Churches of Christ in Oklahoma assess damage, brace for another round of severe weather

Tornado sirens went off as I was getting this post together. I wrote the final paragraphs while waiting out a storm in the same place I was yesterday (see below). A massive tornado has been reported in Moore, Okla., south of Oklahoma City. We’re praying for the people there and will post updates.

Aiming at Heaven

If there is one thing this life has taught me, it’s that I must hold loosely to everything. Everything. I can’t put down roots anywhere; I will never find stability. I will never grow old in one house. I may someday have to evacuate with the clothes on my back. Or, I may just get robbed blind.
But it’s okay. Because it reminds me that I shouldn’t love this life too tightly anyway. This life is not all there is, and it’s definitely not worth fretting over.
“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” C. S. Lewis

Does God Need Our Defense?

What if Christians actually laid down their honor, their pride, their instincts to get defensive? What if we beat our swords into plowshares and answered every attack with love, with a still small voice that never wavered, but never raised?
It would mean that we are finally imitators of Jesus, and every last one of the accusations leveled against us—that we are hateful, hypocrites, selfish, narrow-minded and backward—would no longer be true.

The Way We Think About Charity Is All Wrong

Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, “We kept charity overhead low.” We want it to read that we changed the world, and that part of the way we did that was by changing the way we think about these things. So the next time you’re looking at a charity, don’t ask about the rate of their overhead. Ask about the scale of their dreams, their Apple-, Google-, Amazon-scale dreams, how they measure their progress toward those dreams, and what resources they need to make them come true regardless of what the overhead is. Who cares what the overhead is if these problems are actually getting solved? If we can have that kind of generosity, a generosity of thought, then the non-profit sector can play a massive role in changing the world for all those citizens most desperately in need of it to change. . . .

The Art of Good Openings and Closings

I’ve just returned from an amazing trip of facilitating workshops, discussions and master classes as well as a keynoting a conference on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” in Australia and New Zealand. It made me very happy to be teaching non-stop for almost two weeks. I’m always learning as I help others learn. Here’s a couple of reflections from my “trainer’s notebook.”

No Signal

You get to choose your story. If the story you’ve chosen doesn’t get through, it’s up to you to fix that. Pick a story that reflects your work, sure, but also one that resonates with the receiver

What Guilt Does the U.S. Bear in Guatemala?

But little was said at the trial about U.S. involvement in Guatemala. A United Nations truth commission in 1999 said the United States bore much responsibility for advising, training, arming and financing the troops, even teaching torture, as part of the Reagan administration’s campaign against communism.
What guilt does the United States bear in Guatemalan atrocities?

Slaughter Was Part of Reagan’s Hard Line
Blaming the U.S. Is Easy Propaganda
We Enabled Genocide, but the Elite Committed It
Guatemala Suffered for U.S. Foreign Policy

10 Dangerous Church Paradigms

I have observed, for example, that paradigms can often shape a church’s culture. A paradigm in simple terms, is a mindset; a way of thinking. In this case, a collective mindset of the church, often programmed into the church’s culture.
If the church is unhealthy part of the reason could be because it has some wrong paradigms. In that case, it will almost always need a paradigm shift in order to be a healthier church again.

The Preacher Search: Lessons for Churches Searching for Preachers, Part 1
The Preacher Search: Lessons for Churches Searching for Preachers, Part 2

We finished a 15-month preacher search late last year. I’ve learned several lessons I thought I should pass along.
Many of these I learned the hard way. This was not my first preacher search, by any means, but the Churches of Christ are changing, and every search brings new lessons.

Baptism: Back to the Water

Therefore, says Paul, the spectacular Good Friday and Easter at the heart of the Christian story—Jesus’ dying and rising—happened to us in baptism. Paul doesn’t hold back here: he doesn’t hedge and say “as if.” He simply says, You died with Christ in baptism and you were raised with him through the waters into the new life of belonging to Jesus.”

World On Fire

Something is going on.
I believe it is God.
Something is very different about today’s today.
Spiritual hunger, hope, and effectiveness is brewing.

Twelve Ways to Prepare Your Children for Times of Doubt

Let them know that it is not abnormal to experience doubt. This does not mean that your children will experience significant doubt, it just means that doubt is a common issue they will experience, to varying degrees, in a fallen world.

15 Things You Need to Know about Unchurched People Today

Post-modernism has a deeper toe-hold here than in almost anywhere in America, except perhaps the Northwest and New England, where it might be about the same.
Here are characteristics of unchurched people that I’m seeing today.

Documented and Undocumented “Parasites”

Having said all this, for those who are still concerned about undocumented people benefiting from the American system, the best way to keep undocumented people from benefiting inappropriately from the system is to put in place a path to citizenship, while allowing them to remain and work as they pursue legal status. In keeping with the Evangelical Immigration Table’s call for immigration reform, it is in the best interest of all parties that we as a country establish “a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents.”

Of Sheepdogs, Shepherds & Metaphors

Somewhere in the past few months, while whiling away unavailable time on the interwebs, I read about how sheep farmers in the English-speaking world tend to use sheepdogs to control sheep, rather than the middle-eastern method of almost exclusively employing human shepherds.

Seeing Jesus

Although my son does not know all there is to know about Jesus and humanity, he is teaching me a very valuable lesson each time he gives his money to Jesus. He is teaching me that we need to see Jesus in everyone we meet.

One Ministry, Two Kingdoms

It took God employing hardship for me to embrace the inescapable reality that everything I did in ministry was done in allegiance to, and in pursuit of, either the kingdom of self or the kingdom of God.

Football Teams and Church Commitment

But this is the very way that most churches expect to run their youth ministries. To expect that youth be committed to the church with the same level of commitment that would be expected of them on an athletic team would draw the charge of legalism and insensitivity. Our culture has been so carried away by the current of religious individualism that the expectation of commitment to the church has become implausible to most Christians in our culture.

Daily slogging in the power of the Spirit

I am not impressed by young pastors who seem too eager to publish books and speak at big events and get noticed. They are doing the work of the Lord, and that’s good. But what impresses me is my dad’s daily slogging, year after year, in the power of the Spirit, with no big-deal-ness as the payoff.

Man returns to restaurant—over a decade later—to pay off old debt

The boy spoke to the restaurant’s owner and chef, Claus Hjortkjaer. The kind Chef Claus took pity on the young man and gave him $40 from his own pocket. The boy paid his tab and left. Hjortkjaer never saw him again. Until now.
Last week, the mysterious diner returned to Hjortkjaer’s newly reopened restaurant to pay off the debt—with interest. KOAT.com reports that the man walked in, asked to speak to Hjortkjaer, explained who he was and gave the generous chef a $100 bill.

Ann Coulter Calls Me A Liberal

Ann Coulter thinks I’m liberal– actually, I guess that might include all of us who are part of the Evangelical Immigration Table are– and that’s quite a group to call liberal. ;-)

Abercrombie And Fitch And Homelessness and You

This is wrong. It is, to use a word I do not use lightly, evil. It is stigmatizing an already stigmatized group in order to “strike back” at a brand that let you down. One of our idols failed us, and so we critique them by shooting video of vulnerable people wearing their clothes in order to lampoon the brand.

Deciphering Missions
[Note:some strong language in this article]

While I was virtually paralyzed by depression and anxiety, I used Missionary Code to turn every innocuous coffee date with a friend into “discipleship time”. Hours spent circling Facebook were important to “support development”, and everyday interactions with grocery store clerks and bank tellers suddenly became meaningful when referred to as “intentional relationships”. Oh, and the things your supporters do in their time off (like running, or taking classes, or hanging out with their kids) are things you get to claim, according to Missionary Code, as work.

5 Reasons I Meet With Strangers (in My Case, via Twitter) & Would Commend It to You

Well, I do this as an intentional discipline. I can spend a lot of my life just meeting with people who are on my agenda– and that is a good thing. I had a fascinating day today, starting with members of Congress and then meeting national religious leaders. But, we know why we are there and the agenda is planned– sometimes very planned.
Sometimes, we need something more– more spontaneous, more Spirit-led, and more random.

The Difference Between Original Autographs and Original Texts

But does the lack of autographs mean such affirmations of biblical authority are meaningless? No, because the authority does not reside in a physical object, but in the original text. And the original text has been preserved in another way, namely through the multiplicity of manuscripts.

How Humans Have Seen the World, Through Data

“We react to design and to art and to the aesthetics of a piece just as much as we react to the information contained in it,” Steele puts it. “And so if you want to change someone’s mind — if you want to change someone’s behavior — sometimes presenting the information in a visual format is the fastest way to get them to engage with that information.”

Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”
The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

Calif. man who said he fled zombies pleads guilty

A Tennessee man who stole a big-rig truck in California, caused several accidents and told investigators he was fleeing zombies when he did it has pleaded guilty to several felonies.

Woman accused of using Bible as a weapon

The arrest report said Evelyn Mills Moore, 57, of Kings Mountain struck the other woman “numerous times about her body with a closed fist and striking her with a Bible about her left arm,” the Gaston Gazette reported Tuesday.
The alleged victim was left with bruises and abrasions to her head, face and arms after the Saturday incident, police said.

One thing your daughter doesn’t need you to say

Here’s what I came up with: She isn’t supposed to be an example. Her friends don’t need an example, they need a friend. A real one. An honest one. A touchable one. They need a friend who doesn’t think she’s better than everyone, but one who knows she isn’t. They need a friend who knows she needs Jesus.

Worth Fighting For: Key Lessons in Reviving a Small Church in Decline

There are several commonalities among small churches in decline, and I will offer some biblical principles that I believe, with God’s power, can turn a dying church around. I will add that, just like a dying marriage, a dying church is worth fighting for. Isn’t this what Paul did with the church at Corinth? Church “divorce” should not even be on our radar. The church is the bride of Christ, and she belongs to Him, each and every member. We have no business hijacking her, abusing her, or dividing her up into pieces.

The Legacy of Keith Green: A Conversation with Matt Papa

It was never the songs that made Keith’s songs so great. It was that he lived his songs. Keith was just as passionate behind the dinner table as he was behind the piano. He lived by faith – a wild journey of choosing to follow God and trust Him completely.

Tragic Worship

Christian worship should immerse people in the reality of the tragedy of the human fall and of all subsequent human life. It should provide us with a language that allows us to praise the God of resurrection while lamenting the suffering and agony that is our lot in a world alienated from its creator, and it should thereby sharpen our longing for the only answer to the one great challenge we must all face sooner or later. Only those who accept that they are going to die can begin to look with any hope to the resurrection.

3 Lessons From Being Dangerous

Cleve wanted to publish a book in three and a half weeks.
It was all I could do not to laugh at him.
But I dutifully shared the idea with our board members at the Center for Church Communication and got the green light. Cleve, Chuck and myself got to work.
Yesterday we released the book. It took only three weeks. Twenty days.

Kermit Gosnell’s America — What His Trial Really Reveals

What the pro-abortion movement fears most is that Americans will pause to consider what this trial really means. It means that Dr. Gosnell would not be on trial for murder if he had killed those three babies while inside their mother’s body. His murder convictions have everything to do with the fact that the abortions were “botched” and the babies were accidentally born alive. Had the abortions been “successful” — even up to the last hours of pregnancy — Dr. Gosnell might have been charged with performing a late-term abortion, but not of murder.

North Miami mayoral candidate says she was endorsed by Jesus

Anna Pierre, who previously said she was a victim of Vodou sorcery, posted the message in a campaign-style flier featured on her Facebook page.
Reached on Monday, Pierre said Jesus came to her in a dream.
“I had a revelation when I was going to give up on this race. I had a dream. I know what I saw,” she said. “A figure I can’t explain told me, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am your friend. I am walking with you side by side. You are not alone.’ I felt it was from heaven. It was an endorsement by Jesus.”

Broomstick-flying witches to be brought down in Swaziland

“A witch on a broomstick should not fly above the [150-metre] limit,” Civil Aviation Authority marketing and corporate affairs director Sabelo Dlamini told the newspaper.
No penalties exist for witches flying below 150 metres.
The report said it was hard to say how serious he was, but witchcraft isn’t a joking matter in Swaziland, where the people believe in it.
The statute also forbids toy helicopters and children’s kites from ascending too high into the country’s airspace.