Visitors to my house may have noticed a small set of concrete steps leading up to a door near the back of my house. I have called them the stairway to nothing, because it’s really just a small vestibule that used to be a back door entrance into the kitchen.

Well, this evening they became the stairway to the gaping hole in the side of the house. Well, not-so-gaping, I guess.

Point is, I had to remove the 80-year-old formerly oak (now largely pulp) threshold of the old door that was rotting into the steps so I could replace it and paint the whole deal. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get it all the way dismantled and reassembled before it got very dark.

This is because to replace the threshold on this particular door, one had to remove both the exterior trim and the interior trim and then remove the entire doorjamb from the frame, after which the soggy threshold could be removed from the jamb.

Needless to say, this took a mite longer than expected, and was only interrupted by 2 pastoral phone calls.* Thus, I did not complete the project. Now, to supply the project, I will have to purchase a new oak threshold and, unfortunately, new exterior trim. No, I did not damage it when I removed it. It was rotten wherever the screen door was screwed in to the frame. There were only about 2 or 3 screws really doing any work to hold that door up.

While this seems like a lot of work for a doorway to nothing, I can’t much let it just rot off the back of the house, either. Nor was it substantial enough to be an adequate substrate for paint. I was able to pre-prime the new pieces that will replace some of the rotten boards. That will abate much of the future potential for rot.

So the stairway to nothing is creating quite a project – a sub-project of prepping my house for painting.

* (Usually in that given time period there are more. But given that I was not on a ladder dangling from the side of the house the phone didn’t ring as much as it does when I am entangled in rungs.)

I gave an explanation tonight ex tempore which I think explains the basic operating philosophy behind the Vision Process our congregation has been going through.

Leading congregational transformation is rather complex. There are many issues to consider, not the least of which is what comes first.

Here’s what we came up with:

1. Discern Vision. Basically, for us this meant looking into the Bible to discern what God’s vision and understanding of The Church is. Once we established a basic Biblical foundation, we examined our congregational history and current practice to see how we measured up. Throughout this process we involved as much of the congregation as was interested in the discussion of a number of issues that arose. The product of this part of the process was the Vision, Mission and Values statements, as well as a good sense of direction that has developed congregationally for what God’s definition of and vision for the church is.

2. Develop a process to work toward the vision. This is the general issue of getting the Vision out into the basic fabric of the congregation and beginning to practice the principles of the Vision in congregational life. Thankfully, instead of having to write our own process and completely start from scratch, our colleagues at ABC/Ohio have developed a process, starting this year, called Rise Up and Build which intends to help us become a “healthy, missional congregation.” In other words, it intends to take us to the place of implementing the Vision we have discerned and developed. It also creates space to modify and tweak the Vision, Mission and Values statements where necessary to make them more applicable to how things are actually developing. The process of re-examining Vision periodically is thus built in to the system from the get-go.

3. Examine our existing structures. This takes our official structures – among which we could include constitution, staff, and even possibly building – and examines them with the intent to make whatever modifications are necessary to promote the healthy development of the Vision while maintaining appropriately accountable structures throughout the process.

These three stages grew out of the process as it developed on the ground over the past year. It would be possible in many ways to consider stages 2 and 3 to be two parts of a greater process of implementation. However, in this case, since Rise Up and Build does not deal with the structures directly, we found it necessary to take things one step at a time there.

Thus, as of the Executive Board meeting tonight, we will have a congregational vote of affirmation for stages 1 & 2 on 10 September 2006 after church. Stage three was discussed tonight and will develop soon.

Thank you all for all of your prayers in getting to this point. The grace of God be with you all.

Several people said that their favorite quote from the sermon this morning was,

“you can turn on the lights but you can’t turn on the dark!”

See Ephesians 5:1 – 20 for details.

Found at GrantCThomas:

Bono said Friday, at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit, that most Christian art is lacking, because it has no tension between Good and Evil. He says he identifies more with the blues than with gospel music, because blues starts with an honesty about one’s situation and gospel glosses over the bad and acts like everything is OK. (Bono has said before that “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was meant as a gospel song. Its about striving for something deeper rather than thinking you’ve arrived.)

Now some in the church, in an attempt to seem relevant to the culture, have written new songs and have tossed out all the old ones saying that hymns are culturally elitist and indecipherable to a world that gets its news in sound bites. In my opinion they have settled for less than the best.

I subbed for the worship leader a few weeks ago. Let’s look at how this played out when I was picking songs for a worship service. I should preface that this worship service is called the “Contemporary” service and that I attend it not because of the musical style.

I got the text for the sermon ahead of time. I like to have at least one song go with the sermon, so that the songs don’t seem totally disjunct from what is being preached that week. The sermon was on community, but try as I might, I couldn’t find any songs in a contemporary setting that were about community. So I tried breaking conventions- I thumbed through the hymnal. (You know that book full of powerpoint slides of song lyrics. It also has those black blobs that move up and down on the page to tell you how high or low you should sing.) I still struck out. There wasn’t even a section on community in the hymnal’s topical index!

Now if I had known the history of Christian music, I probably would have eventually found at least one song about community that I could have adapted to a guitar-based band. If I were Bach I would have to write the whole thing every week any how.

Now if guys like Bono (and myself) find contemporary Christian art lacking in depth, perhaps we should look to Christians, like Bach who were innovators on the very conventions of art itself. Bach invented the chorale which is a choral piece of music sung in SATB in which every chord builds off the last and sounds utterly beautiful even to the untrained ear. He didn’t just write these pieces by trial and error, he also invented an entire system, so that any chord progression could be written into a choral. And we haven’t even talked about fugues! (a piece where several melodies are perfectly intertwined to make a greater whole.)

The fact of the matter is we no longer live in the same time and culture as Bach. Culture is never static, but it also does not suffer from amnesia. We need artists like Bono who not only makes great art, but practices what he preaches. We also need Bach, Vivaldi, Charles Westley, Isaac Watts and Franny Crosby to look back to as artists who spoke for their times, but also have things to tell our time.

My $0.02: This is a prime example of what I mean when we will celebrate God’s work as his people with the best of every decade – not merely concretize a certain style or cultural expression as “the holiest.” Music that is truly Christian captures the essential fact that the Word became Flesh, and that Flesh resided in a particular culture at a peculiar time, as our flesh does these days, with that selfsame Word dwelling in us. Our flesh continually unites with his Word to create new Christian expressions – in a variety of Christian forms and cultures. The beauty of Bach with the austerity of Plainsong now can take their place with the power of an electric guitar and the street-level incarnations of rap and R&B. Together they become the unity of soul in the panoply of the armor of God.

Nevertheless, this takes great amounts of Christian maturity: the mutual love and respect to listen and to truly hear the other. This is especially necessary in these days where we have been niched and targeted until we, like the residents of Lewis’ Grey City in the Great Divorce, have moved further and further apart until we are utterly alone – utterly alone to enjoy our peculiar tastes and delights, without the possibility of any other person infringing upon our will and desire; without the possibility of the joy of the sharing in mutual delight; without God, without light, without self.

In these mad days must the counter-cultural Christian intentionally choose the other in more explicit and intentional ways. For we are born into connectedness, and re-born into connectedness. Somewhere along the way we find ourselves disconnected from all others, even ourselves. For the church of Jesus Christ, this has often been symbolized in the “worship wars” that turn mainly upon the question of style, while the true issues are those of power and control. These issues degenerate into such power struggles the first time someone even breathes the thought that they want it their way. Instead, if we truly were Christian about the whole thing we would see that each one speaks to God in their own langugage – let alone their own timbre, phrasing and progressions. Thus the respect for both Bach and Bono would build something new – the one new anthropos (i.e., humanity) out of the two – which all will be built into the dwelling place for God.

…or at least about one per day.

any idea how that one could be getting through? I’ve vetted all of my registered users.

Suggestions welcome.

Today the First Baptist Church Secretary, Linda S___, retired after almost 20 years at the church. She will be sorely missed. The office will maintain its regular duties for the forseeable future through congregational volunteers. More information will be coming through the regular church announcements.

Ok. I know they’re annoying.

But they are a must.

I have installed the “Did you pass math?” plugin for this site that should keep my spam management down considerably. It asks a simple math question of people who comment so that the spam-bots can’t just do all they seem to want to do.

For people who are registered or logged in somehow, there should not be any changes to the system. I don’t see ‘em myself when I’m logged in.

Sorry about the hassle but I got sick of sifting through 100+ spam comments per day. And no, I don’t need either Viagra nor silicone implants, nor am I in any way interested in advertizing for them (actively or passively). If you want to know where I think all that crud should end up, just guess.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ -

Please join me in a day of Fasting and Prayer, tomorrow, 11 August 2006, abstaining from both breakfast and lunch.

Please pray the following Prayer Points:

1. That God would be first at First Baptist Church of Warren
2. That there would be unity in the body of Christ
3. That God would pour out his Spirit upon the whole body in increasing measure.

Thank you for fasting and praying with us as you can.

Grace and Peace -

Pastor Matthew M. Thomas

Yes, today is the day that the Web could get its learners permit in most states.

One key date is 6 August 1991 – the day on which links to the fledgling computer code for the www were put on the alt.hypertext discussion group so others could download it and play with it.

On that day the web went world wide.

Oh yeah, and they mention the U of I in the article along with NCSA.

Happy Birthday!
From the BBC via /.

Definitation of Evangelical Pastor: “A person obsessed with the spiritual condition of others.”

Definitation of Jesus: “A person concerned about his own spiritual condition.”

via Out of Ur

I believe that this contrast is true; it also means that we have a long way to go.

Here’s the deal: with the Rise Up and Build process we are in, we are starting to look (each of us) at our own personal spiritual formation, which is leading us into greater ministry together.

I think that this proves the point.

En ho metro metreite metrethesetai humin

Euangellion to kata Matthaion, VII.ii.

These are the days and nights that drive one to contemplation and self-examination. There is much that is developing positively in these days – across the board. Yet it is, at the same time, a process that is requiring, yea, even urging personal growth and transformation in Christ in everyone. That process includes me. These are the days and nights when, with medical precision, God targets areas of disease, debilitation, fault and frustration in my own life as we all move down a path to Christian Maturity.

It was, in fact, a discussion of Christian Maturity that led me to this place of reflection this evening. Moreover, it was a discussion of what it looks like, how we reach it, and how we encourage and develop it in ourselves and in others that brought about some deep personal reflection. Communicating ideas comes easy for me in some contexts, and it is extremely difficult in others. Tonight was perhaps one of the latter.

This morning, I used the term “Christ-sized” to summarize Ephesians 4:13, “the measure of the full stature of Christ,” or somesuch other verbally complicated translation of the complex underlying Greek. I realized after discussing Maturity with the group tonight that the general perception of Maturity is that it is two-dimensional, tracking time as an independent variable versus Maturity as the dependent variable. The goal is to have a line that grows steadily upward as you move from left to right. However, that is not how Christian Maturity looks at all.

The real Christian Maturity is at least modeled three-dimensionally, if not multi-dimensionally, as a contoured surface, not unlike a model of a range of hills or mountains. These contours develop and change over time, as life develops. Throughout this time, there are both high peaks and low valleys. The high peaks represent areas of life in which the person has developed a greater measure of maturity, while the low valleys represent areas of particularly needed growth and transformation. Maintaining the analogy would suggest that the overall average height of the contour surface represents the average personal maturity in a given person.

This model would suggest that Christian Maturity is not a two-dimensional progressive-regressive process as modeled by a road or a line of some sort, but participation in a whole shape of life, wherein a person may in fact be particularly mature in a certain area (or areas) of life and particularly immature in another area (or areas). I suppose that I took this outlook intuitively de facto, having developed this concept nearly 10 years ago in an entirely different context, forgetting that the typical perception is much more of a two-dimensional function than a contoured surface.

So tonight I slogged in up to my neck until I realized the error of my ways.

This reminded me (clearly) that there are a number of areas where God is poking, prodding, encouraging and pressing me to continue to grow – and to overcome some areas once and for all. Nevertheless, God is not nearly the perfectionist that I am. In this round of discussion with God it seems that he is reminding me of places of continued growth in

Anxiety/Fear
Analysis sine iudicio (without criticism)
Appropriate cycles of work and rest
Appropriate boundaries of life’s relationships
Love for Enemies (or at least the difficult people to get along with)

and more.

Gratia et Pax omnibus.

I walked in a clear, rock creek tonight. A couple guys went with me to see the damage done by flooding and storms at Camp Koinonia, our church camp on the Ashtabula-Lake county line just off OH-534 on Cork-Cold Springs Road.

Evidently, water was 20 feet above flood stage at one point in the camp. The high-water mark was in the second floor of the lodge. There was mud in the grass and the force of the flowing water had uprooted trees and washed out the main road-bridge into the camp. The bridge itself still stands, but the road on either side of it is just gone.

Nevertheless, the camp seems like it will be operational. Everything has been cleaned up in the main part of the camp and the swimming pool has been cleaned out. It will be a while before there is full functionality, I suspect.

I got some great help today.

As some of you know, on Pentecost Sunday, (4 June 2006), my car was hit in the church parking lot during or after the service. Probably by a vehicle bearing a high bumper or a trailer hitch.

This added injury to the insult of my passenger door which already had a problem with the automatic window. It had a lot of trouble opening.

Well, today, I got some help popping that dent back out from a guy named Todd. Now the door works fine!

Thanks!

Today is 2/8/6.

Get it?

Inspired by Slashdot.

Romans 16:17 – 20:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded. For while your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, I want you to be wise in what is good and guileless in what is evil. The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.