Glorious Mud

We have a crisis of discontentment today.  We have more than we have ever had - but we are less content that we have ever been. So, here is the deal.  If you want to be content - you have to foster a healthy discontentment. Seriously.  You can't be content without it. A lot of people think of contentment as a passive state of simply being "OK" with your life.  That isn't contentment.  It is denial.  Or worse, it is despair - the loss of hope for something better. Contentment is not a passive acceptance of what is - it is the result of an active pursuit of what is better. We are discontent because have a hunger for something we don't have.  The problem isn't the hunger - the problem is that we try to feed that hunger with the wrong things.  We crave something - so we try to feed it with buying stuff, or with the distraction of entertainment, or with more and greater achievement.  And it doesn't work. You can't satisfy a desire for ...

This last Saturday, The Journey: Metro East (soon to be Trailhead Church) hosted our first Affordable Christmas at our space in Edwardsville, IL. Affordable Christmas was the brain child of Josh Wilson and the crew at Mission St. Louis .  They decided several years ago to try to empower a group of low income parents with a way to shop for their children's Christmas by giving them an event that offered new presents at drastically reduced prices.  This event has proven to be one of the most anticipated events put on by MStL.  So, this year, we jumped in with them (or, I should say they jumped in with us - they brought over a great crew to help us staff and run our event)!  We have been working over the last two years to build relationships with a group of families living at SIUE's family housing, and this even was a great way to empower them and continue to serve them with the love of Christ. It really was a blast.  We had fun.  The parents had fun....

Gratitude is a catalyst to gospel growth in our lives. Or, as Colin Powell would say, it is a force multiplier. I heard Colin Powell speak at a leadership event years ago and he talked about how military leaders are always looking for force multipliers - elements that are natural to the environment and will increase the effectiveness of your strength.  It might be a hill to come down or a ravine to travel up through or a line of trees to use as cover. In the Christian life, it is gratitude.  We can see this in a number of passages, like this one:     Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7 ESV) The Bible is f...

I meet with a lot of young dudes.  Many of them show real leadership potential.  But more than anything else, one of the first things I look for is a deep and real gratitude to God.  I am convinced that one of the first signs that someone really "gets" the gospel (and by "gets," I simply mean "believe") is a deep sense of thankfulness. In fact, probably the most accurate prayer someone could utter after hearing the gospel is not, "Lord, please forgive me" but "Thank you." Why?  Because the gospel is the message that Jesus has won for us peace with God.  It's a done deal.  The payment is complete.  When Jesus came as our High Priest and offered himself as the substitutionary sacrificial lamb, he fully paid our sin-debt to God and completely satisfied God's anger toward our sin.  He took the cup of God's wrath and drank it to the dregs.  So, when he rose from the grave, that was proof that the payment was absolutely comple...

So, here is a familiar scenario:  You are standing in line at the grocery store and your little angel has been teetering on the dark side of angelic all morning.  The tipping point comes when you hit the check out line and your child sees that bright and colorful something that was perfectly places to create a crisis for parents. It happens.  Your child reaches out and grunts - or worse, actually swipes it as you walk by.  And you take a deep breath and say the magic word: No.  And in that moment, your little angel crosses completely over to the dark side and becomes a midget demon.  The thrashing and wailing begin.  Other parents move slowly away.  The security guard talks quietly on his walkie-talkie as he moves where he can watch your every move.  The clerk stares at you with her blank stare and saucer eyes. And in that moment, you wish you had the silver bullet that would kill that tantrum and restore your child to "angelic" statu...

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I have been answering a lot of the same questions in different conversations about our transition from The Journey Metro East to Trailhead Church.  So, in an attempt to continue to shed light on what is seen (understandably) as an unusual situation, I am going to post this FAQ. I hope it is helpful. So, here we go: Why do this? The first and best answer to "why" is this: God is leading us to this. This shouldn't be surprising since The Journey has made it clear that it is a church-planting church.  We believe in church planting for a number of good reasons.  Local, autonomous churches contextualize the gospel to and lead best in their communities.  People in a church plant feel more pressure to take ownership of the church's life - which is a good pressure that encourages the development and use of the gifts of the Spirit in the church.  In addition, teaching content - not just illustrations - can be focus...

I knew when I announced that The Journey: Metro East would transition toward becoming an independent, autonomous church that I was in for a lot of conversations.  I was prepared to work hard to cast vision clearly, honestly, and compellingly.  So, I haven't be surprised by the need to cast vision - and then to do it again in short time.  It isn't surprising - we are getting ready to do something that just isn't done very often.  Healthy hives are rare enough, but the transition of a video venue to an autonomous church is as rare as finding a snipe on a snipe hunt. I have come to see that church splits are actually quite easy at least in the beginning.  All you have to do is rally people around a "common enemy."  Just gather people together by what you all don't like or are angry about - and that gives momentum to the vision.  (This can only last for awhile, though.  Eventually all that sinful negativity will sap all the energy out of the church ...