Trying to follow

A great series I enjoyed writing that I wish I continued was about the church. And it started with this post, Why a Building?:

I think my initial hesitation about the whole building thing came when the church building craze started my last year of high school. My church decided we need to add a $2.5 million addition on to our building. I didn’t realize we were outgrowing the original building in the first place, and now they wanted to add on. And in adding on they wanted it to look really nice, which is understandable since the current building looked quite nice. But I thought to myself $2.5 million is a whole lot of money, and it just doesn’t seem necessary.
Little did I know over the next few years practically every church I went to was doing a building campaign. Some of them really needed it, others I wasn’t so sure. We attended one church for a while and then they started a building campaign for a second building and they where putting an indoor waterfall in it. That was it, I was gone.

Then at some point I started thinking… Why the heck do we need a building anyways? I mean we all live somewhere, why don’t we meet in our homes? It seemed to me that’s mostly what the early church did. I mean, it’s true we couldn’t all pack in to hear the really good preachers, but since when is that what it’s all about? Some would say that’s what small groups are for, to meet in smaller communities in our homes and stuff (I’ll address this later).

I’m not saying church buildings don’t have a purpose, I’ve just started questioning if they are really necessary at all. I mean is it feasible to do the things we do in a church building in our homes instead? And what about bigger events? Is it possible to do those in a place other than our own building?

One of my main concerns about the building is that seems to be all we spend our money on, or talk about spending our money on. The main time you hear about making tithing pledges in most churches it seems is usually related to a building campaign. And then the church goes into debt to purchase the new building before they even have all the money.

That was just a rant of sorts, I really should fine tune it a bit, but there it is raw.

The conversation that began from that post was great and it continued into a brief series entitled, Considering Church.

I’m a visionary of sorts. What I mean is that I often think about and dream about what would happen if… the big radical amazing changes we long to take place actually took place. In an effort to encourage my imagination and spread the vision of change to others, I’m gonna start writing once in a while some of these thoughts. Don’t know if I’ll call them by a unique title or not, any ideas?

In reflection on yesterdays post on Jesus’ statements on Wealth…
What if Everyone Who Read The Bible Lived Out What Jesus said about Wealth and Possessions.

First of all, I think there would be a lot more people that chose to step out of the rat race, selling their possessions and wandering the land (just like Jesus!). But let’s think on a large scale. I’m not gonna look up specific numbers, but let’s just suppose there are 1 billion people in the world who actually read the Bible. If each of them read Jesus’ words and chose to live their lives accordingly it would mean incredible change in the world. Let’s assume they chose to continue at their jobs, provide the basics for their family and gave the rest to those in need.
There would be no one homeless or without something to eat in the entire United States. If a Bible reader saw a person walking the street with nothing to eat or no were to sleep they would bring them to their house and feed them, clothe them, and provide them with shelter. If they didn’t have room at their home they would do as the Samaritan and provide the finances to feed, clothe and shelter their companion until they are well enough to make it on their own.
Organizations like World Vision and Compassion which sponsor children through out the world would suddenly have more finances available then children and they would have to quadruple their service to every child in the entire world.

We could probably fully fund feeding, vaccinating, providing clean water, educating, and housing ever person on the planet.

Imagine that.

And just in case you thought there wasn’t any validity to this, here’s a stat from Generous Giving:
Generosity Potential (American Churchgoers)

1. If members of historically Christian churches in the United States had raised their giving to the Old Testament’s minimum standard of giving (10 percent of income) in 2000, an additional $139 billion a year would become available.

The name Se7en might be cheesy, more so maybe because it was a complete rip-off of 5ives. I thought it would be fun though to start making brief collections of verses on various topics (ones I like to talk about). This might be a weekly thing, or maybe not. Let me know what you think

1. Luke 12:15 — “Then he said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’ ”
2. Mark 12:43-44 — “Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.’ ”
3. Luke 6:24 — “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.”
4. Matthew 25:34-40 — “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ ”
5. Mark 10:21 — “Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ ”
6. Matthew 6:19-21 — “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” [cf. Luke 12:34]
7. Luke 14:33 — “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”

Thanks to the Generous Giving website for the format of the text.

From some dude in the movie Walk the Line:

If you was hit by a truck and you were lying out in that gutter dying…
and you had time to sing one song, huh, one song…
people would remember before you’re dirt…
one song that would let God know what you felt about your time here on earth…
one song that would sum you up…
you telling me that’s the song you’d sing?
That same Jimmie Davis tune we hear on the radio all day?
About your peace within and how it’s real and how you’re gonna shout it?
Or would you sing something different?
Something real, something you felt?
Because I’m telling you right now…
that’s the kind of song people want to hear.
That’s the kind of song that truly saves people.

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of country music. However, I went to this little music showcase thing with Mindy and my in-laws with some country singer/song writers, and I have to admit I enjoyed it. There was a lot of story involved in the songs they sang, and though some of the themes got old quick, others I enjoyed and was touched by. Now back to the quote above.

I’ll be honest, when I was in high school, I was quite involved in the youth group at the church I attended, and I enjoyed the worship music songs and sessions. But, for the past six years, I have had the hardest time feeling connected or in tune with the songs that are being song at any church I’ve attend. There are a number of reasons for this, but I wanted to touch on just one: They are not real.

I don’t know a lot of Johnny Cash songs, but from what I’ve heard, and what the quote above infers, is that he sangs songs that were real. Not all the ‘worship’ songs these days are touchy feely, but a lot of them are. Not all of them are happy all the time, but a lot of them are. And sadly, most of the songs we sing lack any story, any connection for us and the place we as individuals or as a group are.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to go to a church on Sunday and the songs they sang had to do with the events unfolding around them? In Nashville there is a big effort by the homeless community right now to be recognized and for the need for adequate affordable housing to be available in the Nashville area. Wouldn’t it be amazing to sing ‘worship’ songs about God being a God of the Oppressed with lyrics that connected it to that story of the homeless in Nashville? With some much talent available musically in most churches, can’t we sing more of what’s on our hearts, sing about what we don’t understand, about our hurts, our pains, our lives? Let’s give glory to God, but let’s do it in a way that is real and connected to our lives, not totally unrelated.

Those who have faithfully read my blog as it’s progressed over the last year or two should be happy that this is the first of these sorts of posts in quite a while. As I was getting started it seemed like every week, or every other post, I was talking about the blog, asking people’s thoughts on the design, etc. Well, I’ve avoided it for a while, some will be proud (kudos welcome).

I’ve been posting one blog post a day for the last few months now and I have every intention of continuing. Hopefully this has made it easier to take in, like choice morsels of caramel each day (or maybe prunes). I’ve also been doing mini-series of posts, which I’ve enjoyed writing as the desire to write about certain things has arisen. I’m also eager to sort of go back and bring up two older series, Considering Church and Thoughts on War.

The main reason I’m writing this fairly worthless self-reflective post, with the rambling above which I deleted, is to acknowledge that sometimes writing is hard to do. I have a bunch of ideas bouncing around in my head right now which I would love to write down, but I can’t seem to find the motivation at the moment.

However, I’m excited to acknowledge that I’ve been making an effort to go to bed earlier and to wake up earlier, which has been a very positive experience for me. I leave you with a brief list of upcoming changes/additions/ideas for what I’d like to do with the site in the future:

• Update/fix my About Me page
• do cool theme banners like Josh
• re-design and promote the required reading and podcast pages
• highlight and update the podcast more
• update to wordpress 2.2
• create downloadable booklets about various topics in pdf format
• integrate better sidebar content

Sorry this post was lame. I’m just in a struggling writing mood.