Why I love the fall

I used to be a summer guy. Summer is about hotdogs and swimming pools and vacations, and for most of my life, I lived for the summer. But lately, I find myself tolerating the summer and looking forward to the fall. Growing up, the fall was all about ugly trees (we don't experience that "beautiful leaves changing colors" thing very often in Oklahoma), those awful peanut butter candies wrapped in black and orange wrappers that the cheap families gave out on halloween, and the beginning of nasty weather (as if the blazing heat and rampant tornadoes of an Oklahoma summer are the definition of good weather). 

So here I am on the first day of fall coming out of the "I think I like fall more than summer" closet, and though it feels good to get it off my chest, it still feels a little strange, because I have been trying to figure out how I got here. Summer never did anything so awful to me, but like a person who accidentally eats something that have sworn to hate for decades and finds it somewhat appealing; I have become a lover of the fall. Now I still don't like those nasty peanut butter candies and I still have an underlying dislike for all things orange and black, I am a Sooner fan after all; but I find myself embracing the season. As I have been thinking about where my new found fall-love came from, several things have emerged. First of all, it is the best sports season of the year. I mean is there anything better than college football and October baseball? I definitely don't think so. But its not just the great sports that have changed my seasonal palate. I think the real reason that I have grown to love the fall is the presence of the mundane and the routine.

I know what you are thinking, the presence of the mundane and routine...isn't that a little anticlimactic? Yes it is. It most certainly is, and that is what I have come to love abo

ut it. One of the reasons so many of us have loved the summer is because it is representative of a season of freedom from our mundane and ordinary lives; but if we are not careful, we will begin to think that a couple of months of free-spirited living which so often accompanies summer is the norm and the ten or so remaining months of the year are some sort of sub-par depressed season to be endured. People very often hate routines and spend all of their time thinking about the next upcoming break, because they have terribly designed routines, from which they feel they need to break free.

One of my favorite books is called "Ordering Your Private World" by Gordon MacDonald. In it, he shares a story about the establishment of his routine that I think will be beneficial for us, so I have included it here.

I carry with me the memory of a time when my missiology professor at Denver Seminary, Dr. Raymond Buker, approached me at the end of a special convocation where I had read a paper on some moral issue that was burning in the hearts of the student generation of that day. I had cut two of his classes that day to prepare the paper, and it had not gone unnoticed.

"Gordon," he said, "the paper you read tonight was a good one, but it wasn't a great one. Would you like to know why?"

I wasn't sure I really wanted to know because I anticipated a bit of humiliation coming my way, but I swallowed hard and told Dr. Buker that I would like to hear his analysis.

"The paper wasn't a great one," he said as he thumped his finger on my chest, "because you sacrificed your routine to write it."

I think often of this story as I seek to architect my life and build my routines. Routines are not our enemies. We can become people who embrace the seasons of life with joy and vitality. Let me give you a couple of things to consider that just might help.

1. Build the Sabbath into your routine. This one sounds simple enough, but in truth it is quite difficult to do. The Sabbath is the most broken commandment of the ten and there is not a close second. Neglect of the Sabbath is the most socially acceptable way to rebel against God. No one is going to call you out for breaking it, because almost no one else is obeying it. I recently asked a couple of people when was the last time that you took a day to rest and reflect on the Lord...he replied sometime in the nineties. The Bible says we are to have those kinds of days once a week. 

2. Prioritize the important over the urgent. There are things in life that appear to us important, but are really just urgent things that fake importance. Things like email and phone calls fake importance because they ring and vibrate, but many times they are not important, they are just immediate. You have to learn to live in such a way that you spend your time on the important things. This is not always easy, because many of the most important things in our lives, like devotion, prayer, strategic planning, and goal setting are all things that require our attention and the neglect of none of them will cause an immediate backlash. 

3. Build fun into your routine. If you do not make specific effort to build fun into your routine, you will sin to have fun. You have to find things that you enjoy and build in time for them in your routine. One of those things for me is college football. I do almost nothing on Saturdays in the fall, because I watch college football all day. It energizes me and I prioritize it, because it is something I enjoy.

4. Live according to your priorities. Making priorities is worthless unless you are willing to follow them, which is emotionally difficult at times. To live according to priorities means that several things are going to suffer from lack of attention. In truth, several things in your life are going to suffer from lack of attention anyway, and living according to priorities does not alleviate the fact that things are still going to suffer, it just allows you to be the one who determines which areas of your life suffer. 

5. Learn to say no...and then say it often. This is perhaps the toughest of these five suggestions, because saying yes helps us assuage our guilt. What do I mean? Every time someone asks you to do something and you do it, you feel a little less guilty, and every time someone asks you to do something and you say no, you feel the twinge of guilt. People who cannot say no have serious and fundamental Gospel issues in their lives. The underlying reason that they cannot say no, is because in their world Jesus isn't the savior...they are. We call this a "messiah complex," where people feel that they are so important that they can never let Jesus do the work he says repeatedly in Scripture that he will do.  

May the Lord bless us all as we build routines that honor him.

Some People are Stupid

It's just another Friday night here in Oklahoma. We are expecting rain tomorrow, but all in all it has been a pretty good day here. I emphasize here, because tonight the Texas coast is bracing for what looks to be a pretty major hurricane. Ike is supposed to make landfall at Galveston, Texas in a few hours, and the talking heads are expecting a 20 foot storm surge, which if they are right, and we are praying that they aren't, is going to be a catastrophic event for coastal Texas, and Galveston in particular. This is of particular importance to me, because I have a lot of friends in the Houston area and I have been thinking about them and praying for them for the last couple of days. Almost all of them evacuated, and the ones who didn't live quite a ways inland. 

Galveston is a city on an island in the gulf that is basically one long street named Seawall Blvd. Seawall Blvd. got its name, because it runs immediately beside the 17 foot high seawall built to protect the island from just such an event as they will experience tonight. For those not aware of the history of Galveston, the seawall was built in response to the most devastating hurricane in US history, which struck the island in 1900. In fact, the Galveston hurricane is the 

deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. That hurricane killed more than 8,000 people. For perspective, Hurricane Katrina killed just over 1,800 people. I have great compassion for the people killed in that hurricane from 100 years ago, and how could you not. They had no radar, and thus no warning. The water rose, the winds raged, and the city was destroyed. 

Now we are a long way from 1900, and you cannot look at a TV or computer without seeing a map of North America with a huge red swirl spinning toward Galveston. The people of Galveston were told to evacuate or face "certain death." Certain death...that is the direct quote. Now you would think this would motivate everyone and the only people left on the island would be dumb network reporters who get paid to hug telephone poles in torrential rains and gale force winds and try to yell into their microphones and compare this storm with the last one for their loyal viewers. But even with the warning of certain death, many people have chosen to stay and ride out the storm. Those deciding to ride out the storm have been mandated to write their name and social security numbers on their arms in black markers so the authorities will be able to identify their bodies in a couple of days. 

These people enjoying a couple of beers have decided to stay in Galveston to watch the storm. They are not alone. Fox news is estimating that more than 90,000 people in the mandatory evacuation zones of coastal Texas have decided to stay and ride out the storm, despite the severe warnings.

So why take time to write about an impending hurricane on a blog devoted to missional thinking? I am glad you asked. Many of those staying to ride out the storm are giving theological justifications when asked why they chose to stay. Some of the trite answers that I have heard already are: "I told them I believe in a man up there, God...he will take care of me," "I am just enjoying the serenity really...you never know what the aftermath might hold, but right now it is really peaceful...and besides, worrying is a sin," and my personal favorite, "whats gonna happen is gonna happen." Now for the record, I hope the weathermen are wrong. I hope it is a gross overestimation and that no one has to be identified by the sharpied names and numbers on their arms, but what if they are not? What if it is not a case of "the weatherman who cried massive storm surge?" What if everyone of those people who made such dumb statements are washed up on shore on Monday afternoon? Are we to feel sorry for them? 

I for one will not shed one tear for a person, who knowing the danger chose to stay and ride out the storm and then didn't make it. In truth, it is a just end for those who choose to stay having been confronted by overwhelming reason to leave. And so it will be for those who after numerous times of being confronted with the Gospel, make the foolish choice to reject it. And though it will be trendy to blame God for the catastrophic damage inflicted upon coastal Texas, it will be a baseless claim. The claim will have no merit, because the same God who brought the hurricane also brought about the means of rescue from its devastation. The God who created hell also created an avenue of rescue when he sent his son to suffer and die for his children. And so the question goes, "how can a loving God send people to hell?" In truth, he doesn't. He simply lets them have exactly what they asked for...a chance to freely reject rescue, face the storm alone, and live, or die, with the consequences. 

A Little Perspective

I think that pretty much everyone that spends any time at all reading has a favorite author. Mine is C. S. Lewis. Lewis was elevated to the status of "favorite author" the day I finished his book the Screwtape Letters. It is an absolute classic. In Screwtape, Lewis writes a series of letters from a master demon named Screwtape to his apprentice wormwood with advice as to how he can best draw his "patient" away from Christ. The style takes a little getting used to, what with the way God is referred to as "the enemy" and other such idiosyncrasies. However, it is a brilliant piece of literature, and the depth and relevance of Lewis' insight is incredible. I have included one of the chapters from Screwtape and a video that is definitely worth your time. Even if you don't take the time to read the excerpt from Screwtape, please take a look at the video. You will be glad you did.

My dear Wormwood,

When I told you not to fill your letters with rubbish about the war, I mean, of course, that I did not want to have your rather infantile rhapsodies about the death of men and the destruction of cities. In so far as the war really concerns the spiritual state of the patient, I naturally want full reports. And on this aspect you seem singularly obtuse. Thus you tell me with glee that there is reason to expect heavy air raids on the town where the creature lives. This is a crying example of something I have complained about already--your readiness to forget the main point in your immediate enjoyment of human suffering. Do you not know that bombs kill men? Or do you not realize that the patient's death, at this moment, is precisely what we want to avoid? He has escaped the worldly friends with whom you tried to entangle him; he has 'fallen in love' with a very Christian woman and is temporarily immune from your attacks on his chastity; and the various methods of corrupting his spiritual life which we have been trying are so far unsuccessful. At the present moment, as the full impact of the war draws nearer and his worldly hopes take a proportionately lower place in his mind, full of his defense work, full of the girl, forced to attend to his neighbors more than he has ever done before and liking it more than he expected, 'taken out of himself' as the humans say, and daily increasing in conscious dependence on the Enemy, he will certainly be lost to us if he is killed tonight. This is so obvious that I am ashamed to write it. I sometimes wonder if you young fiends are not kept out on temptation duty too long at a time--if you are not in some danger of becoming infected by the sentiments and values of the humans among whom you work. They, of course, do tend to regard death as the prime evil and survival as the greatest good. But that is because we have taught them to do so. Do not let us be infected by our own propaganda. I know it seems strange that the your chief aim at the moment should be the very same thing for which the patient's lover and mother are praying--namely his bodily safety. But so it is; you should be guarding him like the apple of your eye. If he dies now, you lose him. if he survives the war, there is always hope. the enemy has guarded him from you through the first great wave of temptation. But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. you see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up a sense of really being at home in earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.

The truth is that the Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in HIs own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. That is why we must often wish long life to our patients; seventy years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unraveling their souls from heaven and building up a firm attachment to the earth. While they are young we find them always shooting off at a tangent. Even if we contrive to keep them ignorant of explicit religion, the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry--the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, the sight of a horizon--are always blowing our whole structure away. They will not apply themselves steadily to worldly advancement, prudent connections, and the policy of safety first. So inveterate is their appetite for heaven that our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or 'science' or psychology, or what not. Real worldliness is a work of time--assisted, or course, by pride, for we teach them to describe the creeping death as good sense of Maturity or Experience. Experience, in the peculiar sense we teach them to give it, is, by the by, a most useful word. A great human philosopher nearly let our secret out when he said that where Virtue is concerned, 'Experience is the mother of illusion;' by thanks to a change in Fashion, and also, of course, to the Historical Point of View, we have largely rendered his book innocuous. 

How valuable time is to us may be guaged by the fact that the Enemy allows us so little of it. The majority of the human race dies in infancy; of the survivors, a good many die in youth. It is obvious that to Him human birth is important chiefly as the qualification for human death, and death solely as the gate to that other kind of life. We are allowed to work on only a selected minority of the race, for what humans call a 'normal life' is the exception. Apparently He wants some--but only a very few--of the human animals with which He is peopling heaven to have had the experience of resisting us through an earthly life of sixty or seventy years. Well, there is our opportunity. The smaller it is, the better we must use it. Whatever you do, keep your patient as safe as you possibly can.

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

I have watched this video now three times, and not once without tears streaming down my face. The grace with which this family embraced incredible adversity touches a deep place in my soul. The youngest of my three children, Eden, is 93 days old today. She knows nothing of Edward's syndrome, she has never been fed by a tube, and she has never even been inside of a hospital. 

Now there will be those who stand on the sidelines and offer cheap explanations as to why one kid is born healthy and another not; but truthfully, none of our reasons seem to satisfy. In the end, there is a God who gives gifts to mortal men. Some of the gifts are lovely, some of them immensely difficult, but all are beautiful in their own way, because each affords an opportunity to experience grace and come to know the giver. He has seen fit to give me a few gifts that I would not have chosen for myself, and though I rarely understand the whys, I embrace his gifts and trust him still. I trust him because he is good, and I trust him because he gave himself a most painful gift when he sent his own son to suffer and die in my place. 

"God gives. God takes. May his name be ever blessed." -Job 1:21

The Ambition Factor

Sometimes I wish I was a euphemism guy. You know...one of those guys that always seems to find a way to beat around the bush and craft a nice way to say something not so nice. Think the guy who somehow successfully navigates the "does this make me look fat" question from his wife. I am just not that guy. God seems to have blessed me with a special condition that I tend to call a strong appreciation for truth; my buddies have been known to refer to it as, "a profound lack of tact." This "condition" is not exactly high on the list of desirable characteristics of a pastor. I mean, who in their right mind would intentionally participate in a church where the pastor's lowest score on every spiritual gifts test that he has ever taken is mercy and compassion?

That said, it is healthy for us to occasionally be exposed to the ruthless and unfiltered truth about ourselves. The only other options are self-deception, denial, and pretending, all of which are deadly. The truth is, when I began to seek the unfiltered truth about myself, I learned some very interesting things. The first of which was that I am not cool...nor have I ever been. This will come as no shock to anyone who knows me, but I was caught off guard a bit when I discovered that, not only am I not cool, I am in fact a big nerd. I should have gotten a clue about my nerd status when people began to snicker every time I told them that I Tivo every episode of Jeopardy.

Not all of my discoveries about myself were comical. In fact, some of them caused me great depth of sorrow and have become continual matters of prayer that I regularly bring before the Lord. One of the most profound things I learned about myself is that a great deal of my ministry has been motivated more out of an ambitious quest for identity than out of love for Jesus and his people. One of my mentors once told me, "too often you have been the hero of your own story, but there is only one hero in our movement, and you are not him." I found that I had become "The Missions Guy," and not a guy Jesus loves who happens to do some missions work. Though these sound quite similar, they are in fact, nowhere close to the same thing. It is dangerously easy for our identity to become rooted in our service for Christ and not in his love for us. I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is, "if we could no longer effectively serve Christ and his mission, would we still have any relationship with him?" Because, if our relationship with Jesus consists of only our ministerial service, then there is almost certainly a deep fracture in our souls that when it has run its course will produce a viciously ambitious legalism. 

For those of you who think that I made too big of a leap just then, I want you to consider a couple of things. First, why is there such a bloated emphasis on bigness in American Christianity. For some of us, pursuit of bigness is a subtle, almost subconscious idol; but for others, the bigness of the three B's (buildings, butts in the pews, & budgets) serve as the boundary markers of our Christianized caste system--the bigger the better. It just becomes part of the way we speak about things..."you should listen to this guy...his church is running six thousand" or "God is really at work over there, they just built a new $45 million dollar facility." Listen, I am not a bigness hater. In fact, I think almost all of the criticism of mega-churches and the like is motivated out of good old-fashioned jealousy. My point is simply that our excessive preoccupation with bigness is more indicative of the presence of unbridled ambition than it is the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

Second, what is the deal with our ridiculously competitive need to argue about who is laboring in the hardest mission field? No matter where God has placed us, why do we feel the need to abuse the superlative to describe our ministry circumstance. This is the "most unchurched city..." We are in the "third poorest..." This is really nothing more than foolish competition, and it is a telling indicator of the presence of ambitious legalism. Think it through; every time we attempt to prove the validity of our ministry by appealing to these kind of superlative descriptions, we all but invalidate the ministry of hundreds of thousands of faithful ministers, because they are less likely to be shot at or mocked in the local press or whatever horrific thing that comes with ministry in our circumstance that makes us feel good about taking one for the team.

I was just in Guatemala for a week. We were blessed to work with some great people, and really see God's grace in action. One of the guys we got to spend some time with was a guy named Joel. This guy had more energy than three energizer bunnies. It was his job to expose us to the 11,000 people living off of the Guatemala city dump (a sobering experience to be sure), and several other incredible ministries around the city, all of which were beautiful portraits of the body of Christ serving a hurting city. I don't want to pick on Joel, because, he is a great guy, with an incredibly huge heart; but about twenty times during our day with him, he busted out the superlatives to validate these ministries. "This is the hardest..." "This is the most difficult..." I suspect that his heart is clean in the matter and his intentions pure, but is it really necessary for us to appeal to people's ambition to get them involved in ministry. This kind of competitive appeal does little but tarnish a really incredible work of the Spirit.

If ministry is only valid when faced with incredibly difficult circumstances, surely a very "average" guy like me is not up to the task. Is it any wonder that we have such difficulty getting the average Christian to step up to the plate when we make ministry the task of superheroes? I am not pretending that I am free from the grip of this ambitious competition, but I sure wish that I were; and as with every element of our walk with Jesus, confession is step number one.

The Barbarian Way

I like this book.  It was very interesting.  I did not like the title or how it applied the word barbarian.  When I think barbarian, I think about the beginning of Gladiator when the barbarian holds the cut off head of the dude he just killed and starts screaming.  I love the ideas presented in this book.  I appreciated the way McManus references his relationship with his daughter and son.  I think he does a great job communicating the miscommunications between generations.  I love his writing style.  McManus does a good job referencing scripture and pointing out how people in the bible lived.  I agree with the idea that we try to water men down.  Society doesn't allow men to be men.  Churches don't allow men to be men.  There is something great about it when men are men.  When we get to fight for things that are worth fighting for on a daily basis.  Like I said, I did not appreciate McManus's use of the term "Barbarian", but I did like the book a lot.  He definitely spoke well to how men should act.  How men should not care what limitations society has placed on us.  Men should only be concerned about the limitations that the Lord has placed on them.  

The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher

The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher is a fictional account of non-Christian realtor, who through a most curious set of events, decides to plant a church in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. This caught my attention immediately, seeing that I am a church planter that is from just outside of Bartlesville, OK. That alone would have been enough for me to have at least checked out the book; but it is content of the book itself that has warranted writing this review.

The book is extremely clever and Stennett's satire is both brilliant and dangerously accurate. The book pokes fun at many elements of American "Churchianity" as only an insider can; however, it is not biting or malicious in its criticisms, as has become the trend among so many angry children of Evangelicalism, who have realized that irreverently beating up on the Bride of Christ can be pretty lucrative business. Stennett is an incredible developer of characters, and though parts of the book are verging on "over the top," the plot felt natural and eerily believable. Which, I think, leads into one of the main take aways from the book...it is possible to plant, and even grow, a church with absolutely no depth of relationship with Jesus; which incidentally, is something almost all of us suspect after five minutes of watching Christian TV, and wondering why the Pastor on his golden throne telling little old ladies to trade their life savings for prosperity prayer cloths seems so different from the Jesus we find so beautifully portrayed in the Gospels. Somehow in the midst of this novel filled with belly laughing humor, a very somber message rings out reminding those of us, whose task it is to plant and pastor God's church, to take a long hard look in the mirror and deal with the Ryan Fisherism in our hearts.

I think every potential church planter and pastor would benefit greatly from this book, and I am even offering extra credit for students in my undergraduate church planting class to read and review it. I had an opportunity to spend a few minutes with the author last week. He is a great guy and a brilliant writer. He told me that he has another book coming out pretty soon, and from what he told me, it is going to be great as well. This book is one of my new favorites and I highly recommend it.

Wide Awake

I love the ideas presented in this book.  It basically tells you to dream big and allow God to use you to fulfill your dreams.  It is not unrealistic.  Meaning just dream big and anyone can do anything.  For Example: My nephew named Jonathan was born blind.  .  . Not to say that God won't heal him, cause I think if the Lord receives the most glory by healing him, he will.  If one of his dreams is to be an eye surgeon, this is a little unrealistic.  Right now that is out of the scope of his capabilities.  Granted, the Lord can heal him and he could do that, but right now he is not capable of doing this.  (I think he will do great things and the Lord will get great glory from Jonathan's Life.)  We are capable of doing amazing things with the Lords help, even greater than we think.  We are not all meant to be the eye of the body.  Back to the book,  I love how relationships are addressed.  It is very important to invest in people.  One of the greatest legacy's we achieve is measured by the success of the people that we have helped.  You cannot live a successful life alone.  Life is not meant to be lived alone.  

Last of all if you want to know more about me read this book.  The way I am and want to be is represented well in this book.