Turn, Turn, Turn...

I'm learning more and more how easily and quickly people can turn on you: whether it's in life, church, sports, whatever. This last weekend the Detroit Lions got hammered pretty hard by the Chicago Bears. All of sudden, Matt Stafford (the Lion's quarterback) went from the most beloved man in Detroit to one of the most hated. After 1 game that he played with a broken pinky, and was throwing a large, light-weight ball into 40 mph wind gusts.
I was listening to the radio on the way home from lunch today and people were calling for him to be benched, saying he was terrible, saying he's never been good; this after just a month ago people were saying he would be the one to carry the Lions to their first Superbowl in a billion years.
Turned on so quickly... (this is why I'm okay with not being a professional athlete)
It happens so often. There's no compassion anymore. This is one example of a growing epidemic in our society. One minute, people are telling you how amazing you are and what a great job you're doing and how awesome a person you are, the next you can't do anything right.
Why do I bring this up. Well, it really makes me think about how truly blessed we are that God isn't a human. Could you imagine if God looked at us the way we look at each other? What would happen if one minute we were following God and He loved us for it, then we do one thing wrong and all of the sudden He hates us? I know this is how a lot of people actually do view God, but in Romans chapter 8 it tells us nothing we can ever do can ever separate us from His love. It's awesome, truly awesome.
So the next time someone angers you, says something you don't like, or hurts you in some way, instead of turning on them and hating them for it, try to have a little compassion. I think if we had more compassion in this world for our friends, family, co-workers, and especially for our church leaders, this world would be a lot nicer place to live.

Arms and Legs

Last Saturday, My youth group, along with 4 or 5 other youth groups from Dearborn, had an event called "Ignite". What we did, was take some food (that was delicious, egg noodles with meatballs, fresh salad, carrots, and homemade brownies) and go down to Martin Luther King blvd. and 3rd Ave., right in front of a warming shelter, and just hand out food and about 200 winter coats. It was amazing. It was easy. And it helped people.
I think we tend to think that we because we don't want to sell everything we have and give it to the poor, that means we can't do anything. But for some reason, I think this is why we Christians get a bad wrap. We talk about how in church that all creation are our brothers and sisters, because we all call God "Father" (or at least we Christians say He is the Father of all creation), yet we're totally content with the fact that every night we have brothers and sisters within 10 miles of us going to bed cold, hungry, and alone. I'm not saying what we did changed lives (even though I think it did for some of our students), what I'm saying is there are little things we CAN do, that are still helpful, and still let people know we care about them.
I think this goes beyond just helping those in need, I think it refers also to how we treat people in every day life. Think about it, if someone presented a religion to YOU where it was totally based on community, love, and service, then you learned the church split because they added a drumset, and that upset people, would that be a religion you would want to embrace? Of course not.
We need to change. I'll be the first to say I need to change. We need to start practicing what we preach. We need to start acting like we believe what we say. Maybe then we won't be known as hypocrites, but we'll be known as loving servants, who treat EVERY person like they're our brothers and sisters. Maybe then we can actually be proud of and embrace the fact that we ARE God's arms and legs in this world.

Money's Where The Heart Is

Recently I was having a conversation with my friend Charlotte, who was a full-time missionary to Brazil, but now, after a short time in the States, is moving to Portugal to be a full-time missionary there. I don't know how it came up, but we started talking about tithing, and the traditional 10% that most churches teach is the "right" amount to give to the church, or to the Kingdom. Charlotte then started talking about how she hated the fact that tithing or giving has been limited to 10%, so that some Christians give the 10% and think that's enough; they're covered. She thought we should stop preaching about tithing all together, which I though was crazy because tithing is what pays my paycheck!

But after talking about it with her, I think she's right. Because the only place in the Bible where it talks about giving 10% is in the book of Numbers, which was laying out Jewish Law. And even there, it says you should give AT LEAST 10% of your income.

I think it's funny how we do try to give just 10% and then say we've done our part. I mean you look at Paul's life, he didn't even view his own body as his, so he didn't care if he was beaten, whipped, jailed, whatever, because he saw his body as belonging to God, so if it suffered for God's sake, then praise God! So why is it we limit our giving at all? Everything we have is God's. All our money. Our families. Everything. His love for us limitless, so why is our giving for Him limited?

Ya Know What Really Grinds My Gears?!

So I saw a post on Facebook this morning that I thought was really good from my buddy Mark Corcoran. This was it: "Ive seen a world where churchs are more like sports teams, each one only taking care of its own members, competing against the other churches, unwilling to help each other, unwilling to love each other, and everyone loses. That is not the church of the bible. The church is Christs body, it is the entire body of believers, it is meant for good works and love, and only Jesus is the head."

Now if you think about it, this is so true. So often we as churches turn the work of Christ into a competition. We spend time looking at what other churches are doing not to get ideas for how we can more affectively spread the Kingdom of God, but so we can compete with them to get people from other churches into our churches. It seems really silly to me that we're all supposed to be brothers and sisters, but we're fighting with our brothers and sisters over where they choose to worship. Shouldn't we just be rejoicing in the fact that they ARE our brothers and sisters? Maybe it's this inner-quarreling that James was talking about when he said in his book, chapter 4 "What causes quarrels and fights among you? Do they not come from inside?"

It's this kind of inner-fighting within the Body of Christ that makes it so hard for people outside the Body of Christ to believe that we really are a faith based on love. How can we say our whole belief-system hinges on love, but then show so much hate towards our own family?

Maybe we should spend less time in our churches figuring out how to steal members from other churches, and focus more on just reaching as many people as we can with love and service toward them. Might not be a great business plan for churches, but it's the only Plan for followers of Christ.

okay I'll get off my soapbox now and figure out how to get more kids in my youth group...

Rockstar Jesus!

So I recently got this email with a picture of Jesus rockin out on an electric guitar that said "Jesus Rocks!" on it. It reminded me of when I was looking for a college to go to and I got a pamphlet from a school with Jesus crowd-surfing on the cover (in the interest of full-disclosure, I DID end up going there...). But I mean it's all the same isn't, Buddy Jesus, Dancing Jesus on our dashboard, all this stuff about how "cool" we can make Jesus, when really at the end of the day, Jesus' whole ministry was about doing things that by the standard of his day, was not "cool".
I think we Christians try to focus on the wrong things. Trying to be "cool" or make Jesus into a "cool dude". In fact, at a show my band played one of the guys working there said "God is such an awesome dude, and he loves you!" I think what most people are looking for in this world isn't a "cool dude", we have have enough dudes in this world who think they're cool.
People are looking for something meaningful. The Savior of our World. The God of all human-kind who's love is limitless, never-ending, never ceasing (Romans 8). So I think we need to stop trying so hard to focus on how cool Jesus is, and just start telling people about how Great his love for us is. Because at the end of the day, people are looking for a Savior that's "cool", they're looking to be loved.
And, I'm pretty sure God is far more concerned with people hearing of and feeling his love then people thinking he's a "Cool Dude."
(Did that all sound entirely too old man-ish?)

hatin on haters

Ya know, it always makes me so mad when I hear someone who claims to be a Christian, saying Christians make them so mad, they don't want to be called a "Christian" anymore. I think it's just part of our society these days, or maybe my generation: we like to sit back and complain about the way things are, but we're too lazy/apathetic to do anything about it.
I was talking with a dude at one of our shows the other week who was upset because a rapper he had booked to play at a church was swearing in his music, and the Pastor of the church wanted him to be cut off. (is that really so much to ask? To ask that a dude that's droppin the f-bomb on a church alter to be cut off?)
The booker then goes into this rant about "this is what makes me not even want to be called a Christian anymore!"
The way I see it, Christian means: "Christ-follower". It's not a club name, it's not anything other than defining yourself as living for our Savior. I guess if you're not cool with being labeled a follower of Christ, or if you're ashamed of our Savior's name because of some black sheep in our Christian family, then I just have to wonder how committed you are to Christ in the first place?
This isn't meant to be judgmental even though it probably sounds like it. I just don't see how God could possibly be glorified by us being ashamed to bare his Son's name.