A Great Communicator -part 4

When people don’t see what we are doing as vital in their lives (and I mean everything from a church picnic to a Sunday sermon) then they begin to look at church services and events as religious duties performed by the faithful, but having little real meaning or import. They actually begin to view these times as something that must be endured, often primarily in order to maintain their fellowship with the people in the church.

The Gratitutde Project

Day 22

My monthly project is progressing, although slower than I expected.  I think I need to babysit it more in order for it to happen.

I have taken to writing thank you cards once a week to a few people.  I think it is funny that people almost always contact me back and thank me for sending them a “thank you.”  I have flirted with the idea of sending out a thank you card for thanking them for thanking me.  OK, I would never do that.  When they call I think “Hey, you can thank me for sending you a ‘thank you.’  That erases the thank you.”

In reality, I am happy that they are calling.  My mind just jumps around to funny semi-sarcastic thoughts all the time.  I don’t do it because I am cynical or mean.  My mind is always just entertaining itself in the background.

I have realized through this that thankfulness begets thankfulness.  People read the card and their response is to say “thank you” for me thanking them.  Mother Theresa once said “We don’t have to reach the whole world.  If half the world was loving the other half, then everyone would be being loved.”  I like that.  If I can be the most thankful person I possibly can, then the people around me will be more thankful.  If they are thankful, then the people around them are affected, and on down the line.  Like a pebble in a pond, the ripples could reach the whole pool.

I want to reach the whole pond, but I really need to pay more attention to me being more thankful.  After all, I am doing this because I get frustrated at how much we (me and most people around me) pay attention to the failures around them.  Psychology calls it the Fundamental Accountability Error.  Every schoolboy knows how it works.  When a fly ball goes into right field and the fielder has to dive to catch it.  He gets up and says “I am an awesome fielder.”  If he misses the catch, it is “The sun was in my eyes.”

That kind of thinking is what causes us to have an entitlement mentality.  This error makes us focus on others failures and what we deserve.  It is the opposite of thankfulness.  It is sin.  Although I fall prey to this law of psychological tendency just as much as anyone else, I am trying to burn it out of me.  That is part of my prayer.  Please pray for me in this regard.  -Ryan

Thoughts from my Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday.  Typically, people enjoy their birthdays, I think.  In recent years I have been increasingly becoming quite the birthday party-pooper.  I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is that makes me feel so un-festive on October 1^st.  There could be a bunch of reasons, and perhaps many of them work together to make me a little bit gloomy and highly introspective.  I feel a combination of wanting to huddle up in a ball behind the washer and dryer like some sickly cat, and wanting people to gather around me and make me feel loved.  I endure it with a relatively normal look on my face.  I do enjoy the love that people show me, for sure though.

One of the things I’ve dealt with over the last couple years is the knowledge that I’m not getting any younger.  When I was younger I dreamed that I would accomplish all manner of amazing things.  These weren’t just selfish ambitions, but godly Kingdom goals too.  But now the older I get, I see people around me who are my role models, and I realize that by my age, they had already accomplished much more than I.  Some of them are now even younger than I am.  It is starting to feel like that moment in a football game where you realize that there just isn’t enough time to score the three touchdowns you need in order to win, even if you keep the other side from doing anything.  You start to have those thoughts of forced turnovers and onside kicks, but you also really wonder if it is all possible.  Yeah, I know that I’m being overly dramatic, but I already told you that I’m in that sort of mood.  It is my birthday.  Indulge me a little.

When I got home from Barnes and Noble, Peichi was waiting for me with some dinner and a mixed drink that she had made, and cupcakes she had just baked to top it all off.  She is very good to me sometimes.  I felt loved.

As I was eating, she pulled out a milk carton.  I’m lactose intolerant, which means that I can only drink lactose-free milk that just happens to cost twice as much as regular milk.  She showed me the expiration date, a day in late August, a whole month ago.  I’m bad with those kinds of things.  I’ll be in the grocery store and see something on sale, and thinking that my frugal spouse will be proud of me, I’ll buy two.  The problem starts when I forget to actually eat or drink said product.  I’ll put it in the fridge.  It will slowly move to the back as I reach for other things and just put them in front.  Two months later, she’ll pull out an expired milk carton, half full of milk, half full of a green ecosystem complete with Greenpeace activists demanding it be declared a protected environment.

I smiled nonchalantly and continued to eat.  The date stared back at me, boring a hole in my forehead.  As I ate, I realize that sometimes I feel a bit like that milk carton.  I look back on my year and realize that some of who I am has just sat on the shelf.  Some of my gifts have just not been used.

Just like that milk, I have an expiration date.  We all do.  It isn’t known, but it is definitely stamped on our foreheads in some ink we can’t see, but it is indelible.  We are also filled up with gifts, dreams, passions, and all manner of good stuff.   When we can’t use these in the way God intended, they just sit there and slosh around inside of us.  I think that is why Proverbs 13:12 says “hope deferred makes the heart grow sick, but longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”  I was meant for those hopes, gifts, and passions to be used for God and His kingdom.

I don’t believe that I’m sitting on the shelf, but as I sat on my birthday I realized that I have so much more to give.  God put things in me that I want to be used for Him this year.  I can’t put the blame for this on anyone but myself.  The possibilities are endless, and ultimately any blame for my shelf-ishness (see I just made a ridiculous pun) is my own.  But I know I don’t want things in me to sit on the shelf for another year turning green.  I never know when time for me, just like it did for that milk, may have passed. -Ryan

The Vineyard Southwest Church Planting Conference

I just wanted to share a bit about the conference I spent most of the weekend at.  Pastor Bob, Andy Rodriguez, and I went down to the Houston area.  Like a lot of these things, there was some really good “watermellon” to eat, and a bit of seeds to spit out, if you catch my metaphor.  It did help me, in that it really illuminated the road blocks that still stand in my way of making a church plant happen.  My prayer is that God would show me the answer to these roadblocks and clarify.

Here is a little bit of what Bert Waggoner (Vineyard USA National Director) had to say on Friday night.  It was a really great message.

A Brief Update

I’ve taken a brief hiatus from blogging, due to the two craziest weeks in recent memory. After the conference in Galveston, I have had a house guest, a Mother’s Day sermon, the biggest youth event of the year, some big changes to our church program, a house guest, twice as much work for the youth group, a coffee house at church, and did I mention a house guest?

There were other things too, but these were the most pressing.

In the middle of all of this, I decided that blogging was just one of those activities that I had to put on hold. I also have a mountain of laundry (some still packed from my Galveston trip). Next week things will slow down again, and it will be back to the regularly scheduled program.

In the meantime, enjoy this Video Infection:

Some Pictures from the Vineyard National Conference

Semi-Liveblogging the VNC (Session 3)

Tonight I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting too much.  Don Williams was speaking, and I’ve heard him quite a bit in VLI.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Don Williams.  He is obviously brilliant.  He has an amazing heart for God.  My experience has been that he rambles a bit, and it is sometimes hard to follow him.

He blew my expectations out of the water.

He spoke about the Holy Spirit.  He showed how the ministry of the Holy Spirit to us and in our ministry is biblical, indespensible, and powerful.  He told his testimony of encountering the Holy Spirit.  He read the testimonies of famous modern Christian leaders in the same regard.  He was funny.  He was clear.  He was short.  Yes, that is right.  He didn’t talk for an hour.

Then he asked us for the people under 35 to come forward to receive a filling of the Holy Spirit.  They did a similar thing at the last conference.  I went forward.

Just as an aside, I don’t know what it is due to, but there is a huge difference in the age demographics between this conference and the last one in Anaheim.  Last time the building was full of rapidly graying hair, bald spots, Hawaiian shirts, and creatively secured Bermuda shorts.  There was a smattering of under 40′s, but it was clear who was in charge.

This time was clearly different.  It was trendy shirts, spiked hair, and tattoos.  The under 40′s were large and in charge.  We are energized.  We are networking.  The Hawaaian shirts are smiling, but I suspect that is from fear (j/k).  There is a definite sense of passing the baton.  This was my big prayer last time.  Now, we just need to not forget that the Hawaiian shirts have a lot of wisdom and experience.  They are godly men and women we can learn a lot from.  The tattoos bug me a bit though, I must admit.

So back to Tuesday night: I stood there for a long time, just waiting on God.  I really felt the Holy Spirit early on, and I was bursting with laughter.  Not the kind of laughter that is at something funny, just a bubbling up from joy kind of thing.  I can’t really explain it.  What I do know is that everyone around me was weeping, and I was laughing…that is so me.  But then I realized that people could feel that I was laughing at them.  So I tried to stifle the laugh.  I stood there shaking as I held it in.  But I knew God wasn’t done with me.

As I stood there I had the growing sense of being totally alone.  I am not going to go too much into this (I’m probably sharing too much anyway), but this is a feeling beneath the surface that I’ve always had.  Sometimes I feel totally alone no matter who is around me and what they say.  Other times, it is not so bad.  Lately I think I am in a season where this is more of a reality anyway, so I think it has been bubbling under the surface for quite some time.  I can’t always identify it, but it has been there.

I began to weep.  People prayed for me.  I wept harder.  More people prayed.  I wept harder still.  Finally, a pastor from Philadelphia named Paul came, and he asked me what I was feeling.  I told him.  He prayed for me with power.  I felt the Holy Spirit ministering to me, and touching my soul in a way I haven’t felt in a while.  I am very thankful for him.

I’d like to say I spoke in tongues as I rolled on the floor in the Spirit (OK, maybe I wouldn’t like that, really) but I didn’t.  I think last night was just a time for God to minister to my heart.

Semi-Liveblogging the VNC 2:00

I just attended the seminar on Growing Your Chruch in Times of Change.  Here are my thoughts:

His stuff was really good, except for a mathmatically flawed example about triangles.

He started by saying that it was important to settle the issue that God wants your church to grow.  This is a real issue, and one that I feel we don’t focus on enough.  God wants us to multiply.  I really feel that we need to set a goal at Grace to multiply our Sunday morning service.  He intimated that this was a good thing to do.  Frankly, as long as there is anyone in Arlington who isn’t in a vital and growing relationship with Jesus, we shouldn’t stop growing.

He said that statistically most people only have 60 relationships within their church.  If the church is only 60 people, then they know everybody.  If the church is over 60, they might say this, but in reality they don’t know any less people.  They might say “I don’t know anybody anymore,” but in reality what they mean is “I don’t know everyone anymore.”  There could be two reasons for this:
1- They don’t have the influence within the church that they used to have.
2- They are looking for meaningful relationships.  In this case they need to be connected to a vital small group.

Never use the word “divide.”  Always use the word “multiply.”  Oops!

This was a big one for me, and one I will be instituting even more:  “Never do any ministry without bringing someone with you to learn how to do what you are doing!”  In the past, I have often said, always ask “What am I doing that someone else could do?”  I think this is better, and is my new paradigm for youth ministry.

As an aside, he said that they have recently asked the question, “What does it mean to be a follower of Christ?”  This has led them to formulate 3 commitments that someone at their church should have: 1-A commitment to Christ; 2-A commitment to the Church; 3-A commitment to the cause [of the Church].

I think that last one may be the topic for my sermon on Sunday.  I’ll know better as the week progresses.

Semi-Liveblogging the Vineyard National Conference (Session 1)

Bert Waggoner spoke.  I’d like to say that he’s riveting, but I’d be lying, and we know where liars go…politics.  Here is what I wrote while he was speaking:

I’m sitting in the Vineyard National Conference.  Bert Waggoner is speaking about “Heroic Leadership in a Time of Change,” which is the conference theme.  He’s using the book of Esther as a template for a paradigm for heroic leadership.  It is nice to see that we are focused on “a time of change” right now.  I wonder if we are really late on this, but a lot of denominations haven’t caught on yet.  His message is:

Heroic Leaders are:

1-     Compelled by a controlling value
2-     Committed to a Necessary risk
3-     Captured by sacrificial love

He used the words “post Christian” and “fall of Christendom” quite a few times, maybe too many.  It seems odd to be eulogizing ourselves, although I know that we aren’t proclaiming the death of the Church.  I fear that somehow we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Christian America hasn’t been all bad.  I am dying for a change now, though.  I am praying that I hear or experience something powerful and transforming for our movement.  I want to hear something heroic.  I haven’t yet.  I’m keeping my eyes open.

After the session I prayed for Jason, a church planter about my age.  He was a great guy.  He prayed for me, against any cynicism.  I needed that.

Semi-Liveblogging the Vineyard Conference (a)

This week I’m on Galveston Island, southeast of Houston, for the Vineyard USA National Conference.  I am going to be semi-live blogging the event.  I can’t actually get internet in the conference room, and I’m blogging from a laptop.  I will be posting my thoughts that I have penned the old fashioned way and typed out.  I know, I feel like a luddite…or something along those lines.

Galveston was ravaged by hurricane Ike over a year ago.  The flood waters have subsided, or course, but there is still lingering destruction.  Peichi asked me tonight if there were any buildings left.  I guess that the media made it sound like that.  There are.  The whole place was underwater, but many of those places were cleaned and repaired.  But many places were also totally destroyed.  The closer you get on the island to the sea wall, the more you see hotels standing uninhabited, and buildings that look like they’ve been through a hurricane (duh).  The convention center the conference is at has no working elevators anywhere.  This is because of the flooding.

The most difficult thing for me is the fact that half the street signs have all been blown away, and have yet to be replaced, as if replacing street signs for me are a top priority to the city.  It is hard to find my way around sometimes because of it, though.

I’ll be taking pictures and will include them on a different post when time allows.