what a week...

So me and the fam spent all of last week down at Camp Carew in SOUTHERN Illinois (which is a world unto itself). It was a great week but a crazy and hard week. Glad we did it. But I'm wiped out. Picked 14 ticks off me. Caught 2 big catfish. Tipped a canoe. Slept in a hogan. Good stuff.

Now it feels like summer can start. It's been a sprint up until and through last week. But now it feels like I can shift my attention ahead to the coming year. (Yikes.) You never know what's gonna come up when I start thinking and dreaming ahead. I'll keep you posted.

My friend Tammy

I need your help. Would you please pray with me for my friend Tammy?
She is a missionary in India where she runs an orphanage. It would take pages to describe some of the amazing things she has done there. Tammy prays with tremendous strength and God answers her prayers in miraculous ways. And she has taught those children in India to pray the same way!

Well, Tammy needs some prayers herself, now. She is in the hospital with pancreatitis. She just had a first surgery to remove a gall stone that had caused inflammation in several organs. She needs to have her pancreas removed. The degree of inflammation means that laproscopic surgery might not be possible. Regular surgery is more risky and more prone to infection.

Bottom line, please pray for my friend Tammy. Pray for success in the attempt at laproscopic surgery. Pray for swift and full recovery. Pray for healing. Pray also for peace for all her little children in the orphanage that are, with us, praying for her!

Thanks.

Gettin' back to my roots

The South Georgia Yard Swing

Can we get one of these at the Launch?
How awesome would it be to preach from the hanging couch?

In case you missed this cool idea...

So a member of our congregation had an idea following the generosity series.
The idea is described on this new blog. This is not connected to the church in any way. It's just one person's idea.

Take a peek. You might be able to help. Or to be helped.

Click here: Generosity In C.U.

Jesus walks into a tattoo parlor...

So, don't ask me why, but I found myself in a tattoo parlor recently. And it was a little bit of an eye opening experience. I just don't get to hear that kind of language very often in the church office. I mean, did you realize that you can use the F-bomb as a noun, an adjective, and adverb, and a verb, all in the SAME SENTENCE???? I'm sitting there listening to these rather graphic conversations about casual sex, and heavy drug use and I'm just praying that nobody asks me what I do for a living.

Then I have this picture pop in my head of Jesus hanging out in that tattoo parlor. And I realize that it's exactly the kind of place Jesus would want to be. Those are Jesus' kind of people.

That's exactly what made the religious folks so mad about Jesus. He actually ate meals with "those kind of people". He went to their homes. That's what the whole God-in-the-flesh thing was all about: God becoming one of us, God moving into the neighborhood, God living right smack dab in the middle of our ugly, broken, warped lives.

So I'm watching this guy get a tattoo - its a huge cross that covers most of his forearm. And the thought occurs to me: what would these guys think if they came and watched ME at MY work? What would they think of my world? What would they think of my life? What would they think of my faith? What would they think of MY Jesus? (And I'm intentionally saying MY Jesus because my life and work and faith and words and choices all play a part in the way I communicate Jesus).

Here's a quote that I've used before that says what I'm trying to say much better than I can say it:

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.

That's from Tim Keller's "The Prodigal God".

All of this got me re-thinking some things.

I found myself hoping that one of those guys might actually ask me what I do for a living. Maybe they will next time.

Check out Jaron's sermon...

In case you missed it, Jaron spoke the truth on Sunday at the Launch.
Good stuff about our new mission statement!

You can hear it by clicking on the top link on the right side (under Sermon mp3's)

Parents on Facebook

So, I've found it fascinating to watch the Facebook phenomenon spread into older generations of adults. When I first got on Facebook (and before that MySpace), the only adults I saw on there were youth pastors who were using those sites to connect with kids. And most of the time, that just resulted in this slightly scary stalker feeling.

Recently, I had a conversation with a parent who told me that their son doesn't really use Facebook anymore because all of his friend's parents are on it. And if we're doing it, it can't really be cool, right?

This reminds me of a quote I heard once, I seem to recall it being the lead singer of the Ramone's but I could be totally wrong about that. Anyway, this singer was asked to define Rock n Roll and said something to the effect of: "Rock and Roll is whatever music makes the parents mad". (He actually used much more colorful language than that.)

So...that got me thinking that maybe the very best way to reinforce cultural behaviors among our youth is to get mad about it.

Or, vice versa, maybe the very best way to change cultural patterns of behavior that bother us is for us adults to embrace those behaviors and start acting that way too.

For example, all of us adults could start wearing extremely baggy pants that sag way down revealing most of our underwear. (come to think of it, that might be a nice corrective for the tendency of our belt lines creeping upwards as we get older.

So, now I'm going to try to focus on a sermon with images of Chuck Carlson in sagging pants stuck in my head!!!

Hey. It's Monday. I'll have something better tomorrow.