Friday, Saturday and Sunday combined to make this an amazing weekend. It is going to be really good for me to be “standing up” in two weddings before I have to perform my first as the pastor at the end of June. It helps to reinforce what a service should look like and what order things go in.

Grant’s wedding went very smoothly. As is typical, the 10-year-old ring bearer kept everyone relaxed and smiling with his antics. The reception was fun, too: several of my friends were amazed at how my family dominated the dance floor. And it wasn’t just “ballroom” dance that they were doing, either: they twisted and shouted, slid electrically, swung and “slow danced.” They helped get the rest of the crowd “in to it.”

Sunday was really good for me, too. I had the opportunity to preach at the church I grew up in. It’s the first time I’ve ever done two services in a row. I got some really positive feedback from the pastoral staff there; and friends remarked that I have improved dramatically from even just a few weeks ago.

Today topped it all off: I went out on a speedboat with some Koin-Strat people. A couple of them tubed, but the water was pretty cold. All in all, a good day.

This week’s shaping up to be another good one!

You know, it’s been nice being able to kinda take things slow the last couple of days. I haven’t had much to do, and it’s been nice to be able to just sit around and be quiet, or visit with the family.

I’m in “take what comes” mode: there’s stuff I want to do, but it doesn’t take all that long, so I just enjoy sitting quietly (for the first time in weeks) and receiving the happenings all around me.

Of course, Grant’s party was cool last night - there’ll be some good pictures posted here eventually. Lots of pool, some Kareoke, darts, conversation, and some beer. Good stuff.

Dear friends,

I am honored to be given the opportunity to preach at my home church this Sunday while I am in Champaign-Urbana for my brother’s wedding. I would be delighted if you were to join me for this experience! Services will be at 8:15 and 10:45 this Sunday morning, 29 May 2005, at 1602 Prospect Ave. in Savoy, IL.

This is something I’ve been looking forward to for some time; I didn’t think that this opportunity would come so soon!

I hope to see you there!

I made it back home safely to Illinois! Tonight we had my dad’s 50th birthday party at the best restaurant in town. It was really cool to get the whole family together for that! Moreover, he was really surprised.

Posting may be sporadic this week and next while I’m with the family.

Tonight First Baptist Church of Warren hosted the “West Virginians,” a singing group from Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi, WV. The “West Virginians” led us in rousing, Spirit-inspired worship for about an hour and a half. It is an amazing group of people.

They sang a mix of songs, sacred and secular, slow and fast, classical and rock, hymns and anthems. They did so with such passion and poise that our normally more staid congregation was on its feet clapping for several of their numbers. Needless to say, I was one of the more exuberent listeners.

Near the end of the concert/worship event, the band invited me to join them on the stage/chancel for a rousing song I can’t remember the name of right now. It was a lot of fun!

The congregation gathered there, I believe, sensed that God is continuing to move among us and within us - the events of the past three days are creating a “mountaintop experience” for a few of us. The “West Virginians” have contributed to the continued sense of renewal we have been feeling for this past week.

God is in this place!

It has been an amazing couple of days. God has been moving mightily in the congregation of First Baptist Church of Warren, and I feel priveleged to be able to be a part of his most recent work.

I knew there was something special about this congregation. I interviewed with thirteen different churches over the period of a year for various pastoral positions, in an effort to discern where God was calling me. I met with a small number of very good congregations: those who were following God and pursuing where he was calling them. Yet, the “fit” wasn’t right. The call wasn’t there for me.

I also met with a lot of other congregations: those who were struggling with major problems and were, honestly, looking for a leader who didn’t exist - couldn’t exist. They were looking for someone who was young, with 30 years of experience, who wouldn’t change anything, and who would bring in new people to the congregation. They were not able to see that young, 30 years experience and wouldn’t change anything weren’t compatible options, nor was “don’t change anything” compatible with bringing new people in.

And then I met two members of First Baptist Warren - in a hotel room in southern Indiana. Something was different. We “clicked.” Over a period of weeks and months we found ourselves continuing the process together so that they ended up inviting me to come be their pastor. God was a part of that process; God was clearly moving in the congregation.

They were different from the others not so much in that God was moving among them (there were other churches where God’s work was clearly seen), but in their receptivity to my style and tone of leadership that I set before them. For them, while my youth was not a complete non-issue, it was not the insurmountable obstacle that it was for almost everyone else. They gave me a chance to speak to them; they gave me a chance to lead them. It is clear that God has been speaking, and they have been listening.

At the same time, God was speaking to me: give this largely elderly church in northeast Ohio a chance. Be willing to surrender your home town and your friends and family to me, God said, and I will work in your life to enable you to follow me more closely.

So yesterday, when I invited the people gathered for worship to respond to God’s call to make telling the good news of Jesus Christ a priority for the congregation, I shouldn’t have been surprised when 14 people came forward in response saying, this is what we want to do! We don’t know what it means, but we’re interested. When I invited them to become missionaries in their own community, they responded with gusto.

Tonight, the executive board of the church met. We discussed what happened yesterday. Everyone was amazed at what occured. Many were confused as to what I was talking about and what I was asking people to do. Nevertheless, everyone knew that something new and different was going on, and it was good. God is mysterious: we’re not sure what he is up to, but we like it and we want more of it.

We realized that there are a lot of people with a lot of good ideas in the congregation, and it is our role as leaders to help foster implementation of good ideas in a way that will build up the body, rather than having all the good ideas work at cross-purposes to each other. Our discussion moved naturally from this to discussion of the Vision Task Force I proposed to the board a month ago. This group would be a small group selected from the members of the church to pray and discern where God is leading us throughout the course of a year so as to come up with a godly understanding of our next steps.

I’m pleased to announce that the board constituted a team of six, including myself, who will do that work. The desire to follow God is there; I believe we will see what God wants to do among us and be able to carry it through in the years to come.

Thanks be to God!

This morning totally surprised me. Given that it was Trinity Sunday, I was preaching on the Trinity. Not exactly a topic that usually keeps people awake.

Today, however, an amazing thing happened: As I got to the end of the sermon, I realized that there was only one way to end the service: to invite people to respond by physically coming forward to pray. This is not something we’ve done often at FBC-Warren during my time here.

Fourteen people came forward, indicating their desire to serve as missionaries in our community, to bring the love of God, expressed in the community of the Trinity, out to the rest of Warren and the surrounding area.

I was blown away by the response. There’s a move of God occurring in Warren, Ohio that I am surprised by even though I somehow hoped it would happen. As a congregation, we will develop our focus in ministry to be outside the four walls of our church building and bring the community love of God to the people of Warren, Ohio.

Thanks be to God!

Sermon 22 May 2005
Trinity Sunday, Year A
Matthew 28:16 – 20

“…baptizing them into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit…�

This is Trinity Sunday.

Star Wars Intro

This week, the sixth of the Star Wars movies came out. Yes, I’ve already seen it – I saw it on the day it came out! I grew up on the Star Wars movies: my brothers and I used to talk about them so much that my mother banned all discussion of the movies (and our creative childhood extrapolations) from dinner-table conversation, just to save her wits.

For those of us who grew up with Star Wars, many of the movies’ lines gained quite a bit of notoriety. One of the lines that became famous comes at the end of the first movie: “Use the Force, Luke.� In Star Wars, this force is the supernatural means whereby things happen. This force is both good and bad; it can be used for good or ill. It somehow transcends normal experience. People connect to this force, and are able to do many amazing things through it – including lifting entire spaceships out of a swamp just by sheer willpower. In that way, it is just about the closest that movie comes to an understanding of God.

Trinity as Personal God

Our Christian affirmations of faith contrast with this Star Wars understanding of the supernatural: (more…)

CNN ran a story today about the Archimedes Palimpsest. The Archimedes Palimpsest is a 1oth and 12th century manuscript. 10th and 12th century manuscript, you say?

That’s because a Palimpsest is a manuscript, usually written on parchment (an animal-skin medium), where the text originally written thereupon has been erased through a process of scraping and a new text written in its place, usually at a ninety degree orientation to the original. Palimpsests are actually somewhat common during the Medieval period, since good-quality parchment was hard to get and was more easily “erasable” than other media such as papyrus or vellum (i.e., calfskin). Many valuable classical documents are available only in palimpsestic form, since they were not as highly valued during the Middle Ages and were overwritten to serve as prayer books, commentaries and other more monastic writings.

Since the original text has been erased and overwritten, it is very difficult, but not usually impossible, to read the text using modern photographic equipment. Whether using ultraviolet light or X-rays (such as in the case of the Archimedes Palimpsest), scholars are able to take photographic images of the original text and read what is now hidden by the “new” text. Which is what scholars and scientists are doing with a particle accelerator at Stanford University.

Archimedes, as you know, was a Greek Philosopher living in Syracuse on the island of Sicily in the 3rd century BC. His most famous discovery was the principles of density and displacement. He famously discovered this while bathing and, being extremely excited by his discovery, lept from the bath and ran naked through town yelling, “Eureka!” (which means, “I’ve figured it out!”)

Archimedes is also known for a number of inventions and the mathematical principles. “Give me a place to stand,” he once said during a discussion about levers and fulcra, “and I will move the earth.” Archimedes died during the Roman invasion in 212 BC, supposedly killed while drawing mathematical diagrams in the sand, oblivious to the goings-on around him.

The Archimedes Palimpsest could offer valuable early manuscript versions of his mathematical texts. Most importantly, this palimpsest has some of his diagrams on it. This manuscript could be a window into the science, culture and history of Archimedes and his world.

I’ve almost finished reading Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, which I picked up upon the recommendations of Grant and a number of others.

In Grant’s words, BLJ is “J. D. Salinger meets Dallas Willard.” In a way, Miller writes like Holden Caufield speaks - but instead of Caufield’s unbounded cynicism, we see a Willard-like spiritual perception.

In chapter 11, entitled “Confession,” Miller writes about how he and a few of his Christian friends set up a confession booth in the middle of their college campus during the middle of one of the wildest school-sanctioned parties college students have ever known. I was fascinated with how, instead of having the debaucherous students confess their sins to the Christians, the Christians instead confessed their sins to the partygoers who ventured into the confession booth. They confessed how they lived judgementally toward their fellow students. They confessed that the church of Jesus Christ hadn’t always lived up to the life God called it to.

By confessing their sins, these brave Christians demonstrated the love of God to their campus community - in a way that opened up doors for communication and further conversation.

There is much to be gained in creatively engaging people where they are, being open, honest and authentic. Its risky, it’s different, but with some effort and some widespread engagement within the body of Christ, it might become normal.

Today I ran the big loop route again. I still ran it in the clockwise direction, that is, uphill. This evening, I decided to try to figure out how far I’ve been running.

And it’s not as far as everyone thought. I thought I was going close to 4.5 miles. Actually, it’s a mile shorter. 3.4375 (three and seven sixteenths) miles, to be exact. That’s 5.53212 km. for the rest of you.

So now I have to ask: why is it taking me so long?

Ok, I know I make a lot of references to Andrew Jones’ site - but he’s got some really good stuff (especially lately)!

An exerpt from the latest:

Solomon would have sent out his proverbs with an daily RSS feed, perhaps using a blog as a home base for his feeds.

Matthew. A hyperlink geek who would blog with a constant stream of links back to the original prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures. Most blogging programs make that easy.

(more…)

Now, this is a must-see!

Both Andrew Jones and Jordon Cooper have linked the Star Wars Last Supper photo.

Which leads me to the question: is there really a Christ figure in the series?

I don’t think so. Heroes, yes. Valor, yes. Courage, yes. Good triumphing over evil, yes. But Christ? Hmmm… no, still don’t think so.

Ok, so I’m a Star Wars junkie. I went and saw the last of the Star Wars movies today as it opened in theatres in Warren. I liked the first three movies, was disappointed by the second two, and consider Lucas to have redeemed himself quite well with the last one.

I was struck by the interaction between good and evil in the movie. A gifted young man - one I can identify with in some ways - struggles to find his place in a society and a system where he is quite capable and competent in many ways. He is the equal of his elders in most respects. But he is still young, and he ends up being manipulated by one who promises power but is really out to secure his own power.

In the end, though, the “young and impressionable, gifted yet inexperienced” dynamic isn’t the main theme. Rather, it is one of wrestling with idolatry. Idolatry is an attempt to manipulate God, other people and, in many cases, the created order, in order to control events: whether to prevent undesirable events from taking place, or engaging in wanted activities. In doing so, relationships and activities take their place in the center of life, finding a place in life that they do not deserve.

The movie demonstrates this quite clearly in several of the relationships it portrays. In each case, people do unwise things because they want to protect and control something that is entirely out of their control and protection and sphere of influence. And in the end, it destroys the very thing they were trying to protect and control. Only when their fate is sealed do the perpetrators realize what has come about.

And that’s the way idols work. They move things to the center that do not belong, resetting our priorities and goals to maintain the idol’s status, and to prevent the loss of control and protection the idol portrays. Idols cause us to lose our sense of direction, become confused, and compromise what we know is good and right to protect the idol.

Nevertheless, as life moves on, the idol’s position becomes untenable. We discover eventually that whether the idol is in the fiercely defended center or in its rightful place, there is nothing we can do to maintain the idol. If it is to fall, it will fall; if it is to stand, it will stand.

Which is why we learn, as the movie points out, to hold all things loosely. We receive what we have as a gift from God, given out of his love for us. When God calls us to release the gift so that another may receive, we do so with joy, knowing the joy it brought to us. If we do not, the pain is excruciating.

…rather, seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well.

Hmmm… there it is again…

Andrew Jones wrote a “random thought” today on the intersection of Kingdom and Mission:

- After a good soaking of Kingdom thinking, when you pull out your head, and wipe your eyes, you dont see churches, you see the Church. Only one. And you don’t see mission as a yes or no button in front of you, but rather a river coming somewhere behind you, sweeping you along into somewhere exciting.

I suppose this is merely another way of restating Matthew 6:33 -

…rather, seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Nevertheless, it is an important re-statement: by developing and maintaining our focus on the Kingdom of God, all of our smaller territories find their place within the whole; once the Kingdom is in view, we don’t have to hold seminars about how to make the Christian faith look like good news, neither do we have to ask the question of the role of outreach: for the Kingdom of God is nothing if it is not God reaching out to us in a welcoming embrace, inviting us to join in his very life - a life that is not just restored to fullness but a life that is being re-created into life in overflowing proportions.

We who are looking to find direction for being not only “the church” but “a church” need look no further than the Kingdom. The church is not the Kingdom. Lest we forget, the church is the witness to the Kingdom. As witnesses to the Kingdom, we stand as participants in the Kingdom whose role is inherently missional. Our loss of missional focus seems to come from either a loss of Kingdom-consciousness or our identification of the church with the Kingdom.

In the first case, we end up doing church just to do church. We perceive the actions of the church to be ordinances, commands to be followed, not activities to be joyfully engaged in. In the second case, we become very territorial and defensive. Each local body is seen as the church, so each Kingdom has to be advanced - and there are a lot of other Kingdoms out there in competition for unconquered territory (and, I daresay, quite a bit of territory already held by others). The second case also establishes the church as a defensive bastion against the evils of society and is the basis for culture wars.

Notice that in both cases, the church becomes almost entirely inward-focused (even in outreach practices). Even evangelism - the joyful telling of the good news - becomes drudgery or something used to build up the Kingdom. Taking on Jesus’ Kingdom perspective changes everything. Jesus’ perspective says that we may well be participants in the Kingdom, but the Kingdom isn’t us. Actually, nothing can destroy God’s Kingdom, because it is and is coming whether we want it or not. It is a fact of life of the age to come.

Therefore, going out into the world, we make disciples of all nations - not to make them look like or act like us, nor to convert them to our opinion and perspective - but to point them to God’s Kingdom that has come in Jesus Christ and is coming: immersing them into the life of the Triune God and teaching obedience to the Kingdom way of life through our own obedience to it. And God With Us, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, will be with us through all of this, until this present age shall end and the Kingdom is all that remains.

Amen.

For more random thoughts for today from Andrew Jones, click here.