that is where evangelism will happen. The contemporary ministry responds to this conviction by making itself attractive enough so that more will come. The traditional church does not change, and so few come. But the expectation is the same for both because they share a common assumption.

It is, however, a flawed assumption.

Rarely will the non-Christian in our day enter a church. He sees no need to do so, and he sees no relevance of the church to his real life. There is nothing he sees in the church which would make him think that the church has anything to offer him. Merely changing the environment of the church from ‘traditional’ to ‘contemporary’ does not change the fundamental attitude that most in our culture share. For that, we must rethink ministry.

That a rethinking is necessary is a point made by Jim Petersen in several books published by Navpress. This quote, from his book Lifestyle Discipleship makes the point better than I could:

“As our society abandons its foundations of biblical religion and gropes its way toward neo-paganism, certain things become obvious. For one, the distance between biblical truth and modernity’s mind-set is widening. Truth of any kind, even the kind that science can offer, is being rejected. Gross contradictions are in. People are creating their own designer religions, and if we happen to object on the basis of reason, it is we who are the bigots. America is as religious as ever, but we are changing gods.

”What this means in practical terms is that our basic strategy for connecting with the unbelieving world is going to have to change. Until now, our assumption has been that somehow, sooner or later, we can manage to get them to come to us. That assumption is becoming increasingly unrealistic. A certain percentage will come, perhaps enough to keep us distracted and even feeling successful, but the vast majority will not. For them, what we do in church is irrelevant.“ (page 27)

The issue is not really whether we are ‘contemporary’ or ‘traditional’ when we are not understanding the mindset of the culture we have been called to reach.

I’m curious what you think. Is this an accurate assessment of the American culture in which we live? If so, what rethinking of ministry does it suggest to your mind?

Technorati Tags: Ministry, Outreach

Barb and I took in two movies this Friday night, which is normal for us. But normally we see both of these at home, with a trip to Starbucks during halftime. The movies help us relax, and the trip to Starbucks gives us a chance to talk. It is a strong routine that works for us.

Rarely do we take in a movie at a theater. But rarely does a new Indiana Jones adventure hit the cinema. So, Friday at 5:15 we entered a completely empty theater for a nearly private screening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (We were later joined by a girl and her father. The rest of the world was apparently watching Sex and the City that evening.) We spent the next two hours thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Is it over the top? Of course. It’s Indiana Jones. But it was witty and intriguing and an awful lot of fun, a lot of fun that is missed, I think, if seen on a small screen.

It was also lucky. Face it. Indy never makes a false move. He always reaches his objective, and always is standing just outside the zone of real danger. When he is within range of a nuclear blast, he finds a lead lined refrigerator to climb into. Luck. And even though he is nearly blown into orbit by the blast, he emerges unscathed. Luck.

Luck rules adventure flicks. But does it rule real life? Yes, as far as Woody Allen is concerned. That was the focus of our second movie, Match Point. Is it better to be lucky or good? In this film which is far more interesting and watchable than I had anticipated (if you can tolerate the ‘R’ rated elements) it is clear on which side of that fence Allen’s sensibilities lie. There is some wonderful acting in this movie, and it is a story in which one can sympathize with some characters (Emily Mortimer is a gem) and understand others (Scarlett Johansson is more than eye candy; she can act) and despise still others (Jonathan Rhys Meyers – did he win the ‘Best Creep in a Leading Role’ Oscar?). Good storytelling makes one care. I don’t like the answers that Allen proposes to the question. But there is no doubt that many side with him.

An ironic footnote is that some threads of the movie are clearly suggested by Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which Meyer’s character is seen reading early in the film. One vote for literacy, there!

Technorati Tags: Literature, Movies

To the complete embarrassment of my wife, can I say publicly both “Happy Birthday” and “How did I get to be so lucky?”

Today is Barb’s birthday, the pretty one in this picture. She is here seen with one of her little boys.

It has been publicly reported that she is 23, but we all know that cannot be true. (We’ve been in Bradenton for 23 years, and she was older than 2 months old when we came.) No, in reality she is 32, but she has the wisdom of a woman much older. And the best thing is, given the time, there is still no one in the world that I more enjoy ‘hanging out’ with. What a blessing she has been to me.

The Proverbs ask, “A good wife, who can find?” It’s not so hard. By God’s grace, I wake up next to one every morning.

Happy Birthday, Barb. How did I get to be so lucky?

I know, it’s providence. A wonderful providence.

But I sure feel lucky to have been the beneficiary of such providence!

Technorati Tags: Family