The Advent Conspiracy

Does Christmas ever make you feel like this sign? Do you think about Christmas and get depressed just thinking about a mountain of Christmas presents, gifts to return, toys that get played with for a week, months of bills, traffic jams, stress, and a big empty feeling at the end of it all.



Imagine if Christmas could be a world changing event...
It (still) can.

This Advent Season, what if you could:
Worship Fully
Spend Less
Give More
and Love All.

Welcome to the Advent Conspiracy. We are joining together with thousands of other churches all over the world in this journey of entering the story of Christ's birth and of celebrating Christ's birth in a way that the King of Heaven deserves. Last year, the churches that participated in the Advent Conspiracy raised over 3 million dollars (just by re-thinking the way they celebrate Christmas) and that money made life changing differences in countries all over the globe. The Advent Conspiracy funded clean water wells in villages in Africa, Asia, and South America. The Advent Conspiracy also funded countless local initiatives in communities across our country as churches redistributed their own Christmas spending in order to meet the real needs of their neighbors.

This year, at FirstChurch Champaign, the Advent Conspiracy funds we raise will meet 2 significant needs: We will provide clean drinking water in Malawi by digging life saving shallow wells. We will also meet the very real needs of our local neighbors who don't have enough to eat.

Food and Water for the hungry and the thirsty.

That's a gift worthy of the Christ child!!!

Check out our local Advent Conspiracy blog. Advent Conspiracy Champaign . You can share stories and ideas about what you are doing. We'll also be posting a daily Advent Devotional on that page. If you'd like to receive that via email, just let us know at the church office.

Lastly, there are tons of ideas and resources at the official Advent Conspiracy website: www.adventconspiracy.org

Not to totally change the subject, but...

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.

by Tim Keller in The Prodigal God, 14-15.

Who do you think we attract?
Who maybe SHOULD we be attracting?
Why don't we?

Let's just chalk that one up to "a learning moment"...

Yesterday's blog post was a first for me.
It was the first time I received more email responses about the blog than comments on the blog. Thanks to everyone who emailed. Some great responses. Some really funny responses. And all very thoughtful responses. You all challenged my thought processes and expanded my perspective.

Some of those emails helped me realize that I may have said some things in a way that really clouded the points I was trying to make. If yesterday's post sounded like a partisan shot, please forgive me. That was not my intent at all.

Allow me to try again...

A common sentiment I heard in response to my post was that we’re just better off separating faith and politics altogether. Maybe I’m just young and naïve, but I want to believe that that isn’t true. I want to believe that we are capable of having loving, thoughtful, respectful, and humble conversation about political issues. I want to believe that we can have those conversations among ourselves, and that we can engage our neighbors in conversation as well. And that we can do it in a way that demonstrates the love and compassion of Jesus.

What you all helped me realize is that words on a computer screen on an anonymous blog is really a poor place to initiate those kinds of conversations. Like I said…a learning moment. Sorry about that.

I also want to be sure and say that I don’t believe either political party does a very good job of representing the values that I hold as a follower of Christ. To be a Christian does not mean being a (insert favorite party here).

I did not write yesterday as a Democrat. I'm not one. I don't agree with a number of the stances our president-elect holds. I don't think that the Democratic party embodies the values I hold any better than the republican party does. I did not mean to imply that a vote in either direction was somehow more faithful to God than a vote in any other direction. My feelings about the election have nothing whatsoever to do with party affiliation.

It would have been quite fair of me to point out that just as some Christians have jumped to some unfair and really unloving conclusions and opinions of President-elect Obama, so too have many done to our current President Bush. Both reactions are worthy of critique. It is entirely appropriate for us as followers of Christ to spur one another on to a higher standard of love and respect than what is too often accepted in the political sphere. And neither party is above reproach in that regard.

Yesterday I said I was excited and I am. I hope I managed to communicate that, for me, that has more to do with my kids than anything else. I don’t think I can explain that adequately in this space. Maybe this isn’t the right place. Or perhaps another day.

Well, I hope you all (I like to pretend I have lots of blog readers) will forgive some of my idiosyncrasies, such as typing faster than my brain can actually think.

Thanks again for your great emails. You taught me. Feel free to stick comments like that right here on the blog. That’s what it’s here for.
Humbly growing.

Faith and Politics...(gasp)...part one

So, I thought I'd wait a week before jumping in to comment on the recent election. One of my favorite blogs Stuff Christians Like recently joked about the obligatory post-election pastor response. If you were happy about the result, you praised God for his provision. If not so happy, you praised God for his sovereignty. Well, I didn't want this to seem obligatory. So a week later, it feels right.

Today, my general reaction.
Tomorrow, (faith and politics, part 2) I think I'm gonna tackle abortion.

So, a week after the election of a new president, I have to admit, I'm thrilled.
As a father of biracial kids, I still get tears in my eyes at the thought of being able to tell my kids "you can be ANYTHING you want" and for it to be true. I honestly did not dream of that being true in the near future. I'm gonna be honest with you, my perspectives on race have totally changed in the years since we adopted our kids. If you have a hard time believing that racism is an oppressive and daily reality for people of color, I'd love to tell you some stories about our personal experiences of that reality. So for me, I see this as a profound moment of opportunity for ALL people in our country. I am ecstatic.

I'm also deeply sad.
I'm sad because of the strong reactions I've seen people have to the result of the election. I have an especially hard time getting my hands around the volatile reactions of Christians. Jesus stood in front of Pilate (who would clearly be an objectionable choice for a national leader) and Jesus basically says, you wouldn't be in your position of power if my Father hadn't given you that position. But there Pilate was. The implications are significant.

I'm saddened at the cheap and ridiculous statements I see on people's Facebook status.

I'm sad at the willingness of people to make outrageous claims (and believe outrageous claims) about Obama's personal faith. Those who know our president-elect most deeply have consistently testified to the depth of his Christian faith and his devotion to the daily disciplines of prayer and study of Scripture. I'm humbled and challenged to know that our new president is far more consistent in seeking God in prayer than I am as a pastor.

And ultimately I know that, as a follower of Christ, it is my duty to pray for and support the president of my country. We can, and will, continue to disagree over the policies that will best promote the well-being of our neighbors. But as Christians, our first calling is to be about love, grace, and generosity. Can't help but remember the Corinthians passage that says (roughly) if we make alot of noise about a particular issue, but we don't have love, then we're just a banging gong. If you are a gong, please stop. You cannot understand love and fail to understand that it means you communicate in a different way. And you ACT in a different way.

I'm sad. But I'm also hopeful. And excited. And I'm more interested in politics than I've been in a dozen years.

Bottom line, I don't ask you to share my enthusiasm.
But I do challenge you to share my commitment to looking at our involvement in the political sphere, not through rigid political ideology, but through the love and mercy of Jesus.

PS. Feel free to totally disagree. That's what blogs are for!!! What do you think? Click on the "comments" link below to share your thoughts.

Fear...

I am increasingly compelled by the feeling that Jesus wants to challenge some of our comfortableness. I have this growing feeling that Jesus wants us to become something so much more than what we are. And that's never easy.

In fact it's scary.

Then I ran across this quote on the blog of Donald Miller. It challenged me this morning:

Last year I vowed I wouldn’t make decisions out of fear. And because of that I’ve had one of the greatest years of my life. I went to Uganda and got to meet with the man who helped write their constitution. I wrapped up an evangelism project I believe will introduce more than a million people to the gospel. I rode my bike across America. All of this stuff took some degree of risk. But when calculating those risks, I realized the only reason not to try was fear. What if I was wrong, what if I couldn’t make it, what if the project didn’t work? But none of my heroes are controlled by fear.

The commandment most often repeated in scripture, in fact, is “do not fear.” Fear is often something unrighteous trying to keep you from doing something good.

They will never write stories about people controlled by fear. Fear is always a sign that a great story is about to be written (or not, depending on how you respond.) People live the most boring lives because they stand down when they encounter fear. And so I said yes.

What would you do if you had the courage to say yes?

My 100th Post

In honor of my 100th post on this blog, we are unveiling our new sign out at the Launch.

splishing and splashing...

A man goes to visit a pastor and tells the pastor that he'd like to change his ways and join the church. He tells the pastor that his wife is trying to get him to join her Presbyterian church where they baptize by sprinkling. He asks the pastor how they do it. The pastor says without the slightest pause, "We walk out into the river and we dunk em." The man says, "well what if we just walk out waist deep - is that good enough?" The pastor says no. The man asks, "well, what if we walk out till I'm up to my shoulders - does that count?" Absolutely not says the pastor. "Well, what if we walk out there until its just the top if my head sticking out?" No way, says the pastor.

The man stands up and says, "I knew it was just the top of the head that counted anyway. I'm going Presbyterian!"

So, baptism seems to be the theme this month.
Ironically, (at least in response to the joke above), we Presbyterians believe that any mode of baptism is equally legitimate. It doesn't matter who does it, or where it is done, or how it is done. We believe that any baptism done in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is fully effective. Baptism is all about the faithfulness of God and God is fully faithful in baptism whether we're sprinkling a little water on the top of your head, or wading into the river!

What a great day last week when we baptized Will Shaffer into the family of God. I loved that moment, standing there holding Will, looking out at all of you and saying, "Will, we are your family. We are with you in this journey. We are yours."

And we've got another great event coming up this Sunday when Celeste Twombly will be baptized. This special event might be a little different than most baptisms you've observed (at least if you're Presbyterian). I don't want to spoil the surprise, so join us if you can.