anonymous

Going along the lines of my previous post about recognition being its own reward, I was thinking about a sermon Alicia Chole gave at a CMF (campus missions fellowship) service last year.

After expressing her excitement for what our generation seems like it's going to accomplish missionally, she spoke on 9 woes that await those who deviate from the path that God wants us to take. I can't remember exactly how she worded it, but one of the woes was aimed at those who would misuse ministry as a cover to make a name for themselves. It was only one of her 9 points, but it stuck with me.

I just googled her to see if I could find a blog or something, and I found an awesome video preview (she's so smiley) for this book I am going to read as soon as I can get my hands on it: anonymous.

Aside from the obvious problems with isolationism, in this broadcast-everything world, there is a huge temptation to focus on marketing oneself before "being misunderstood, persecuted, and ignored" to develop character. This is proving to be a huge mistake (I can think of a few Christian celebrity examples), and one that I sometimes have a desire to commit. Hopefully this book will give me the encouragement to stay in obscurity as long as God would have me stay a nobody...even if its a lifetime.

Above the Water

Now that I'm starting to get more oxygen (even though I'm sick right now), there are a couple things I'm realizing:

1. Doing service just for the sake of receiving recognition is its own reward. We have to posture ourselves to become servants instead of just serving on occasion to feed off of the praise of men. MUFHH: It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes.

2. God will provide everything you need if you put his kingdom and righteousness first. There are way too many short cuts in this country and not nearly enough reminders that our God has more than enough to satisfy our every desire. God can give me a job. God can give me a supportive and loving family. God can give me genuine friends. We cannot out give God. Knowing this, we must continually pour ourselves out to each other. I am not done serving just because I'm finished with a pastorate.

I have to stop making decisions in my life based on worry or lack of faith. It's not enough for faith to line the major decisions of one's life. Faith should drive us every day even in the little things.

Interim Pastor Andy No More

Tonight was my last night preaching to the youth. It's been four months that I've been an interim youth pastor, and I have to say honestly that the experience has been excruciating. Numerous confirmations led me to the solid conclusion that God was calling me to lead my old youth group for a season, but nonetheless this has been the hardest four months of my life. I had the following against me from the start:

(a) I already have a full time job and people to minister to at Indiana Wesleyan University
(b) I knew my online classes would start very quickly, removing at least another 8 hours from my week
(c) My fitness schedule also cannot be tampered with because I support someone financially with the wellness pay I get for working out
(d) I'm not the "typical" youth pastor type (I'm not loud)
(e) I'm not even the "traditional" pastor type (I don't like listening to myself talk)
(f) The youth group has been through a lot and was by no means "booming" at the time

Thanks to Mark Batterson and his inspiring book "In a Pit, with a Lion, on a Snowy Day" I saw the above as challenges to my faith...challenges that must be met with the insane act of accepting the position. So I looked my lion in the face, and I can now say that I have conquered him. And in the process I have learned a few things about myself:

(1) I love preaching through entire books. God set up my preaching schedule perfectly so my last night speaking to the kids would be the last sermon in the second sermon series we completed. We started in the New Testament with Colossians and then moved to the Old Testament with Jonah. I like it because instead of preaching my own spin on every sermon I've already heard before, I was forced to learn new stuff and teach it to the kids. Colossians taught me to stay Christ-centered, and Jonah taught me about God's character.

(2) I hate ministry without relationship. Doing an interim pastorate means you will lose one way or another. Either you are resented for not interacting with the kids enough or selfish for making the next guy's job harder by building relationships that will leave the kids disillusioned when you have to leave. I chose to do all I could to create opportunities for the youth sponsors to relate to the kids instead of me. Needless to say, it is very hard to keep a teenagers attention when they don't think you care about them. I had to love them by developing a fun service with a hard hitting message at the end. I like how most of the services turned out, but if I could have built close relationships first, I wouldn't have been so drained at the end of each service.

(3) I can be resourceful when I want to be. We turned a service that was boring the kids to death into something that was both fun and convicting.
-I utilized my Firefox video downloader to acquire new viral videos every week to break the ice
-Found a fun and exciting games for the kids from websites
-Developed fresh, themed sermons with a graphic every week
-Founded the five dolla holla, a weekly game segment to start each service off
None of these are really that amazing, but when you consider I didn't have much time every week, it kind of all came together miraculously.

(4) I suck at church discipline, but at least I do it. Talking to one of the kids I confronted about a serious sin problem, I heard something that really saddened me: "none of the other youth groups I go to thought it was a problem." How are we loving the people we minister to if we refuse to correct them in love? To Jesus, "filling the seats" was secondary to producing REAL disciples. This meant getting in their face when they said something that was inspired by satan. I don't like confronting people about sin, its awkward because I have no tact and deep down I know there a few (hundred) things I need to work on. Nevertheless, looking the other way is committing the sin of knowing what we ought to do and not doing it.

(5) I have a lot more faith building to do. You don't realize how dependent upon God you really are until you are deep in a pit with a lion. There was no hiding my inadequacies in the position I have been in. I've never been in less control of my emotions. I felt powerless every day. The good news is that I lived through it all, and I still love Jesus.

It's through suffering that we are able to have fellowship with Jesus, because he suffered. If I had turned the position down, God would have found some other way to humble me. I have no reason to fear the future, but I know that this won't be the last time I have a tough time for Jesus. (I just hope the next step is a little easier because I feel like taking a permanent vacation to Jamaica right now.)

Song of Solomon

Mars Hill Church in Seattle is doing a phenomenal sermon series on the Song of Solomon. I probably can't regurgitate everything I have absorbed so far, but I'll give it a shot. Just one of these nuggets would be enough for the time to be worth it.

(1) Standard of Beauty - The SoB of every man who is eventually going to be married is his future wife. There are no 8s or 8.5s or 9s when it comes to a husband judging the beauty of his wife. Just like Adam looked at Eve when God brought them together and desired her, a husband's opinion of his wife's beauty is always a resounding 10. It is NOT okay to let the garbage of the entertainment world's glamorization of Hollywood hotties seep into my mind and create some kind of impossible standard of beauty. My standard of physical beauty will be whoever I pledge my life to in marriage. Until then, I keep my eyes open for someone that is HOLISTICALLY attractive.

(2) Priority - Knowing that God has called me to full time ministry (whatever that means), I've always tried to keep that first in my life. And I guess that is fine while I am single. Whatever job God has me doing is important and worth my attention, but whenever it is that I get married my ministry will be to my wife. My life will change in that my relationship with Jesus will remain first, but second is my duty to love my wife until I die. Then comes whatever position I hold in whatever church I am serving. A husband's ministry is to his wife.

(3) Garden - A prudent woman has kept her body like a locked, private garden not a public park. Cleavage = Grievage

(4) Wedding - The first day of marriage is not nearly as important as the LAST day. I like what Mark and his wife Grace agreed on: they will never speak of divorce or consider divorce as an option. Whatever comes around the corner, they will deal with it and work through it. I like that. Total commitment. Marriage use to automatically mean that, but with today's relationships that is not so anymore.

(5) Wife's Role - Mark Driscoll and his wife think it a scriptural principle for the wife to remain at home with the kids. They are big on the traditional gender roles. His wife said at one point: I can't imagine handing my kids over to a daycare 5 days a week (while tearing up). Looking at the quality of parenting today, I could see huge benefits in this whether you believe it is mandated by the Bible or not. Home schooling is a different story, but if both parents are tied up in full times jobs and responsibility, how can the kids be given the attention and teaching they need to overcome the temptations of this world. This is not to say that the wife cannot work while they are without children.

Those are all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm grateful that Mars Hill is doing this untouched book of the Bible. It was a genius move because even Biblical sex sells, and that's one product you don't have to worry about overindulging in...when you're married.

...

@%$&!

Changes

The status quo is not acceptable. I'm rooting for change. Yes we can.

No, I'm not talking about the presidential election.

I'm talking about the fact that the Cubs just ended a dominant season by losing three straight games to the dodgers.

So I'm pouring out a forty for this year's Cubs.... another victory for Prozac in the north side of Chicago.

Tell em, pac:

Life in the Valley

As part of my post-Bible College devotional life, I check My Utmost for His Highest every day. While I was going to CBC, I felt like the chapels spoke so personally to me that I must be going through a really important time in my life. Now that I don't have chapel to go to every day, I'm finding that meeting us where we are is something God must do all the time? All I know is, God has been using this online daily devotional to speak DEEP truths into my life and shape my character even more frequently than when I was at CBC.

A few months ago, I was upset about something that had to do with someone. I was upset for all the right reasons, but I was responding in all the wrong ways. That day I checked My Utmost and right there was a scripture telling me to "reconcile disputes with your brother RIGHT WAY."

That was it for me. Right that moment I called and told that person what I had been frustrated about.

Recently, MUfHH has been talking about "valley experiences," citing the time after the transfiguration when the disciples failed to cast out a demon (Matthew 17:14-23). Here is a selection from today's post:

Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.

Here's the point: It's easy to believe in Jesus when he's right in front of your face, glowing, and talking to the most famous men of God in history, BUT how many people have that kind of faith in the valley, when there's no glowing savior to be seen? The mountaintop experience doesn't require an extraordinary amount of faith. It's in the valley that our "faith" is tested and REAL faith built.

Growing up in youth group we were always told that spiritual highs and lows are bad. We should always be on the mountaintop. Now I'm learning that if you stay on the mountaintop, you will harm the growth of your faith (and possibly destroy it).

It's in the everyday or sometimes painfully dark events in our lives that God is building our faith.

Translated to Christian culture: Spending all our time in a church BUILDING is not necessarily BUILDING our faith.

First Post

"Blog is a word that you hear people say right before they throw up or start boring you." -me

(..yeah I quote myself. I'm either arrogant or a genius.)

I already have a private blog that I use occasionally, but I think having an open version has its benefits:

1. I'll be connecting with all of my respected friends who are out there expressing themselves.
   
2. It can serve as an e-ministry to some (as God has used the blogs of others in the past to aid MY spiritual growth).
   
3. This blog will be an all encompassing answer to the "how are you doing?" questions that I receive and can't answer for whatever reason.

As far as subject matter goes, I'm thinking this blog will document my spiritual growth as I have learned the painful lesson that I have not arrived, and I won't arrive at my destination until Jesus takes me home.

Where am I right now?

I'm living at home after graduation...working at Indiana Wesleyan University. I've been the interim youth pastor at my home church, Living Hope, for almost 3 months. I'm enrolled in a bachelors of science in management program at IWU online which will finish in under 2 years. After that, my plan is to work with a church plant in Utah called Elevation Church (www.elevation.cc). I want to go the "tent making" route by finding a job in the community and seeing what God will do as far as raising up a church of Jesus followers.

Until that happens, it's been made obvious to me that I am still very much in school. I couldn't wait to finish Bible College my senior year so I could get out in the world and apply the stuff I had learned, but I quickly found out that school is still in session. Let's get my learn on...