Will you hire him?

I have lived in the glorious Bible Belt my entire life and now we have moved to what some call the buckle of this moral culture. I have struggled for many years with my culture's impulsive desire for titles and boundary lines. I studied my Bible that spoke of unity and the Messiah who destroyed worldly divisions. But all of the churches I knew continued dividing and the road that stood between the leading churches of each denomination, although it is all that separated them, acted as a vast ocean of which no one would dare to cross.

Ask yourself this question: when someone asks you about your church, how do you define it? For many church-members denominational affiliation is without a doubt their first thought. For most personnel committees their stack of resumes will include only graduates of their own seminaries. Why? Is a man or woman who has been given gifts to serve and a devotion to study God's word not adequate for the leadership of your church?

When Jesus ascended from our world he left the keys to his Church in the hands of twelve apostles (including the apostle Paul). Eleven of these men had spent years with Christ, continually making a fool of themselves, most often by the words of Simon Peter.

If one of the twelve apostles resume landed in your pile, would you hire him? This is a man who does not have a seminary education, is not a part of your financial class, culture, denomination or theological framework. But would you hire him?

What defined the disciples as quality leaders were the divine gifts they received, their devotion to the study of scriptures and most importantly their baptism in the Holy Spirit. Nothing of our world should ever be a higher qualification than that which comes from the one and only God, and He cannot only be a characteristic, but THE chief character of the Church.

Are we there yet?

"Mom, sissy touched me!" Does this remind you of anything? For many people it takes them back to that family trip to Orlando, Washington D.C., or the Grand Canyon (and maybe all three). The first scream was most likely followed soon after with, "Are we there yet?" in that nasely high pitched voice that makes
Dad fume and hopefully drive a little faster.

Some of the largest theological debates (and fallacies) exist around the "ends times" and/or Christ's second coming. Books, articles, and movies are continually being produced but are we actually longing to reach this great destination or are we just curious about a literary genre? I can't speak for you, but I know that I am not continually longing for my Savior to come back for his bride. Often, I have a stronger expectancy for football season than for the eschaton. Are we too comfortable? Are our lives so caught up in this world that we forget that we are not of it?

Have Christian's settled with the answer, "We'll get there when we get there?"

It wasn't uncommon for my parents to set up small beds for us on long car drives so that we would spend more time sleeping and less time slapping each other. Have we Christians taken a nap in the back seat, leaving out all desire for our Saviors return?

Not that human actions determine the will of God, but maybe our lack of desire for God to arrive is just as annoying as your persistent impatient child. But you forget that you are driving that child to DISNEY WORLD where ALL of their hopes and dreams have dwelled ever since Toy Story.

Walt Disney succeeded in saturating children's lives with his mystical kingdom. Are we a bunch of "2%ers" wrapped up more in our crumbling world than the coming kingdom? All grown up now, where have our hopes and dreams gone? Christ commanded us to both prepare and wait for his coming (Matthew 24). So today, instead of grumbling over the specifics of John's Revelation, marvel in the beauty of our God.

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" 

(Revelation 4.8)

Awkward Interruptions

Authentic Christian Community has become a hot button. We love talking about it, preaching about it, reading about it, and for the most part we all desire it, but how many days a week do we pursue it? For most people there is some awkward unspoken barrier that deprives us from one of humans' earliest identified needs. So why is it so hard to find and create this creature? When you continue this conversation through our culture of gated driveways and bolt-locked doors it becomes clear that we have created a security system to protect our lives from the world.

Not only have we locked our doors to protect ourselves but we have a fatalistic fear to even attempt to ring a doorbell. What do we fear? Most people I talk to agree that this fear is directly related with interruption. Why should I visit a friend unannounced or uninvited when I could be risking interrupting them from their busy lives? But my question is what are you actually going to interrupt? Most likely, with most Americans (if they are home) you are going to interrupt 1 of 2 things, eating or watching TV, both of which are great to do with people!

There are researches, studies, and journals written on the fact, but it doesn't take much to show that Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Steve Jobs have drastically changed humanity's lifestyle. The internet and social media are great tools and without them I would not be connected to friends and family across state and country. But, they can create a superficial connection that some label as stalking. No matter how many times someone tweets, posts, or texts how often do even your closest friends communicate their true struggles and needs? Stalk all you want but I'm going to go on a walk and have a conversation (go ahead, call me weird). So, stop "following" on YourPhone and start using it as a tool for this authentic community that you keep tweeting about.

My Lord and Savior did not come into this world with an invitation, and it was nowhere on Mary's Gmail Calendar. The community we drool over that is accounted in the Acts of the Apostles was not created on their own, but existed by and with the Holy Spirit. Stop waiting for some one to write on your wall and start knocking on some doors. Get awkward, interrupt, and allow Holy Spirit to move and create what we are all looking for! 

Visiting Churches

I am that small town boy who lived in the same Arkansan community for the majority of his life.  I never visited churches when I moved to college, I just picked one.  So now, we (Bailey and I - http://thegreenacres.blogspot.com/) have moved from a town of 10,000 to Fort Worth, TX.  Here you could visit churches for the rest of your life, and those are only the ones aligned with the SBC.  So how do you choose? Dare you judge? When do you begin paying dues and transfer this so-called church letter? 

It quickly became clear that the close your eyes and point to the map method, although methodological, felt about as productive as reading an encyclopedia. Ironically, I found myself deciphering the churches we would visit through online dating. There isn't a website that matches you by personality or similarity (yet). But, most churches have fairly functional sites which told me they know what the internet is, but I also found that I was able to "size up" a church with somewhat precision. I know this sounds judgmental, because in all truthfulness, it is.  So work hard not to judge but pray for discernment and seek God to guide you through the help of the Holy Spirit. 


The second factor I learned is that you can't make a choice from one, two, or more visits.  So, don't jump in the creek before you know that there is a swimming hole to land in.  After visiting the churches we selected to visit we choose a church to visit consistently, and for now feel guided to become a part of this community. The major contributions to this decision were biblical teaching and application, and genuine community.  Although there were other bodies of believers that partly fulfilled these for us, the tipping point was a family of believers that were willing to be our community immediately.  Bailey and I found ourselves in a place needing community, and for now we believe to have found it.