Normal
Lately, I have been meditating on that word…normal. What does it really mean?
Why are so many people pursuing it?
Why are so many more running away from it?
When life exits a crisis why are we in search of a “New Normal?”
Normal is a word you want to hear after a medical exam, and is a word you hope to never hear in show business.
What about all of the normal people in the Bible? People unlike Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers and eventually rose to be second in command to Pharaoh, or David who killed Goliath with one shot and became King of Israel only to eventually commit adultery and murder a friend.
What about the men who fought with Gideon? Or the men who were sent away because they chose to drink from the stream instead of from their hands?
What about the elders of the churches that were started by Timothy and Titus and Paul? What about the people Peter, Paul, Jude, James, John and the writer of Hebrews fail to mention?
In the day and age where great leaders are celebrated and even worshiped I find myself wondering if everyone is supposed to strive to be great, or are most of us just supposed to figure out what it means to be normal Christians?
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.
Gracenomics
It’s 9:26 pm on a Thursday night. I’m still at my full-time gig running samples on an instrument I have been trying to fix for two weeks. So, while the instrument is working I’m churning out the data. In the mean time I figured out how to sync my music to my new phone, the Droid X. I have never had an iPhone, but I doubt my mobile experience could be any better than it is right now even if the iPhone comes to Verizon.
Eminem is on the headphones asking, “Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity…To seize everything you ever wanted…Would you capture it, or just let it slip?”
What would you do?
In most circles of success we might think that everyone would respond, “Capture it!” In most leadership books or conferences I think the same message is presented. A few friends just got back from one of those Church Leadership conferences and when asked to text me a comment about the conference one of them typed, “We only have one shot, so what are we waiting for?” Sounds a lot like Eminem, doesn’t it?
I have been wondering a lot lately about how Eminem filters out through the Church.
I mean, we are supposed to be governed by Grace, which – at least to me – means Eminem’s question might become, “If you had a million shots, a billion opportunities…To seize the only thing, or One, you really wanted…Would you capture it, eventually, or not?”
It would make a terrible rap song, I know, I know, but hopefully the content of my message isn’t destroyed by the delivery.
Recently, I had the privilege of receiving an advanced copy of a book, by Mike Foster, to review before it goes public October 6th. To tell you the truth, I’m in the book. I mean I’m not, but my name is in there. I had forgotten that he ran a contest or something when POTSC.com launched and my name actually appears in the book as one of the thousands of People of the Second Chance.
The title of the book is Gracenomics. It’s not really your typical book for the Church, but it doesn’t make it any less valuable for the Church to read. Simply it helped me grapple with this question of how Eminem’s question gets transformed in the context of the Church, although he never actually mentions Eminem I’m sure Lose Yourself was playing at some point.
You can pick up a copy at Amazon.
In short the book proposes that grace can change the world. In the face of failure people can be given a second chance and that opportunity could turn into huge dividends. Foster points to multiple examples of how second chances have paid off. While the book is an easy read you will want to savor each chapter like a fine wine. It raises significant questions and pushes some interesting buttons when it comes to what we might be justified to do and what might be the best to do. It challenges the idea that we need to find someone to blame for failure, and instead we might need to expect it and even be concerned if there isn’t enough of it. It calls into question the gravity of “One shot” living, and asks that maybe the stronger and eventually more successful people are those who risk failure, fail, and learn to move on.
It’s worth the $9.00.