Who has say in your church?

Thanks to ASBO for this gem

Jon Foreman - Your Love Is Strong

My New Favorite Song

Sarah McLachlan - World On Fire

I love this video. Sarah did a cheap recording of her song world on fire and showed where the money she would have spent on the production was put to use in other areas of the world.

David After Dentist

This kid is still buzzing from the "happy gas" at the dentist. I believe that I felt the same way a few times after the dentist. Being a redhead, it takes a bit more to "juice me up" according to my dentist.

Thanks to Keely for this video

A Good Day

Today has been a good day.

First off, I got this letter:

Dear Pastor Tom,

In the spirit of all the negativity lately
and your sermon last Sunday - I felt
perhaps it is time to step up to the plate
and commend you on your sermon.
-We are so quick to criticize and/or forget
1.) I was taken aback with the
quote on Blessed are those who mourn
for they will be comforted.
As I mentioned at coffee
I never got that - It does make
much more sense with the vast
impact of the Sermon on the Mt.
2.) The words "Salt & Light" have
been plauging me all week -what
a simple reminder of truth with
a (little) spice!
I just mentioned to my boss the
above & wonder if I should put a
salt shaker on my desk as a
reminder!
Tom, things change minute
by minute, all we can do is
keep moving forward step by
little step & be sure our motives
are pure- we all have a part
of ourselves that wants to be
puffed up or recognized- I do as well
but unless I'm mistaken that takes
away somewhat from the love one
anotehr and humility clause in
the Bible
If you wish, share this w/
Kendall & keep your chin
up- I always have a hug
available!

That was a great pick me up. As you may remember from my last letter I received, I am a little hesitant to read letters sent to me. But I am glad I opened this one.

Then I got another letter donating $200 to a member of our Guatemala team annonymously.

Then I got an e-mail letting me know that I won a $50 gift card to Home Depot from Barganeering.com He e-mailed me:

"1 out of 664 chance... you got it. :)
Thanks for the kind words, I hope you keep reading!
Cheers,
Jim"

Man what a day today!

Guatemala City -zone 18

Ellen DeGeneres ~ I Love Jesus But I Drink A Little (HQ)

Don't watch this if you are eating or drinking anything! It's messy.

Awesome Post

My friend Josh started blogging, and I laughed out loud at this recent post of Demotivators:

Guatemala Trip 2009

If the world had 100 people in it. from John Chow on Vimeo.

This video really makes you think about how blessed we are.
The part that struck me was "If you keep your food in a fridge, clothes in a closet and sleep in a bed and have a roof over your head, you are richer than 75% of the rest of the world.

I did a message this past week on blessed are the poor, and there were people saying, "Well I must be blessed, because I am poor." Not when you place things in proper perspective.

We are going to Guatemala this year for a missions trip, we will see people who have no fridge, bed, or closet, and the roof over their head is corrugated tin. The house that they live in is as big as my kitchen, and 15 people live there.

We go down not to stoop down and help out the poor little people in Guatemala, but we are going down to take part in the HOLY privilege of serving the people that Jesus identified himself with.

"If you do it for the least of these, you do it for me." Working with the poor is a privilege that we get to do and by serving the poor in this way, somehow, we are serving Christ himself. When we build a home, we are sheltering Christ. When we give a family a dozen eggs, we are feeding Christ.

Read Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon on the Mount: stick figure style

I have been reading and reflecting the Sermon on the Mount, and I made this little pencil sketch to sum it all up. I am not an artist, I know, but I do draw a mean stick figure.

If you can't see it, click on it and make it bigger.

Quote of the Day

"a [biblical] text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean." -Ben Witherington

meaning, you can make the Bible say just about anything you want it to, and justify anything you need it to. But as I state all the time...

"The Bible can never mean what it never meant." -Gordon Fee

Weekend Wrap Up

We went up to SpringHill this past weekend with our Sr. High students. It was amazing!

I find it hard to sum up what exactly happened. Let's start with fun:

1. We all tubed until we froze. SpringHill has an amazing tubing hill that is open most of the time.
2. Some people went horseback riding. Lots of fun.
3. We got to hangout in the game room and gym and have plenty of fun.
4. Morgan sang at open mic night and was amazing.
5. The sessions were amazing.

Spiritual

1. A few of our students surrendered their life over to Christ for the first time!
2. The rest of us were moved as the speaker presnted Forgiveness is a powerful way.
3. Eric Timm was our speaker, and what an amazing job he did. He had us laughing one minute, and intently listening the next. Very talented individual.
4. Red Umbrella led worship, and they did a spectacular job.

Overall:
one of the best and most powerful retreats I have been on. If you get a chance to go to SpringHill, go. If you get a chance to see Eric Timm, go. If you can go to both, stop everything and go.

HELL!!

I pray that this is not me this weekend!

Why do Freeways (Chruches) come to an annoying hault?

I read this interesting article, and then applied it to church.

1. Someone in front slows to 50mph (i.e. to avoid a car swerving in front of him)
2. The next driver slows to 45 to keep a safe distance away.
3. Drivers farther back see brake lights and begin to slow down
4. The pattern continues and more drivers apply their brakes until traffic is at a crawl.
5. By the time the rear drivers catch up to the source of the shockwave, the offending parties are long gone, and there is no sign of what started the problem.

What if we applied this to churches...

Rick Warren's Inaugural Prayer

There are two types of Christians out there today. The type who can pray like this:



And the type who write garbage like this:

[Click Here]

The Jesus Manifesto: Part One: Class Systems

I have been reading Richard Rohr's Jesus' Plan for a New World. This book really contributed to me wanting to explore the Sermon on the Mount. We love to take little pieces of the Sermon on the Mount out of its context, slap it on a t-shirt, and say, "Look, this is what Jesus said!" But if you don't read the individual teachings within the whole teaching of the sermon on the mount, you can easily become lost, confused, and misinformed on Jesus' intentions.

One of the first questions I asked was, "who is Jesus talking to?" Once I had the answer to this question, the Sermon took on an all new light, I could see it from a perspective of a first century peasant Jew instead of a middle class white American male of the 21st century.

Class Systems:
In our society, we divide up the population by class. The Gilbert-Kahl system, we see that America is divided into six classes:
1. Executive Class: Top politicians, corporate executives, and heirs of large buisnesses reside here
2. Upper Class: Doctors, Lawyers, Medium sized buisness owners
3. Middle Class: Proffessional laborers (electricians, plumbers) non retail sales, lower management positions
4. Working class: factory workers, lower skilled manual labor, clerical, retail sales
5. Working Poor: minimum wage workers
6. Underclass: part-time workers, unemployed. etc...

We can add a bottom class to this system. Your worth is based upon what you can consume and produce, so those who are not able or willing to consume or produce are not even classified here.
7. Expendable: criminals, welfare recipients, nursing home occupants, mental institution occupants, mentally handicapped, and the seriously disabled, the unborn.

This is not a knock on the bottom class, if you know someone who would be classified there. You will see.

The class system of Jesus' day had nine class systems, the top five ran society, and the bottom four were peasant classes.
1. Caesar: received 50% of the GNP, in Jesus' day it would be Tiberius
2. Governor: recieved 25% of the GNP, in Jesus' area this is Pilate
3. Retainers (maintain the system): military officers, lower bureaucrats (Herod), The High Preist (Caiaphas) pharisees and scribes (worked like H&R Block, helping you wade through all the red tape of religion for a fee)
4. Merchants: Lower on the scales than in our Consumer based society
5. Land Owners: Owned all the land
6. Farmers: Rented the land from land owners
7. Artisians: Fisherman, carpenters, masons
8. the "unclean" Lepers, tax collectors, pig farmers, gentiles (non Jews), and pig farmers (see story of Lost Son from Luke)
9. The Expendable: criminals, beggars, cripples, lame, blind, handicapped

When Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount he says, blessed are the poor (ptochi) which means destitute, those who are crouching, he is referring to the bottom two classes.

New Series: The Jesus Manifesto (title still in the works)

I am taking on a message series the whole month of February that I am really excited about. I love the opportunity to speak and teach. When I am not teaching, I am thinking about teaching. I am messed up that way I guess.

BUT... I am working on a series about the Sermon on the Mount. We went through the Advent and prepared for the coming of Christ, we are in the middle of the Jesus is the bridge series, and next we are looking into What did Jesus actually say and teach?

I will be sharing tid bits here and there on this site so you can get a sneak peak of it.

My Wife

my wife is blogging again!
http://www.kararundel.blogspot.com/

i think my wife's a calvinist.mov

good stuff
HT: Noel H