This is great: Backflips (or close) Galore

I saw this on an Outside Magazine blog - and it cracked me up ... I wonder how many times over the years I looked like this when I messed up a goof-ball trick!

{NOTE: after watching this again and paying more attention to the music, I just want to put a disclaimer warning that about 1/3 of the way in the singer drops the f-bomb...you are now forewarned}

Another Church in the News for Beer and Bible

Here is a link to the story

Brooks Hanes, an all around good guy and stud church planter in Cedar Valley, Iowa, was written up in his local paper for his event: Grab a Brew, Share your View (where you have to be 18 to think and 21 to drink). I am thrilled to see young guys taking risks, stepping outside the traditional religious (American) boxes, and being used by God to create relationships with people simply not reached by traditional church models.

Take a look at the article and check out Kaio, Brooks' church plant.

The Journey in Post Dispatch Again

Below is the link to the story.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/keepthefaith/story/4341DF38A15E053186257380008103A7?OpenDocument

Here is the story.

It's always a bit of a thrill to associate with something scary.

That might have explained the large turnout at Covenant Seminary last
weekend for the Rev. Darrin Patrick's three lectures on the emerging
church.

The term "emerging" has come to define a movement that uses alternative
ways of attracting younger people by tapping into secular culture.

Patrick's St. Louis-based church, The Journey, is affiliated with the
Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the
country with 16 million members.

The leadership of the Missouri Baptist Convention — the state arm of the
Southern Baptists — has campaigned against the emerging church, though it
has a working relationship with The Journey. It says Patrick's methods of
evangelizing to young people conflict with what the Bible teaches.

But some scholars say those Baptists are afraid. Afraid because the
emerging church is reaching a generation they've been unable to reach
themselves. And without the young, how will a denomination survive?

The seminarians attending Covenant's Frances A. Schaeffer lectures last
weekend seemed more curious than bent on destroying denominational
Christianity. That Patrick delivered the three lectures within the walls of
a denominational institution (Covenant is run by the Presbyterian Church in
America, a conservative evangelical church) put to bed any conspiracy
theories about the emerging church stomping all traditional denominations
into the ground.

But there were signs that some seminarians at the lectures were there to
scope out the emerging church movement to see how it might fit into their
plans for their own ministries.

Bo Kyle, a 23-year-old Covenant student from Louisiana, said he was brought
up in a "traditional church" but "grew a lot" when he began worshipping at
emerging churches. He said he could see himself eventually practicing his
ministry in the emerging church.

Dawn Salyer, 25, and her husband are students at Covenant. "We came from a
small, traditional church in Nebraska," she said. "But we got here and we
found we have a real heart for what Darrin Patrick is doing in St. Louis."

Patrick, the lead pastor of The Journey, founded the church in 2002 with 30
people. It now has 1,800 members on campuses in St. Louis' Tower Grove
neighborhood, Clayton and west St. Louis County. A fourth campus will open
in south St. Louis County in February. The Journey also has started two
more churches — one in St. Charles called The Refuge, and another called
The Mission that just opened in Edwardsville.

It's that kind of rapid growth and energy that worries church leaders
across the denominational spectrum who look down from the pulpit and see
only white hair. Many would give anything to tap into the fleece jackets,
jeans and hip, bed-head hairstyles that populate Patrick's church.

Patrick said The Journey also is starting to attract more people in their
50s who are looking to find a church that would be palatable for their
young-adult kids who lead very secular lives.

Despite its enviable 18- to 34-year-old demographic, not all is going
swimmingly for the emerging church.

In his lectures, Patrick described the ideological and theological shifts
that led to a splintering of the movement.

Patrick's branch, which is the most theologically conservative, coalesces
around a national network of 125 churches called Acts 29, of which Patrick
is the vice president. Then there's a less conservative branch. And the
most theologically liberal branch is organized around another network
called Emergent Village.

Patrick was educated in Southern Baptist seminaries and believes that the
Bible is the literal word of God. He took issue during one lecture with his
more liberal emerging church cohorts, saying many of them question
orthodoxy. "When God has clearly spoken, we don't converse, we obey," he
said.

The annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention begins Monday at the
Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach, and the emerging church is sure to be a
hot topic of conversation. Patrick, and many of those involved with Acts 29
in the state, will be there. The meeting is scheduled to end, appropriately
enough for those scared by the emerging church, on Halloween.

Liberia, the IMF, and ONE

I just sent a message urging the IMF to fulfill a promise they made to cancel Liberia's debt. Right now they are saddled with $4.5 billion of debt that was accumulated under corrupt dictator Samuel Doe. If the IMF were to fulfill its promise to cancel this debt the democratic government could dedicate resources to fighting poverty and rebuilding their country after 14 years of civil war.

You can send an email to the IMF here: http://www.one.org/liberia/

Thanks for taking action with me.

The Spread of Religions in 90 seconds

This is a pretty fascinating look at the spread of the major world religions (from Justin Taylor's blog "Between Two Worlds")- in only 90 seconds! With the recent rapid expansion of Islam, I wonder what this map will look like in the next 100 years.

Click here to go to the link or cut and paste the URL below:

http://theologica.blogspot.com/2007/10/spread-of-religion-in-90-seconds.html

"Live with Regis and Kelly" provides some real entertainment this week!

I happened across a truly creepy piece of TV footage this week. I don't think I have ever seen Live with Regis and Kelly (I thought her name was Cathy or something - I seem to remember something about third world sweat shops...maybe she got canned), and if this is the kind of stuff they have on there, I can see why. It is truly creepy, until it becomes funny at the end.

Two muscular guys, dressed in tights and pastel colors, doing some kind of strange (disturbing) acrobatics until...

Well, I will let you take a look.

Click Here to go the video or just cut and paste the URL below.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1243777197/bctid1250621569

Ted Kennedy hasn't looked this good in years

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!

Are Christians Anti-gay and Judgmental?

The USA Today is running an article about how our nation's youth see Christianity as anti-gay, judgmental, and hypocritical. Here is an excerpt:

"The vast majority of non-Christians — 91% — said Christianity had an anti-gay image, followed by 87% who said it was judgmental and 85% who said it was hypocritical.

Such views were held by smaller percentages of the active churchgoers, but the faith still did not fare well: 80% agreed with the anti-gay label, 52% said Christianity is judgmental, and 47% declared it hypocritical.

Kinnaman said one of the biggest surprises for researchers was the extent to which respondents — one in four non-Christians — said that modern-day Christianity was no longer like Jesus."

The full article can be viewed here:

USA Today Article


I can't say that I am surprised, because I think the same thing. The church in America has become over politicized and as a result has come to define itself by what it isn't (we aren't gay and we aren't for gay rights or gay marriage, we aren't pro-choice / pro-abortion, we aren't pro-democrat for the most part, and we sure aren't pro-outsiders...or even pro-insiders who hold varying viewpoints from us). We are what we aren't.

The real challenge for the church is to learn how to be known once again for love - love for one another and love for the outsider (the biblical word for hospitality - a requirement for church leaders - literally means "a love for the stranger") while at the same time not abandoning the biblical absolutes that the Bible lays out clearly.

There is a movement today that is part of the emerging movement that is trying to rectify the sin of the church (defining ourselves by what we are not) by redefining biblical morality. These guys give the church a softer public face, but at the cost of biblical truth and the nature of God's character. That error will prove to be just as deadly to the cause of Jesus as the first - it is just the pendulum swinging the opposite extreme...but it is the same pendulum, and really the same sin. It is the church trying to redefine Christian morality in a way that suits its personal tastes - it is a recasting of God in our own image.

I firmly believe we need to redefine ourselves by what we are instead of by what we are not. We need to be known for love. Love for those like us, and even more importantly, love for those unlike us, because it is only in loving our neighbors as ourselves that we can truly love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. I love my neighbor (gay, straight, democrat, fundamentalist, pro-choice, or pro-life) because Jesus loves them, and while they are all messed up, they are no more so than I am or could be without the grace of God.

Fundamentalism, with its disdain for outsiders, completely misrepresents the nature and work of Jesus. But so does this neo-liberal wing of the church (I am speaking of liberal theology, not liberal politics). Loving our neighbors while redefining the character, nature, and revelation of God isn't loving God either - it is simply a recast (and renamed) religion in the form of secular humanism.

How do you know when you are NOT mom's favorite?

Interesting Statistics

For someone in Family Ministry, these stats are pretty mind-blowing. These quotes come from Barna's Raising Spiritual Champions:

“We discovered that the probability of someone embracing Jesus as his or her Savior was 32 percent for those between the ages of 5 and 12; 4 percent for those in the 13 to 18 age range; and 6 percent for people 19 or older. In other words, if people do not embrace Jesus Christ as their Savior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim.”

“By the age of 13, your spiritual identity is largely set in place. Thousands of people decide to embrace Christ as their Savior each year, but from a statistical vantage point the number of Christians is not increasing – the new believers are essentially replacing the Christians who died or those who renounced their faith in Christ. My tracking of religious beliefs and behavior for more than a quarter century has revealed that the spiritual condition of adolescents and teenagers changes very little, if at all, as they age.”

It makes sense: God designed the family to be the primary training ground for values and knowledge of God. God's sovereignty can obviously break the pattern, but the pattern simply reflects the way he designed faith to work. It is meant to be a family thing.

It makes Deuteronomy 6 that much more significant. We need to take every opportunity to live, share, explain, and apply the gospel to our kids.

I guess this also makes Children's Ministry potentially the most successful missional ministry in the church!