It’s how I often feel after leading weekend worship for the 300-1000 people at either of our two church campuses.  I plop down in my car, peel off my nametag, and rehash all the mistakes that happened during the worship experience.  “What a mess that was today,” I think, wondering if anyone could have possibly encountered Christ in the midst of my failed cues, mispoken words, and flat jokes.  But as I turn on some Remedy Drive/David Crowder/Miles Davis to drown out my sorrows, I remember the person who came up to me after service and shared with me something that they were struggling with and how the music/Scripture/message/communion really encouraged them today.  In the midst of this ‘Perfect Mess’, our God – Father/Son/Holy Spirit – came to them and built them up.

That’s the way it is, isn’t it?  God comes to us in the midst of this perfect mess!

If you’re looking for a short read to help you reflect on God’s presence in our chaotic mess of a world, pick up Lisa Harper’s A Perfect Mess.  Lisa uses the greatest of Scriptural music, the Psalms, to remind the harried and time-starved among us that God is continually using all of our imperfect pieces in His perfect plan.  Picking out 12 of the greatest Psalms, Lisa weaves spiritual truth in between hilarious stores and Scriptural study.

I was a bit reticent in reading A Perfect Mess because of its soccer mom packaging, but Lisa’s stories and reflections on the Psalms are too funny to pass up.  As my wife and I read this book together, we often said to one another with a knowing smirk, “Did you get to the ____ story yet?”

Give A Perfect Mess a shot.  It’s short, light-hearted, and soundly Scriptural.  It’s a perfect summer read!

I would highly recommend this book to small groups looking for a fun, light read.  Inviting discussion questions are included at the end of each chapter (I’d recommend 3-4 chapters per session).

]]> http://www.faithemergence.com/2009/07/a-perfect-mess/feed/ 0 http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/07/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-10-sharing-faith-pt-1/ http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/07/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-10-sharing-faith-pt-1/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:00:16 +0000 Dan http://www.faithemergence.com/?p=98 This video on sharing faith really struck me as funny, but also as sadly true.  Many of us fall into a couple of traps in terms of sharing faith.  In the first camp, people try valiantly to talk about faith, but fall into traps like using Christianese terms, words that you’ve heard in church, but can’t really explain to someone from a nonchurched background, or get upset and frustrated when people don’t agree with you. 

In the other camp, and this is by far the larger of the two, you simply don’t talk about faith at all.  Generally the reasons for not sharing fall somewhere into the categories suggested by this very entertaining video which I referenced in a sermon I did last year. 

Both of these are problems and sometimes they’re even related. We get over our fear and share our faith and then the experience is awkward or we find ourselves using Christianese or getting frustrated.  Or maybe the person we talk to was burned by someone who previously shared the faith, but did so in a really forceful or condemning way. 

This week, I present some of the problems.  This is an issue that I think deserves a little more discussion, so this post will actually transition us into a series focusing on witnessing and hopefully we can present some answers in addition to the problems. 

For this week, what’s your reaction?  What most frightens you about witnessing?  What do you think has contributed to your fears or any bad experiences in the past?  Have you ever started talking to someone and had the experience go really well?  Maybe more than you expected?

If this touches your heart, watch this short video.  Now take up the call to action within it.  Pray.  Pray for those you know who are away fighting.  Pray for those you don’t know.  Pray especially for those who may not have many praying for them right now.

If you’re moved to more, visiting the airport in Dallas to welcome troops home is easy.  Just contact the number in this link

To view the USO’s general website, which links to other local branches, click here.  If anyone up there in Appleton is involved in other ways to support the troops, go ahead and leave a comment to help others get involved.

Lord, defend our soldiers who are away from home.  Give them comfort when they’re scared.  Give them peace when they’re troubled by what they see.  Give them courage to be faithful.  Above all, give them the grace to know on a daily basis that you’re right there with them.  Amen.

I like this video because it kind of smacks us in the face with a truth that’s ridiculously obvious, but one we often overlook. After all, how many times have you told a child not to do something and they do it again anyway. Right now my son, age 2, is really into jumping. He wants to jump onto and off everything in sight. We constantly warn him not to jump. “Reuel, if you jump off that it’s going to hurt.” What does he do? Jumps. Gets hurt, but maybe only in a minor way. “See, what did we say, it hurt didn’t it.” So what does he do? Only seconds or minutes later you see him leaping off another object and oftentimes, it hurts more. He runs crying to you, and while you comfort your child, you’re also trying to teach them a lesson- hey don’t keep doing stuff that you know is going to hurt!

Well this seems so obvious to us as parents, but what about our own behaviors as adults? What sins do you grapple with on a daily basis? Most of us have something that we struggle with and we know it hurts. We’ve gotten burned by it any number of times and yet what do we do- we keep going back to it.

Just as we want to yell out to our kids, “Hey just cut it out, you know it’s going to hurt!” God is screaming out to us. How often have you prayed, “Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil”? How often have you prayed a variation of this to God in regards to something specific?

God says he won’t lead us into temptation, but we need to do what we can to keep ourselves out of those situations too. Whatever it is you struggle with, think about the steps that you take before you actually do it. There are probably quite a few steps that you take before the sin is right in front of you. Break it down. How can you, or someone you trust, intervene before you ever get to the actual temptation?

Some serious food for thought after a less-than-serious movie.

]]> http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/07/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-9-cute-kid-temptation/feed/ 0 http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/06/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-8-magic/ http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/06/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-8-magic/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:00:57 +0000 Dan http://www.faithemergence.com/?p=81 Do you like magic?  Even if you don’t, I think you’ll find this video interesting.  And if you can’t quite figure out how it works and you want to know, check this one out too.

Now I’ve loved magic since I was a kid and even dabbled in it for a little while, but it’s not my childlike fascination with magic that intrigued me most about this video.

What interested me was that this relatively basic magic trick was listed in the most viewed videos of the month for Youtube.  There are far more amazing magic tricks that are posted on Youtube, yet this one has gone viral.  Why?

Because it involves you.  It pulls you in.  It gets you to actually do something.  We like to be involved in things.  We like to be part of interactions with those in front of us.  And that got me thinking about church.  There’s been a lot of discussion in church circles about interaction during worship and especially the preaching event.

How can we help members so that as they listen, they feel like they’re also interacting with the pastor?  How can we help the whole thing be as much an experience as simply a data dump or a lesson?  Or should these questions even be considered?  Is it appropriate for sermons to involve the people, or should it primarily be about listening as the pastor reveals God’s truths?  Can these two things somehow come together?

I’d love to hear what you think about interaction during worship and the sermon.  Do you like it when the pastor makes you do things, speak, write, etc?  Do you think this is or could be helpful in getting people to take the truths of the message and actually start to apply them?

These first couple of videos really made me laugh.  Here’s one for those of you with daughters.  I don’t have a daughter yet, but maybe I’ll have to hold on to this video so I can play it for future boyfriends.  In this video, a comedian analyzes scary bedtime prayers.   My wife told me I couldn’t use that prayer with our son, so we’ve used the kinder, gentler ending, “May angels watch me through the night and guide me to the morning light.”

On a more serious note, I thought this video was really good, a touching tribute to the sacrifice of fathers, but also cute since it involves duct tape.

So why did I go with such an amalgam of videos this week rather than just one?  Well, the reality is that dads play a lot of roles in our lives.  Some of it is laughable and humurous.  Sometimes dads go to great ends and sacrifice for us.  The reality though, is that sometimes people have a much more conflicted realtionship with their fathers.  Maybe even the discussion of fathers or Father’s Day makes you a little angry or sad as you think on the mistakes, loss, or pain associated with this topic.

Whatever your experience has been with your earthly father, this video is for you.  This video reminds us that we all have a Father in heaven who loves and cares for us.  He is everything a father is supposed to be.  So to those who think on this term with pain, remember what the word “Dad” can and should be.  To those with mostly fond memories, you can appreciate our God who is the model on which your father built himself.

But then I watched it again.  And another time.  There was definitely something intriguing about it.  Part of that was the concept, but part of it was also something more subtle  His words about change were simple and you didn’t see anything revolutionary in the quick shots he took, but there was something to that.

Like he says, change is often in the simple little things.  You see his appearance change a little.  You see who he’s with change.  You see simple changes like baseball and then football season, but as he says with his final two words, “Expect change”.

Do you expect change? Do you expect it at your church, or in your personal life? 

Do you expect it in your faith?  So often we live trying to avoid change, and perhaps most of all in things related to faith. After all, how much do you expect your faith to grow in a year, in a month, in a day?  Do you set goals?  It’s one thing to take a picture a day and see some changes in your appearance, but what would it be like to truly challenge yourself to change and grow in faith?  And when you experiences setbacks in your faith, how can you let God take advantage of them as well?

First, have you ever dealt with a person like this? Someone who basically thinks his or her idea is the main contribution. Now all the peons can just make the surrounding details happen. Clearly this happens in churches.

There’s another angle though, the gender one. God calls men to a difficult position in the family- servant leader. Oftentimes men act as if they should just boldly lead and expect wife and family to follow. Simply by being the man and doing the manly thing (here grilling the actual meat, but other guy activities such as mowing lawn, putting together furniture out of the Ikea box, etc could be substituted) they are fulfilling their role as head and man of the house and their families should thus be inspired to joyful service. After all they like that other kind of stuff. In reality, God calls men to much more work than that, he calls them to lead by service, including getting their hands dirty with some stuff they may not always enjoy. Remember, he tells men they are to model their leadership and love on that of Jesus Christ who laid down his life for the church (Eph. 5:25)

So what do you think? Take either angle. How do we help people understand what service is really about? How do we help people get excited about all aspects of service? Also, how do we help men and women understand the right use of roles in a household (there is such a thing), the servant-leader role of men, etc?

]]> http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/06/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-5/feed/ 0 http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/05/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-4/ http://www.faithemergence.com/2008/05/videos-that-make-us-laugh-and-think-pt-4/#comments Wed, 28 May 2008 08:00:09 +0000 Dan http://www.faithemergence.com/?p=49 Do you love standing in the midst of the change explored in this video?

I do. Maybe, it’s because I love history so much and loved reading about the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, etc, but there’s something fascinating about living in a generation that is on the verge of a major shift in history, especially such a fundamental shift that touches almost every realm of our lives- thinking, religion, economics, politics, and on and on.

This video really captures these changes and not just in terms of content, but also visually and in terms of media. It is produced and shared on YouTube and expects responses, which is exactly the revolution that it’s discussing.

So where does the Church fit into this picture? How does the sharing revolution affect us? Certainly churches are jumping on board to take advantage of the web, sharing ideas, sermons, Bible studies, music, and more online. GodTube was actually the fastest growing website during August of 2007.

What elements of this culture of sharing and innovation do you find positive for the church? What elements of it have you used?

At the same time, what elements give you pause? The video makes a good point that in the information sharing age, there are concerns about privacy, economics, and whether or not the material that is being shared is accurate and of highest quality.

Give me your thoughts. Remember, simply by reading this blog and posting a response, you are becoming part of this modern day movement.

Does anyone remember when this song/speech came out? It’s hard (at least for me) to believe it was almost 10 years ago now, addressed to the class of 1999. I know these words spoke powerfully to many people. At least that must have been the case because it was played on the radio over and over. . . and over.

Regardless, there are many interesting things in these words. Notice how the author speaks both to the simple “wear sunscreen”, “floss”, “stretch”, and to the deep, “accept inalienable truths,” “respect your elders”. Notice also how the artist points to certain tensions in our lives- enjoy your youth, but you won’t appreciate it until you’re older, don’t worry, but you probably will, etc.

I don’t agree with every statement in this video, but I remember how these words made me think all those years ago, and I sought this video out after I saw some clips from current graduation speeches. Advice should reflect wisdom and it should be stated in a way that is simple enough to remember, yet profound enough to make worthy of holding close to one’s heart.

So a couple of questions- what advice from this piece do you like?  What bothers you?  How should a Christian react to these words? What would intrigue me the most is this- if you were speaking to a crowd of graduates from a Christian perspective, what words of advice would you have for them? Remember, try to keep it within this genre, simple and profound.