Changing Church Paradigms
After watching AND LISTENING to this wonderful talk I would love to hear what you think.
Or just click on the link here.
What do we do in the Church that is really born out of the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment and not the scriptures?
The crux of what Sir Ken Robinson is saying should make us think differently about missions, ministry, and even worship.
Excuse Makers
“17 At the time for the banquet he sent his slave to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, because everything is now ready.’ 18 But one after another they all began to make excuses.” Luke 14 NET
I have the tendency to make excuses.
The interesting thing about excuses is that while we use them in order to manipulate the perception others have, or even we have of reality so that we might magically make our errors and deficiencies disappear while instead we expose them and reveal our brokenness.
Excuses hold us in bondage in order to keep us from becoming something brand new. They help us tell a story that is not true about ourselves. While some use excuses as to why they can’t play basketball as well as Michael Jordan did the rest of us use them in order to derail working out our salvation in order to become perfect, holy, and living sacrifices.
What excuses are you making?
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEVCjUG1Mww’]
I don’t know if the point of this mashup is that Lebron is making excuses, or that Cleveland is making excuses, but it applies to both.
Thanks Bobbitt!
God Is Not A White Man
Gungor is new to the music scene and recently released a video on YouTube portraying images related to their song “God is not a white man.” I love the song, and the video is lots of fun too. It’s kind of funny that in my head I always think of God as an old, white man.
When I went to YouTube to see the comments I was immediately struck by a comment left by neoctopusos.
“what a stupid video; totally irrealistic. If God loves terrorists, i wonder whether god loves also the terrorists victims.”
This is the great thing about our God. That He loves us in spite of us. In reality, we were or are all terrorists against God. God passionately pursues His lost kids regardless of who they are, or what they have done. God’s pursuit is not based upon our value or worth. We call this Grace. Instead it is the very fact that we are pursued by God that makes us valuable and worthy. God knows that when He catches us He will change us, but unless we are caught we are destined to be His enemy.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WybvhRu9KU’]
The song is about the character of God, and not the wickedness of mankind. Therefore, we should not confuse God’s passionate pursuit of us, compelled by His love for us, with a tolerance of our wickedness. One of the outcomes of being captured by God and through the concentration of our affections toward Him is that we are made new. Therefore, how we might have identified ourselves today is destined to change tomorrow until time is undone.
But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? Romans 5:10
So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17