Junk Drawer Spirituality

40 Days of Jesus Creed: Day 27

The focus for this day was on the resourcefulness of love, that like a plummer or a great mechanic, true love always finds a way to love dispite whatever obstacles it might face.  "The resource begins in God's love for us in Jesus Christ.  love makes tinkerers of all of us" (McKnight).

Mapping The Emerging Church

The emerging church is a pretty slippery little sucker to wrap your hands around, even if you've spent some time reading the Padgitt's, Jones' (both Tony and Andrew) and McLarens, the gurus of all things emerging.  Throw Bell, Don MIller, and some of the other guys into the mix, it gets even tougher.  C. Michael Patton posted a chart on his blog that I think is pretty helpful which he used to teach a class on the subject.  It maps out where the different emerging church guys and gals and other Chirstian leaders fall on the spectrum of evangelicalism vs. fundamentalism, vs. liberalism vs. emerging, etc.  I think this is his third or fourth try at this chart after recieving much critism in earlier generations.  Kinda intersting if nothing else.  What do you think?  Accurate?

    

40 Days of Jesus Creed: Day 26

This day was about loving those oblong people who are the closest to you (particularly those you worship with) and sometimes the hardest to love.  Here's a poignant quote: "When we think of the odd collection of folks in our community of faith, perhaps we need to remind ourselves not to focus on the faults in others-- for that will turn our love off- but to look at the supremely sacrificial love of God-- and that will turn our love back on."  Good words, right words, but tough to do sometimes.

Hillside Christian Church Amarillo and Generosity

I just got into Amarillo, and my parents were telling me about their church (the church I grew up in) and a cool series they just finished.  It was a generosity series, but for any of you who know what Waterfront Community Church is going to be about or what CCC is doing this Sunday, this will amaze you.  They decided to take one week's offering and give it away.  Not only that, but they gave it back to the congregation to give away.  They passed out envelopes of $20, $50, and some with $1,000 in it, all totalling $100,000, and they were told to give that back to the community in some way.

The city has gone absolutely nuts over this. . . it was the top news story, newspapers have been following it, and the city has really responded in a huge way.  Just imagine when Waterfront starts giving away our offerings every weekend :)  Check out this article in the local paper from a columnist.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'm currently sitting in an airport and in about 30 minutes, I am leaving Chicago and flying down to Texas.  I'll be there through April 24th, on which day I'm leaving to head up to Colorado for about 5 days.  I'm pretty excited.  It'll be nice to get out of town for a while.   

Oprah and New Age Philosophy

About a week and a half ago, I got an email (one of those mass emails passed around) with a link to a youtube video called "The Church of Oprah."  It was about a 6 minute video some Christian guy compiled and clipped together to make his case that Oprah was a heretic, denying Christ, etc.  I'm always alittle skeptical of that stuff, cause you can clip anything together to say anything, and the idea that Oprah is into New Age stuff wasn't all that new to me anyway (i.e., The Secret).  So it wasn't exactly earth shattering in my opinion. 

Then about a week ago, I happened to flip on the TV one morning, and I saw Oprah interviewing this guy from the Youtube video named Eckhart.  I guess his book, The New Earth is the new Oprah book club book?!  Just caught a few minutes of the inteview, but Oprah said something to the effect of "Jesus didn't come to die for my sins, he came so that I could find my own inner "Christ-consciousness" whatever that means.  So I thought, wow, maybe Oprah really has gone "all in" with her show and completely, unashamedly pumping this New Age philosophy.

So I found a different video on youtube; it's a full-length video, not clipped together, of the aftershow discussion she has with the audience.  in this video, she talks about why she chose this book (The New Earth) for her book club.  What I thought was most interesting was a statement she made in the first few minutes of the mission for her show-- "To help bring a sense [to her audience] of self-actualization," a very new age, existential term.  Check out the video:

 

40 Days of Jesus Creed: Day 25

This day's Jesus Creed moment is entitled "Footwashing Love."  McKnight tells a story about an ER nurse, a Christian gal, who loved  the opportunity to be Jesus to a hurt and broken world.  One night she took a homeless man, a guy who everyone thought was kind of disgusting and smelled bad, and cleaned him up.  She tells how at first she was just as repelled by the man, but somehow her heart changed, and she personally took on the task of washing his feet.  As she did that, she started to cry, and this homeless man leaned down and said "Thank You."  Here's how she concludes: "In that moment, I was the one seeing Jesus.  He was there all along, right where he said he'd be."

Waterfront Communit Church Website

Waterfront Community Church (our church plant, launching in October) has a new website.  Not much to it.  I'll tell you, I have a new found respect for web designers because this stuff is not easy.  It took way more time out of my life than I'd like to admit to get this simple webpage up and going.  But here it is, nonetheless.

The Painted Veil

I just watched a movie the other day called "The Painted Veil."  I'd never heard of it before, but I DVR-ed it for some reason.  Turned out to be a pretty good movie.  It's about this British husband and wife played by Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, set in the 1920s.  They're British, but they end up living in China where he's working as a microbiologist.  It's a long movie, and it starts out kinda slow, but I really liked it.  There aren't many films anymore where you get to see not only sin, but also redemption and forgiveness but this one had it. 

40 Days of Jesus Creed: Day 24

Alright, so I really got behind on the Jesus Creed thing this time.  So I'm just gonna start on day 24, and hold myself to keeping on track.  Here's day 24: McKnight encourages us to convert our memories and life experience into the love we show others.  We have to remember where we came from, and let that inform where we're going in our love for our neighbors.