It’s with a heavy heart that I announce this Sunday will be the last service for missioDei. Just shutting down the website now almost made me tear up, and convos w/folks have made me somewhat more heavier this week. There were some tears at the past few services and folks have been sad but supportive. I’m making the rounds now to make sure those committed few will continue to grow and get plugged in somewhere. What really bites is knowing that some great people invested deeply in us and if you know me you know that one of the things I hate the most is disappointing people. I wish I coulda done y’all proud but things just didn’t go our way. So here I am eulogizing the past 2 years with missio: Read more…
This holiday season there’s been a lot of buzz about nothing.
Specifically, buying nothing. Can’t help but wonder if somewhere subconciously it’s easier for us to advocate this concept now that the economy is stalling and we’re celebrating buy nothing day everyday anyway, but that’s a question I have for u economics types. Isn’t a “buy nothing” day a bad thing for the economy? Or is a buy nothing day exactly what we need since it was the over-consumerism that got us into trouble in the first place?
I was listening to some radio preacher here in VA and thinking “preaching is so different out here compared to the west coast”. It was refreshing, until I realized it was John MacArthur. Isn’t he from LA?
At any rate, whenever I return to the Big Apple I see the pointed differences between East and West sides. A decade has changed me. People dress differently, even to church, think differently, work differently (you can’t get by on a single-income in metro NY). Music tastes are different. I won’t go into the nuances but one of the things I’ve noticed is even the theology – it would seem people on the east coast are more grounded, erudite, and historically educated on things theological, whether Arminian or Reformed, but especially the latter. Any West coasters beg to differ?
Back in NY for a few weeks.
Been feeling the nostalgia of the day I left home back in 2000. The above song was all I listened to at the time. Looking back, leaving was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Like I related in sermon last Sunday, when faith came back to me after the confusing years, it came in force attached w/ an “irrational pull westward”. I looked as far as China, ended up landing in Seattle. And then Bellingham. But back home in NY reminds me of the things that I miss most as well as the reasons why I left in the first place. To this day it remains in the top 2 or 3 hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. How about you? Have you “left” home? How difficult was it? Were you the prodigal, or the sojourner, or the exile?
1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. – Romans 13:1
I nary hear a Democrat cite this verse. It was always a Republican voice calling for support of a Republican president / platform. The question is, now that the tables are turned, will u still give a Democratic president your support? At any rate, it’s bad Biblical interpretation / exegesis.
Got a lot of flack about a recent twitter: ” A pastor in jeans is kinda immature” so I’m gonna do the smart thing and open up the convo some more.
Before I offend an entire legion of jeans-clad ministerium, I was raised in a culture which wore your Sunday best to church. For the last decade I’ve lived in a culture where jeans were almost a uniform. Let me just say it was liberating. But there was something about the suit and tie affair; not so much dignity, but it conveyed the passage from childhood to adulthood. So I guess that’s my question – and certainly not coming from a legalistic stiff – anyone who knows me knows that I don’t give a shit about “dignity” – but is there a way to be a pastor and convey edginess and verve without wearing an ugly pair of tattered jeans? Unless of course that is the dress code. Here is an inconsequential post about something inconsequential. Maybe what we really need is: Queer Eye for the Pastor-Guy. Now there’s a twitter to get everyone all riled up about.
Who suffers more: the entrepreneur or the spouse (in this case, wife) of the entrepreneur?
Great great article from a wife’s perspective of a guy who ran a business into the ground, revived it, suffered, and finally made it big after a decade. And she was nucking futs enough to stay with the dude. As a chronic addict of the future possibilities, it was a great read to see what goes on in the mind of a wife of said chronic. She likens it to being a passenger in a truck on a windy road. It’s rare the driver gets sick, but the passenger who feels nausea most acutely. So I’m recommending this article to anyone who rides shotgun with a crazy person who constantly has their head in the future, risks everything on faith, and has to always do things “outside the box”.
Inc magazine: Hitched To Someone Else’s Dream
Snagged the nifty title of this post from here. Anyways, as we look forward to another opening week next Monday, meditate on this, courtesy Banksy, and pray for Monday morning.
Well I’ve up and done it this time.
I took it upon myself to rehost, redesign, restructure our church website and I am quite pleased with the results if I shant say so myself, so go check it out here: www.nwmissio.org. It may look the same but underneath the hood it’s ten times better. And the website is just the “surface change”… deeper changes are rumbling underneath the surface with the mission and outworkings of the church… Read more…
Let’s take a break from politics and talk about health.
In particular, emotional and spiritual health. DJ as usual brings up a good topic about the connection between emotional maturity and spiritual maturity. This hits close to home for me as a recovering depression(ist) with a melancholic disposition. I’ve been known to have several “down” episodes in my life – and I’ve hated those periods. It was the worst feeling in the world, to be depressed, even more worse than nausea or being sick. I never treated these episodes with pharmaceuticals or anti-depressants and have always felt I was better off w/o. But while dark, oh the lessons I learned in these places… and one of which Read more…
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