Glorious Mud

Death. Burial. Resurrection. That is what we celebrated in our baptisms this weekend at Trailhead Church : the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He paid the price - we reap the benefit. So we celebrate. And that's the way God wants it - Jesus was our substitute. He died our death under our judgment. He was crushed under the weight of our guilt and shame. He was immersed in our death because of our sin. And then he rose again. The payment was complete and a new morning of forgiveness and life had dawned. And we celebrate. To be clear, we don't celebrate our obedience or good fortune. That's in there - but what we really celebrate is Jesus himself. We celebrate his love, his grace, his forgiveness, his initiative with us, his mercy, his work. We celebrate his performance for us, not our performance for him. We rest in the peace of God because Jesus made peace with God for us. We don't just celebrate what he has done - we celebrate him. And ...

So, a strange thought came to me in the shower the other day.  Being a pastor is like being a Chinese buffet.  Everyone shows up with different and specific expectations and everyone walks away disappointed. This thought didn't come to me because I was feeling sorry for myself, because I'm not.  I love what I do because of who I do it for (Jesus), and I have no internal need to meet everyone's expectations of me.  My job is to please the one who loved me and called me to himself.  (And, awesome thought, he is already pleased with me and will continue to be because I am covered with Christ, the delight of God!) The thought actually came to me as I was thinking about how the church today has lost the experience of being the church.  O ur cultural Christianity has essentially taken all the “one another's” of scripture and robbed them of their community experience. Like Colossians 3:16.  It says Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching a...

I had a thought this morning that floored me with its stunning incongruity.  It was simply this: God has invited me to warm myself at the fire of his holiness. God's holiness is the expression of all that makes God good - all that makes him "other" than anything that is different from and less than he is.  His holiness is the perfect expression of his perfection - and it is mainly symbolized in the Bible as light, smoke, and fire. God appeared to Moses as a fire in a bush.  After Israel was delivered from Egypt, God led them through the wilderness as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day.  And then - when they had arrived at Mt. Sinai, the Bible says: Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.  This is not a warm and inviting image.  This is not a crackling, romantic fire in your fireplace.  This ...

I recently read an article in the New Yorker called "How David Beats Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell. I found it fascinating and highly recommend it - you can find it here . The Article The article uses the experiences of the shepherd boy David, a middle school girls' basketball coach named Vivek Ranadivé, Laurence of Arabia, Rick Patino, and others to show that the "Davids" of the world - the underdogs - can actually have a distinct advantage in competition of conflict if they focus more on effort than skill - more time looking for unconventional approaches than by playing the game as it is normally played. The premise of the article is that underdogs actually win most of the time when they approach the conflict on their own terms, unconstrained by conventional expectations. Many times, as in the case of the middle school girls' basketball that used a vigorous full court press the entire game, the strategies are not illegal or immoral - they are simply unco...

I am showing The Passion of the Christ (yes, the whole thing) this Friday night at our Good Friday service. If you were to come, you would enter a dark room lit by candles. You would enter in silence and sit meditatively - expectantly. The night will start with a brief explanation of the series of events of the passion week, so everyone knows how Good Friday fits in to the broader progression. You would then be led through worship music and scripture meditation to consider the cross. You would then hear a brief message on the purpose and value of substitutionary atonement followed by communion, silence, and then a showing of the movie. I know - old news - the movie has been around for over 5 years now. I know churches have been showing clips of it every Easter since. So, here is my confession. I didn't watch the movie when it came out - or when it was recut and re-released the next year...or when it came to DVD. In fact, I didn't watch it until this week. Why? Lot'...

I always find it interesting what angle the media chooses when doing a piece on a pastor or ministry. Driscoll handled himself well. Check it out: ABC News: Pastor Dude's Mega-Church Draws Crowds Posted using ShareThis

What could MTV, the inventor of such kid-friendly shows as Beavis and Butthead, and George Barna, the famous Christian researcher and author of Raising Spiritual Champions , possibly have in common? In what universe could these two culturally polar-opposites possibly agree - especially about the American family? For once they may actually agree on something. When MTV conducted a survey of people aged 13-24 asking them what makes them happy, you would naturally expect to hear about things that are the glory of MTV: money, sex, drugs, and fame. The results, though, were surprisingly (or, maybe not so surprisingly) in line with what Christian researchers like Barna have been telling us for years: parents are the single most important factor in a child's happiness and sense of well-being. Nearly 3/4 of those surveyed said that their relationship with their parents was a significant source of happiness. When asked about what activities made them happy, the respondents li...