Darryl's Blog
April 2005 Archives
As someone who doesn't quite fit as well, but who is not willing to write it off, this is a helpful post.
November 16-18 in Toronto with Erwin McManus, Rick McKinley, and others
Mosaic 2005 is about church planting in Canada. We want to see a gathering of Christians within practical and relational distance of every person, in every kind and culture of people in the nation.Mosaic 2005 is about exploring innovative ways of establishing new churches. There will be instruction from experienced, creative presenters and workshop leaders representing various elements of our diverse social mosaic.
Mosaic 2005 is about creating a space for interaction with others who are impacting our culture with the Good News.
Mosaic 2005 is about each of us being renewed in our sense of how God wants to use us to contribute to the bigger picture of His Kingdom.
Found via Pernell
God grant me the Senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.
Rex Miller, author of The Millennium Matrix, links to an article (PDF format) in this month's Futurist magazine to describes rules for living, working and finding sanity in the digital matrix.
Miller's book is very helpful. He is also very accessible for dialogue by e-mail.
That's easy. Increase your life. Live your life more fully. And pay attention to it...Stay as alive as you dare, and trust that your life with all its unorthodox twists and turns is still God's territory. Dare to tell some stories that don't sound like religious stories. Use some language that doesn't sound like it belongs in church. Read fiction. Take clogging lessons. Go be alive, so that you yourself are a sermon about abundant life. Then whatever you say will be worth listening to. (Barbara Brown Taylor)
I met Stephen Mawdsley at Ron Martoia's Velocity Conference last year. Stephen is a thinker and someone who understands some of the questions churches need to be asking in today's context. He's an architect as well, and has posted a couple of articles on building in changing times:
Over the next four articles, we will examine some of the fundamental issues surrounding a church community's decision to build within the context of a shift to a post-modern culture. We need to rethink the role of purpose built church buildings.
Introduction: Building for God in changing times
Part one: Building intentionally
Looks like a good series of articles.
After yesterday's post, some of you seemed to think that I need to love animals more. I promise to work on it. In fact I will start by reading this book.
The sheer quantity of activities involved in a church can wear everybody out. Such churches may be excellent social organizations, where members enjoy relationships with one another, but they have little transformational impact within the local community.When the activities of a church focus inward, the church has exchanged its mission for maintenance...True success can only result when the activities of God's Body reflect what is in His heart. (Shaped by God's Heart)
I live in the largest English-speaking mission field in the world (North America). It is the fifth or sixth largest mission field of any type.
It's exciting to think missiologically about where God has placed us and to believe:
God has put us here to bless the community (not to bless ourselves).Jesus is hanging out with the same people he has always been hanging out with (hint: they're not at church). If we want to join Jesus, we'll find him with the people that religious people call "sinners".
God has put us in our community for a reason. The answer to how to love our community will not be found at the Christian bookstore. It will be found in knowing our community and following the example of Jesus.
We don't need to be a Christian version of timeshare salespeople. We do need to love people and love Jesus.
God has already strategically placed us in schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods in order to bless them.
I've been challenged to think about what the community would miss if our church wasn't there. It's exciting to recapture some of God's purpose in putting us within a specific community and to long to meet that purpose.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
I'm yearning.
A good article in Leadership Journal (not yet online) on John Newton:
"You appear to be designed by Divine Providence for an healer of breaches, a reconciler of honest but prejudiced men, and a uniter (happy work!) of the children of God that are needlessly divided from each other."So wrote the Arminian John Wesley (1703-1791) to the Calvinist John Newton (1725-1807), in the midst of a pamphlet war between the two theological camps...
Newton, an adult convert with a dark past, had seen too much of human depravity - and too much of God's amazing, seemingly irressitible grace - to be anything but a Calvinist. But he was no controversialist. He tried, as much he once said, to "keep all shibboleths, and forms and terms of distinction out of sight, as we keep knives and razors out of the way of children," opting rather to "talk a good deal about Christ." Where others drew sharp lines to define their theology, Newton believed it best, in George Marsden's playful phrase, to let sleeping dogmans lie.
The technologies may have changed from pamphlets to blogs and books, but I like Newton's approach.
John Newton is an example of Amazing Grace, not only in coming to salvation, but in living it out with Christians of differing backgrounds and persuasions.
We don't have the NHL but we always have politics. Our prime minister has just addressed the nation. Contrary to expectations, he has not declared war on the States to divert attention from the sponsorship scandal. He spoke warmly but I'm not sure it will be enough. Contrite but probably not enough.
I am now witnessing the Conservative leader speaking in French! while appreciating a great satire site and chatting with a Saskatoon friend.
Harper just alleged a criminal conspiracy. The political blood is coursing through my veins. Mr. Cooper can't even post because Blogger is down. Fun!
P.S. Now the Bloc Quebecois leader is speaking in English!
D.A. Carson's book is out (Amazon.com and Amazon.ca). I can't wait to get my copy, which should be arriving soon. Carson is the most famous graduate of the school where I got my M.Div. and is my denomination's favorite son, so I need to know what he's saying.
Scot McKnight has done a great job interacting with the book (starting here). Andrew Jones has some good advice:
Those of you that wish to critique Dr Carson's book on your blogs or on Amazon, please be nice and godly and gentle and generous, even if you don't agree with his accusations. We need critics to blow-torch us and we should honor all who try. Sometimes we must be willing to lose the battle so that the Body of Christ can win.
Dr. Carson is brilliant and I suspect he'll have some things we need to hear, even if we disagree with him at points.
A couple of weeks ago we found shingles on our driveway, never a good sign. I did a temporary fix, but the fix wasn't good enough to keep the rain from getting into our house yesterday. We found a good contractor and the problem is fixed.
The problem: stupid raccoons trying to get into our house. Those raccoons just cost me more money than I like to spend on even animals that I like. And I don't like raccoons.
They didn't get into the attic, and I'm glad. Raccoons can do a lot of damage once they're inside. Toronto has taken away all the fun and it's not easy to legally trap them or shoot them, although it's okay to drive them away with talk radio.
Not long ago someone with PETA tried to sign me up. She asked, "Do you like animals?" I wish I had said, "Depends how they're cooked." If these raccoons come back I'm firing up the BBQ and getting some good sauce ready.
Get yours!
found via
From What Canadians Think About Almost Everything, the list of the most distrusted professons, in order of distrust:
politicians - 60%
lawyers - 40%
corporate executives - 35%
union leaders - 31%
tv/film celebrities - 22%
comedians - 18%
journalists - 17%
sports celebrities - 14%
music celebrities - 13%
priests and ministers - 13%
Top of the most trusted list? "Firefighters rank number one as the hottest in trust."
In my office at church, I have a slowly growing collection of volumes on church history. I have to confess that my knowledge of church history is pretty weak, despite having taken a number of courses.
So much of our history involves the Catholic church. These past few weeks, as we've witnessed the events in Vatican City, I've been drawn to understand what's happening there.
I posted the other day (now deleted) on one of the rumored traditions that I found strange. There are many others that I find fascinating: broken rings, sealed doors, smoke from pipes.
One day I need to brush up on my contemporary Catholic theology, as well as my knowledge of all those centuries before the Reformation.
This should be a fascinating week to observe. An important one too, one that deserves our prayers, even for those of us that aren't Catholic.
Scot McKnight, professor in Religious Studies at North Park University, and a friend and former colleague of D.A. Carson, has a review copy of Carson's book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. Some initial thoughts here and here. Found via Andrew Jones.
Everywhere I go, it seems that someone is quoting Gamaliel:
Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God. (Acts 5:38-39)
Okay, not quite everywhere I go. But I always find it strange that out of all the Pharisees quoted in the Bible, we only quote one approvingly. His statement is reported, but not endorsed, but a lot of us think that this is a view endorsed by the Bible.
When people quote this, they are saying that it's best not to express a viewpoint on something. Just stay passive and let God show whether it is right or not.
Gamaliel is both wrong and right. He's wrong on his first premise: "! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail." Wrong! Lots of activities of human origin have succeeded wildly. Lots of world religions, even all types of -isms, inequities and injustices have stood the test of time. But I am not prepared to say that God is in them all.
He was right in his second premise: that if God is in it, it won't be defeated. But there are a lot of things God is not in, that seem to last.
I don't like being passive about evil. I'm glad Wilberforce never said, "Leave slavery alone! If it's of human origin it will fail." Sometimes we need to oppose what is wrong, not just wait for God to take care of it for us.
Just my pet peeve: let's give Gamaliel a bit of a rest. Enough quoting Pharisees!
From The Star-Ledger:
Salary.com recently conducted an online poll to find the sexiest jobs in America. Firefighters took first place with 16 percent of the nearly 5,000 people who took part. "How could you not find it sexy when a person is willing to risk his life for another's?" said the wife of one firefighter surveyed.
My two brothers and my brother-in-law are firefighters. Frankly, I can't see why pastors didn't edge them out on this survey.
While travelling to England, I read two of Robert Quinn's books, Deep Change and Building the Bridge As You Walk On It.
These two books aren't about leadership techniques. They are about what it takes to change yourself - not surface change, but deep change. When this happens, you are able to lead others, regardless of your position or role.
Quinn argues, "Anyone can become a leader of change, but to do so requires the transformation of self."
Quinn says that most of us (individually and in organizations) enter into the normal state of being through entropy. In this state, we are externally driven, internally closed, self-focused, and comfort-centered. In this state, we lose energy and eventually experience slow death. Most of us live in this state because of fear and self-preservation. Most people and organizations in this state don't know what to do to get out, so they try harder and use techniques or behaviors to change, which does not work. (I've got bookshelves of books that try this approach.)
The way out is not through technique. It is through deep change. The cost is high; our organizations cannot change until we change. We cannot change until we move past techniques and actually deal with some fundamental issues.
At the heart of deep change is what Quinn calls the fundamental state of leadership. In this state, we let go of control, and become purpose-centered, internally directed, other-focused, and externally open.
This isn't a super-human state. In fact, we've all lived in it. Quinn provides some good advice on how to spend more time in this state (it's never permanent). It involves "being the change you want to see in the world" (Ghandi). Building the Bridge is very helpful for giving practical advice on how to experience this state more frequently.
I appreciated these books for a lot of reasons. They deal with root causes rather than symptoms. They are about being before they are about doing. They speak of the power of any person, regardless of position, to enter this state and transform those around them, although sometimes at great cost. You don't have to be in a leadership position to lead.
These aren't Christian books, but I've been struck with how many of the principles are biblical, especially the sections on the importance of inner transformation, and the necessity of risking self for the sake of something greater. The fundamental state of leadership resembles, on a lot of levels, how Christ lived, and the sort of dynamic you witness in the book of Acts.
I still have a lot of work to do in applying these books, and working through the exercises in Building the Bridge. They are two of the better leadership books I have read in a long time.
I missed the bus to Canterbury on Sunday by twenty seconds. I ended up going to Birchington Baptist, the little village church not far from Dad's.
The first time we went there, we had Christina with us. There wasn't much of a kids program to speak of. There still isn't. "We've succeeded where the government hasn't in getting class sizes down," the pastor joked last Sunday, "It's a success story."
I settled in to worship with these strangers from a different country than my own. I didn't know a soul, but some of them remembered me from previous visits. One of them even knew my Dad. She belongs to the legion and had phoned my Dad to offer help, even though the offer was rejected.
Afterwards, the pastor came over and talked. He seemed genuinely interested. He offered to visit my Dad and gave me his home address and phone number. He preached a great sermon but you could tell that he wasn't there just because he is a good preacher. He is there because he loves the people he is serving.
It's the sort of church where you're not impressed by the things that don't matter. There is no live music. I think they have one of those digital hymnals that plays a recorded version of the songs. Nothing flashy.
They know they are not flashy. The pastor was refreshingly honest in a lot of what he said. After he joked about the small kid's classes, he prayed that God would teach them how to reach younger people. Every time I go they are talking about what they are going to do to serve the community next. They weren't pretending and didn't try to act as if they had it all figured out.
I don't want to glorify them in a way that was unrealistic, but I do want to say that I worshiped God with these people on Sunday. I'm glad I missed the cathedral in the end, because I was reminded that God is alive, maybe most active, in places we will never read about in the books or hear about in the conferences. He is alive in churches that are genuinely loving and humble, doing all that they can to care for their communities even when nobody else is paying attention. It was a privilege to be one of them for a Sunday.
I somehow managed to contract a case of herpes zoster, or as they're more commonly known, shingles. Youch. I take back all the times I've laughed at those with this affliction. I no longer find the name funny. I thought only old people got this. Don't say what you're thinking. Make this go away.
Sitting here at Heathrow counting the minutes until my plane leaves. Can't wait to see my family again.
Leaving Dad was somehow easier this time. I think I've left him so many times, each time thinking it would be the last. Someday it will be; maybe it was today. It's somehow gotten easier.
I was looking at him last night. Hard to believe that this is the man whose shoulders I climbed to jump into the lake. Hard to believe that he once knew how to drive a car with a trailer attached and to do so many things that amazed me as a child. Hard to believe so many things about him. For a minute last night I was angry at him for how he has hurt our family. Stuff that you think is buried or not even there rises to the surface and surprises.
I realized last night that for all of this, I still have it easier than many. My Dad still recognizes me. He is still home. I'll take blessings wherever I can find them.
In this all, I'm trying to learn how to honor my father.
Being away has been good, but going home is much better. One day I want to bring Charlene here and really have a good time. I hope to return in the Fall to check in again, this time with a brother, but I swear one day I'm returning just to have fun. Between now and then there will be other visits to check in and one day a funeral.
But one day I'll come for fun.
It's been a good week; I've been able to get a lot of things done. I'm ready to come home, though. I miss my family.
Dad is teaching me a lot. It is always humbling to stay with someone who is weak. I see myself trying to avoid it. This morning I was watching the funeral of a pope while sitting with an old man who can't understand what is going on. Age is scary. Not being in control is scary (as if I am in control - I just enjoy the illusion). But I can learn lots from those who are weak, as much as it's not comfortable. One day that old man may be me. (I keep threatening my children, anyway).
Can't wait to get home.
It's a rant, but it's a good rant.
Someone could make a bundle from making wifi more available in this country, I tell you!
Sitting here in a cafe in Canterbury. I made a bunch of appointments today (bank and lawyer) and met with the social worker, and, lacking anything else to do, decided to come here, the closest major city and home of the worldwide communion of Anglicans. I love this city. I may even go to church at the Cathedral on Sunday - if you're going to go Anglican, you may as well go to the mothership. (Note that I always go to church unlike Jordon. Please feel free to flame him there. Or not!)
I'm about to lose my wifi connection, but it's good to see Dad. Not much has changed from last time, which is good. He's confused but happy and he seems well.
...and where else? The largest Apple store in the world, enjoying the free wireless. It looks like Andrew won't be in town today, so I'm off to Dad.
Headed to England tomorrow to look after some things for my Dad. Not really looking forward to the trip. I have to do some business and check in to see how he's doing. I may even get to see Andrew Jones if I'm lucky.
For some time now, I've been considering what to do to take another step in my spiritual journey. I think I've finally decided to take a vow of chastity. Please pray for me as I talk to Charlene about this as I think it affects her also.