Dennis Rice is my friend.

Dennis Rice is my friend. I was reading his blog recently about being busy and it caused me to start noticing my life and I discovered I am going (make that was going) in the entirely wrong direction. I had become distracted and lost my way. I knew better, but I fell into the trap anyway.

It started as a subtle slip, a mild alternation to the course. I suspect the original plan was to only take a brief but necessary detour into business. The Church where I am the pastor has really been growing and somewhere along the path I took my eyes off God and started looking at the task. I forgot that my sole job is to seek God and share what He shows me.

Last night about 9:00 pm was when I saw the light. My day started with sending my son to his 707 group and taking my daughter to hers. Once they were settled in I went to meet with the 8 boys I have been meeting with weekly for 4 years now. I immediately went from there to meet and pray with the pastor at First Baptist. (we never actually got around to praying, but we had a nice meeting) I left there and went straight to meet with Dennis like I do each Tuesday, got a message he had something come up and couldn’t make it. So I came home to our office and had a staff meeting which took me right up to a Journey meeting for the retreat I am working on this weekend. That lead straight into a board meeting for a community ministry of which I am the chairman of the board. That lead straight into a meeting with Drew Thompson from The Gathering Place from which I left to go pick up my kids from school. Thirty minutes of returning calls and I was off to a partners meeting with area churches, which actually overlapped with another meeting I had with CHAT group host. So I ended the partners meetings as quickly as I could jumped in my truck and headed south where I arrived just as they were finishing dinner and ready to start THE MEETING.

This meeting was with the many of the small group leaders from our church. I quickly and tactfully worked through the agenda. I shared some vision about why we are doing what we are doing and about where we are heading. I listened to their input and we had a great brainstorming session. Some really good ideas came out of our meeting. We prayed and left at about 8:45.

About 9:00 while driving home, it hit me. I missed the point. I missed the point of it all. I have been missing the point for a while now. I had a meeting rather than a ministry. I could have poured into these people so they could have poured into others. We could have worshiped and sought God and been set on fire by the love of God and instead we hammered out some details about some plans we had.

I sign my letters, Simply Seeking Him, but I haven’t been doing that lately. I have been meeting with a lot of people, but not with God. God reminded me that His purpose for me is to: Seek God, Share what He shows me, & Serve where He sends me.

Dennis is my friend because he shared his life with me, (through a blog – imagine that) and it helped my life be better. Isn’t that what good friends do?

What are your reading?

Just Read: 

UnLearning Church by Micahel Slaughter - Great book about how we must unlearn many of our old thought paths in order to move forward into new realities. It really made you think about the thoughts you have which hold you back by blocking opportunities to discover new truths about what it means to be a Christian. I think the single most significant unlearning we must discover is that it is not about us. The Church’s attention is turned in the wrong direction and is thus unable to see what it’s mission is. 3 out of 5 stars for this book. extra point for good practical examples at the end of each chapter.  

Currently Reading:

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Next in line are:

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

Resident Aliens by Hauerwas and Willimon

No More Spectators by Nysewander

Every Perfect Gift comes from God

A bunch of us worked on an old house in down town Brunswick yesterday. We are restoring it and hope to eventually utilize it as a The Chapel office. Over the course of the day there were a lot of people who worked. My two jobs were to work with Jeffrey hanging some sheetrock and with David laying the Hardi-board. To be the amateurs that we obviously are I thought we did a really good job.

I mean sure there were some fairly significant gaps in the sheet rock after we hung it and the holes for the boxes might have been a bit large, but nothing a little mud and tape couldn’t fix. All in all it was a-okay!

I had never even heard of hardi-board, but basically it is like sheets of cement that you attach to the floor and tile is laid over it. David and I were to cover the floor with the hardiboard and we did an alright job if I may say so my self. I mean technically there may have been some spots that the stuff didn’t fit just perfectly, but I mean it is all going to be covered up by the tile anyway, so what does it matter if there is a gap here and there.

Feeling good about our days work, I was relaxing and reflecting at home when these thoughts came to mind:
Good is the enemy of great
Okay prevents Outstanding
Alright is not excellent
2nd best keeps more people from God’s best than worst ever could.

Settling – becoming satisfied with less than God has for you.

Now the truth is we did a perfect job on the house – and to any degree that we missed on perfection, it really will not matter. But there are areas where settling is fatal!

Our church has really been growing a lot lately. This time last year our average worship attendance was somewhere around 125 by Dec it had gone up to 250 each week. Last month it was right around 350.

That made me start wondering “why are all these people coming?” and here is what God showed me:

Truth # 1 The reason we are all here is because God loves us so much that he sought us. He pursued you and He used whatever it was that brought you here. Yep- that girl, that guy, that circumstance, that whatever, was God drawing you to himself

Look at the stories in Luke 15 – God seeks the lost

Truth #2 You want to encounter God else you wouldn’t be here. You can say what you want, but deep down in there someplace you are longing for God

And here is where the danger comes in. It is possible, perhaps even likely that you come to church seeking God and leave saying “well that was good, that was nice, I fell okay now” when what God had in mind was awesome, outstanding, excellent.

Why do we pull up short? Why do we settle?

 

Holding Patterns

Check out this thought my brother Jeff sent me:

On a recent trip, my flight was put in a “holding pattern.” It gave me some time to think, so I thought about “holding patterns.”

Does God ever put us in a holding pattern? Does a Christian find himself in a holding pattern? Does a church find itself in a holding pattern?

In one sense, I decided that the answer is “no” to all of these questions. God desires and expects his people, as individuals and as congregations, to be always growing, developing, seeking, and moving forward in our spiritual flights with him.

But then, I continued to think about “holding patterns.” The point is not to stop the plane; the point is to make sure the plane arrives when the airport is ready to receive it. Trying to land sooner could be disastrous. My plane was thankfully still moving forward, preparing to land, and seeking an opportunity to fulfill its mission.

I believe that God does occasionally require individuals or congregations to take a little extra time in getting to our intended destinations. During that extra time, we must be continuing to move forward, preparing to reach the destination, and seeking to fulfill our mission.

As individuals and churches, we are to be ready to respond when God calls us, in his timing. We are usually more concerned that God will call us to act before we are prepared to act, which is a very legitimate concern. We should also, however, be concerned about the possibility that we may be trying act because we are ready to act rather than because God is calling. Our being willing and able to take action does not necessarily mean God has called us to that action, yet.

As the plane approached the ground, I was glad that the airport was ready to receive and welcome us.

(I haven’t had a chance to think through the application of this analogy to those people who missed their connecting flights. I guess they were still ahead of God’s schedule.)

Discovering good is not good enough with John Smoltz

By Michael Nyenhuis

I heard John Smoltz, ace pitcher for the Atlanta Braves and a Cy Young and World Series winner, speak last night. He gave a testimony about his faith. He made a very interesting point. It seems that most people asked to give testimonies are those with dramatic come-back stories. They were on drugs. They were in jail. They were almost dead. Then, wham, Christ intervened and they haven’t looked back since. Smoltz had a different story. He was a good kid, a nerd, he said. Didn’t really do anything wrong. Made good decisions. Apple of his mother’s eye. He figured he was good enough so he never really made a decision to follow Christ until much later in life when he came to understand none of us are good enough. I liked the talk because I think he spoke to a lot of us who haven’t been in the pit, who’ve lived pretty happy and healthy lives and who have tried to do good – and yet may not have experienced the transforming grace of Christ.

I wondered: Is it more difficult to have a transforming experience in Christ if you don’t think you need to be transformed? I bet it is. And that’s why there are so many lukewarm Christians, untouched, really, by God’s grace. And maybe that’s why those who have risen from the pit usually give the testimonies.

On a side note, Smoltz is a better pitcher than public speaker. But, hey, he ain’t paid millions to speak!

What is the Point?

“What’s the point?” is a cry of frustration I often hear. “No matter how hard I work, I can’t pay all the bills – so what’s the point?” “She never responds when I try – so what’s the point?” “He never notices – so what’s the point?”  I have a friend who is starting a new church called The Pointe so I bet he gets asked all the time “what’s the point?”

How would you answer that question? I mean what is the point?

I have been thinking about that a lot this week and its producing some interesting thoughts about relationships. I’m starting to think that the whole point of it all is community, not work, not success, not bigger faster more powerful but true authentic community. Most of our relationships in today’s culture never break past mere contact to make it into the transforming realm of true connection. I mean we come into contact with literally thousands of people each day, but what is it that moves a relationship to the intimate level of true connection where souls collide and who you are is ultimately affected.

I still have a lot of thinking to do on this, but I am becoming convinced that relationships are very important to God and that they just may in fact be a gift from Him designed to help us become the people He knows we can be. Maybe the point of relationships is not simply pleasure but ultimate perfection. Maybe God uses our relating with others, the good relationships and the bad to shape us.