Terribly Poetic: February 2006

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Monday, February 27, 2006

Loss

Today, it was official. After having to hold in a sad secret it was announced. My friend, and mentor will be leaving YFC after 4 years. I have worked very closely with him for the past 2 years as he has guided me into ministry at YFC. I feel extremely blessed to have been able to be led under his leadership. For many at the office this has come as a surprise, although, being so close to him I have felt it coming. Deep down I just felt like it wouldn't ever happen and we would continue to work together for years. So I feel a great sense of loss. Both for myself as I feel alone, and for our office team as we have lost one of the best leaders. I feel abit like team canada hockey team without Mario Lemieux and wonder if I am going to fall on my face like the team did this year without him. Although I know that this is part of God's plan, I also know that I don't have to like it. Even Jesus wanted to have his burden removed, but he wanted to do God's will more. As do I. I know that the next few months as he transitions away will be difficult and stretching, but I still feel tremedous loss. Please pray for me, as his leaving effects me the most of anyone at our office.

6:05 PM | Permalink |

Friday, February 24, 2006

Christians can miss it...

Here’s a thought for Friday from Kim Reid, church planter with The Open Door in Montreal,

“What do you do when you run into christians who just don’t get it? Christians who just want to get together and be “ministered to”. Christians who have very little if any contact with the real world. Jesus told us to go into the world and make disciples. The only real way to do this is to go into the world and BE a disciple. To enter your community/culture with the same grace, compassion and mercy that Jesus did. I find it disheartening that so many christians think the only contact they should have with “the world” is to preach at them. An interesting idea since Jesus didn’t make it a rule to do that. There is no record that He said anything to Zaccheus that even remotely could be construed as “preaching”. Jesus ate with him and loved him. Interesting that we feel the need to add to Jesus example. God has asked us to feed the poor far more than he has asked us to preach, and yet we prefer to preach, and even use this as a reason not to feed the poor,… unless we can preach at them. Much of the church is over-fed and lazy and make excuses for not serving the unlovely. I met with a group of pastors this morning. One asked, “Is it our job to tell church people they don’t get Jesus’ message?” My answer to this was, “if christians are not doing the things that Jesus told us to, regarding the people he died for(that is everyone), ie. feeding the poor and taking care of those less fortunate, then they are “other than” christian. It is time they knew it.” christians who sit back, demand to be fed and don’t do anything to love the world need to consider their “christian-ness”. Who does God say “I never knew you” to? They are people who thought their actions spoke loudly of God,….. but in the end, only spoke of religiosity. Micheal Frost has suggested that Jesus would never be allowed membership in most of our churches,… interesting.”

11:53 AM | Permalink |

Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Worship Freehouse: Who Am I?

The Worship Freehouse: Who Am I?

This is a modern liturgy that I stubbled across today that I think is quite meaningful. I think that beautiful writing like this should be read in our churches more often.

3:08 PM | Permalink |

Old thoughts...

In 1970, Larry Richards had some interesting (prophetic?) insights into what the church could/should look like as the end of the 2nd Millenium approached:

"Our study has led us to describe church forms which would create conditions in which New Testament principles could best operate. We came to believe that for the church to function most effectively in our world:

The family unit must become the focus of the church's ministry,
Responsibility for nurture and outreach must be shifted from church agencies to believers,
The church must adopt forms (structures) which will support believers in fulfilling their ministries,
A church which meets these requirements will necessarily face a thorough reorganization; it will be re-formed."8 (emphasis added)

So suffice it to say, the ideas of Brian McLaren and Leonard Sweet are not new ideas. However, when is talking about these things going to stop and we are actually going to put some of these ideas into practice. Seems like in our western churches we sure do like to talk a lot. Last question then is… when was our church last truly re-formed?

1:17 PM | Permalink |

Change...

Have you ever wondered why we as humans are so resistant to change? I mean, sure we love new things like movies, music, and the like, but real life change!?! I think we like to resist at all costs. Whether it is changing a simple way of doing something (how resistant is a church to changing simple music?) or whether it is making significant life change, such as moving, changing the way one thinks about theology, or the like. We always seem to resist change - why? Are we only resistant to change because we worry? Cause if that's the case then maybe we need to place that area of our life into the hands of the living God. I mean, doesn't it tell us that worrying about something isn't going to make anything better. Is it this worry about change that makes us shy away from it? Or could it be that we are just plain stubborn? Either way, I hope that we would be able to embrace change, see it as another opportunity to learn from God. If not then we will fight change tooth and nail, and we might come out the other side changed not for the better but for the worse.

8:52 AM | Permalink |

Friday, February 17, 2006

Check this out

This maybe the single most incredible thing I have ever seen a human do. Keep in mind that there are no strings attached like the movies.

Click here

4:22 PM | Permalink |

Thursday, February 16, 2006

"Killing" the Bible

Continuing back to my discussion on the Bible.
McLaren writes that the Bible can be "killed" by the way in which you
approach the Bible and how one reads it. He writes, "You can sanitize the
text of all evocative language, paradox, multiple perspectives, and
interesting, three-dimensional people to end up with cute little morals,
simple two-dimensional systems, and flat, boring prose that reads like a
legal code or assembly instructions. As a result, the Bible itself begins to
vaporize, to disappear, leaving the desired residue of systematic theology,
which is all you ever wanted anyways." Could it be that our modern mindset
have corrupted our thinking so much that we may need to retreat somewhat in
how we read scripture? Could we have created an individual that tries to
interpret scripture without the aid of the community or even the Holy
Spirit? Should we begin to read the Bible a story, a family story, that we
are apart of. It calls us to become part of the story, the story of a God
who wants us to become part of the story, complete with our many failures.

I find it interesting that the story has a great character called the
church. I found out that the church from the greek means, "the sent ones"
but is that what the church of today is... Maybe this is a whole other
topic...so I'll move on.

Just one example of the above...I remember hearing a preacher talk about
suffering in our lives and using the passage about "sharing in the
sufferings of Christ" and "becoming one with Christ...even death on a cross"
(sorry about the lose quotes) While I thought the message on dealing with
suffering was great, but it always made me feel uneasy on how the passage
was used. When Paul talks about sharing in the sufferings of Christ (I
believe its Phil 3) he is also talking about how everything on earth is
counted as rubbish. I dunno, maybe I am out to lunch here. Another example
that comes to mind is when people talk about Song of Solomon as all about
an analogy of Christ's love for the church. Just a few thoughts here...
Please feel free to correct me if I am messed up and comment please...

4:26 PM | Permalink |

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

More of Hawaii

More of Hawaii
Originally uploaded by ddgrunau.

Thinking of Le Parkour, maybe they invented it in Hawaii when they started climbing Palm Trees.

11:42 AM | Permalink |

I wish it was warm

I wish it was warm
Originally uploaded by ddgrunau.

Today is one of the colder days we have had this winter and I thought

again to the warmth of Hawaii and wished I could be there. So here is a

picture of what we are missing.

11:36 AM | Permalink |

Le Parkour?

It is time to start by lighten the mood on my blog. So I decided to start adding some sweet videos I have found on the internet lately. This one is of David Belle showing of the newest extreme sport called “Le Parkour” or Free running.

http://www.parkour-videos.com/007-On-avance-toujours-et-vous_David-Belle_and_Cyril-Raffaelli_Parkour.NET.zip

Enjoy.

11:09 AM | Permalink |

Friday, February 10, 2006

Foundations

I am beginning to rethink the way I view the Bible. Instead of looking at scriptures as my foundation I am beginning to look at scriptures as just one anchor in my faith. I heard it said recently that if an outsider where to try to understand the trinity that they might look at it as "God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Scriptures" To me this statement means alot and is a warning.

If we are to look at scripture as our fondation then where is there room for the Holy Spirit to work in your life? Using words like foundation is such a linear building term, in fact it makes me uncomfortable.

In Brian Maclaren's book "A New Kind of Christian," instead of comparing it to a building he compares it to a spider's web. Where is the web's foundation? Well, it doesn't have one. Exactly.

12:20 PM | Permalink |

Friday, February 03, 2006

"Life is Broken"

It is futile for us to live in anticipation of life always coming together.
It will come together as it does in those moments in life that just seem
'perfect.' It will again. And then the next day, it will be disrupted. It
may even fall apart. The hope is to live fully in the moments of laughter
and contentment- and to also be present in the moments of fear and
disappointment. We need to remember that every part of it has purpose and
meaning. We need to live as if we really believe the greater purpose for us
is transformation - to believe that sanctification takes priority over
enjoyment.

The above is taken from the latest book I just finished reading called
"Becoming a Dad"

9:07 PM | Permalink |

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Yes, I have given in

After having seen many blogs online, read many comments, and even posted many comments myself. I have decided that would fold under the peer pressure and start my own blog. I am not sure what I will include here. A little humor (I hope), some deep theological debate (maybe), some pictures of me, Dawn and our future child(most likely), but whatever I put on this blog, may it be worthy to join the thousands of blogs. So until next time... read, think, pray, and love.
Signing out till I come up with something meaningful to say.

4:43 PM | Permalink |

Terribly Poetic

Sometimes I know exactly what I want to say, and other times I don't know what I want to say. And it's these times when I write the best.