12 Witnesses

Check out Joe Kennedy’s blog for the list of those blogging the Spiritual Disciplines.

Prayer is communication with God, and as such is a two way street. It is as much about listening as it is about speaking. In order to listen, you have to first have the Holy Spirit (Romans 8 ) and then you have to intentionally listen to the Holy Spirit.

Listening is hard because we are such tactile folks. If we can’t see, touch, smell, taste or physically hear something, it is hard to learn how to listen to it. We don’t see ourselves as spiritual beings or dealing with spiritual entities, and because we don’t see it, we rarely do it and because we rarely do it, we aren’t very good at it.

Frankly, it takes practice to be a listener to the Holy Spirit.

Practically, though, it takes a place where distraction is minimal. People are built differently, so that place is different for everyone. Some people find the outdoors inspirational while others are distracted by discomfort and, well, animals, people and whatever else is moving around.

For me, I enjoy a secluded and moderately air conditioned environment. Not too hot, nor too cold. The environment is an easy distraction for me and I like to eliminate it. Also, I am easily distracted by virtually anything that is not present that is intended to point me toward God. If a computer is in the room, I will habitually turn towards it and check for email, etc. This is why I don’t attempt to spend my designated prayer time with anything other than an empty room with my ipod playing some worship stuff, or just my journal.

Speaking of my journal, I know that journaling is coming up next week, but my journal is a big part of my prayer time. I write out my prayers. Not the whole thing, word for word, but general ideas that I speak from. By writing out my prayers I am doing two things.

First, I am listening. Yeah, back to that. I listen to the Holy Spirit lead me through the subjects of my prayers and I write down what I sense He says to me, section by section (more on the sections in a minute). Then I pray them through pretty diligently because I am focused.

That’s the second thing I am doing by writing - staying on task. Maybe I am a product of my generation or maybe something is wrong with me, but if I don’t have my prayers written out, then I tend to wander in my mind. The next thing I know, I am thinking about who knows what and my “effectual and fervent prayer” is somewhere else. I know that God doesn’t do this, but I can just picture Him waving to me: Aaarrrrt (in a sing song voice), I’m over heeeerrrree.

Also, the routine of regularly praying helps me focus my mind. It is apparent to most that regularly praying washes the mind in the presence of God and when combined with Bible Study, which I think it should be and is with me, I am washed in the Word. Made sensitive to the Spirit through Prayer, the Word instructs me and shapes me. They all go together, these disciplines.

The sections. Many of you will have heard this before, so I won’t break it down like it is new, but I follow the Isaiah 6 model of back and forth: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication and then Intercession. I break supplication into two parts: supplication and intercession. The first about me - my character and it being conformed to the image of Christ, and the second about the stuff that I and others need from God.

Obviously, the last part is the only part most of us do. I still do it sometimes. It’s like taking a grocery list to the grocer, leaving it for him to fill and then coming back to pick it up later. We put God in the position of our servant which is diabolical, since it is He who is the Master and we who are the servants.

What do you do? What makes your prayer time really work? Can you pray outside? Do you have a place where you always go to pray?

Let’s just get one more thing straight about my blogging, shall we?

I am not quitting, nor am I slowing down. I am shrugging off the political weight that I have carried and the public demands that such carries with it.

I actually am looking forward to blogging more in the near future. I am, however, going to be changing my subject matter. As you will note from my last post, I am going to start highlighting stories that I find in the news and commenting on them. Previously, the stories were all about the SBC and our current situation. Now they will be about many other things, with the SBC in an appropriate balance as well.

In order to do that, I set up my bloglines (feed reader) to grab certain headlines that may be of interest to me as the subject of future blogs. You can do that doing a news.google.com search or a blog.google.com search and then subscribe to the feed for your search criteria that appears on the page with the results. This will feed new news stories or blog entries, respectively, into your feed reader.

If you don’t have a feed reader yet, it is way past time to get one and learn to work it, don’t ya think?

Well, sit back and enjoy the ride. Look forward to seeing you soon.

I’m not moving back into the SBC politics, thing, but this story transected my feed reader (I’ll explain in a new post later about the new things I’ve done with my feed reader, bloglines) and I just thought it was an interesting parallel. Obviously, this is a church organization that is organized with a hierarchical system, unlike the SBC. Still, I thought it interesting for you SBCers out there.

Zimbabwe: Church Excommunicates 15 Executive Members

This story is about a Catholic Monsignor in Australia who was taunted badly by some teen aged skaters and subsequently lost his cool. After 19 years in Youth Ministry, I can say I have lost my cool more times than I can remember. I never have lost it bad enough to curse at kids. Warning: If you follow the link in the story to the video on You Tube, you will be subject to some opulent profanity.

Red faced church sorry for blue dean

Amnesty International and the RCC are parting ways over the issue of abortion as a result of rape, which is being used as a tool of intimidation in wartime. Full story:

Amnesty, Catholic Church go to war over abortion

Here is a sobering story. Pornography is making its way into lives of women. It used to be that porn was targeted at men and even teenaged boys, but now, women are falling prey to the chains of this sin. xxxchurch.com is cited in the story. I admit readily to you that I have the accountability software produced by xxxchurch installed on the laptop at home and my church laptop. I have helped several others install it on their computer. Porn is insidious and addictive. I think the church needs to address porn in a real and open way. Right now, we avoid the subject because some people in the church think that the topic of sex or anything related to it should be avoided at church. When we do that, we surrender our congregations to the influence of the world who talks about sex from a twisted and worldly perspective. Moreover, we allow the world to caricature the church’s position into a ridiculous one: that God hates sex and that you should feel guilty about it even when you are married. We have to be honest with our people about sex and quit pretending that it is something that we should feel guilty about, because when it is according to the plan of God - you shouldn’t. Anyway, here is the full story:

Revelation: Women joining men in porn-addiction ranks, Christian groups say

I am cleaning out my feed reader. After a while, you just have to start pulling some of the things you don’t read all the time. Honestly, I track those blogs I really like in a folder of “live bookmarks” on the bookmark toolbar in Firefox. There are five there and I check them a couple of times a day.

If you don’t know what a live bookmark is, your browser has an option when you click the rss feed chicklet:

(umm… if you don’t know what an rss feed is, you should probably read my previous posts on this subject, but I’ll give you a reprieve and offer this cool link: video - rss explained in plain english [ht: Desiring God Blog]

Most of the time, I use bloglines, but for those select few blogs, I opt for a live bookmark which is a drop down menu that shows the latest posts. It updates mui pronto and I don’t have to log into bloglines and sort through all of the other feeds that I don’t want to read at the moment.

Which brings me back to my original purpose. Sometimes you have to weed out feeds you aren’t reading. A lot of times, when you decide to subscribe to a feed, you feel sort of obligated to hang in there. Listen, there are plenty of times I have read an incredibly thoughtful post from someone and thought, “Hey, there’s gonna be more of this good stuff.” Generally there is, but too often, it is a long time coming. Sorting through their other posts waiting for the really good stuff is why I got a feed reader, so I could skim.

When I got back from camp, though, and found 300+ feeds waiting on me, I had had enough. I spent a couple of hours on my couch just sifting. By the time I finished, it was midnight and I was supremely irritated from the process. I’m glad everyone was asleep, or I would have been likely to have snapped at my family just for being alive at the moment. When something puts you in that frame of mind, it is time for a change.

Also, I am dumping almost all of my SBC politics feeds. I used to keep track of what everyone was saying because I had to be current. Truth be known, I had pretty much quit reading most of them months ago unless someone linked to them. I was skimming, but my heart has been out of it for a while.

At this point, I have a hard time keeping up with just the stuff coming from SBC Outpost, and I’m a contributor.

There have been a few, more thoughtful blogs, to which I am subscribing, and I thought you might like to know who they are.

Tops of my new interest is Emily Hunter McGowin. That girl knows her stuff and is deep like big water.

Lu has caught my interest and secured a feed in bloglines. She is a former missionary and current Nashvillian. She likes her blogging so much, she is willing to pay to do it (she uses typepad). Who am I to talk? I own my own domain.

Joe Ball is the Student Ministry guy for the Kentucky Baptist Convention and a long time friend. He keeps me hooked up with thoughts on Youth Ministry at Despising None Blog and Podcast.

Finally, I recommend to you an old blogging ally and someone who has made a huge leap from SBC politics to serious cultural engagement and thoughtful cultural commentary/conversation, Kevin Bussey.

Along with these changes, and more, expect my blogroll to change. Almost every SBC politics is going to come off of it. Please don’t get your feelings hurt you are there and get dropped. All things must grow and change and 12 Witnesses is doing that, as well.

[edit]

What the heck!!! I forgot to commend to you the fine blog of Timmy Brister, Provocations and Pantings. Timmy rocks with some massive depth, but also will give you phenominal knowledge on photography, family and life. I guess I forgot him because I have been reading him for a while, but in editing my blogroll, I realized I had never added him. My bad, TB.

I came home from camp and found over 300 posts waiting to be read skimmed in my feed reader, bloglines. In them I found many things striking and many things skipable. Good to know that Molly McCoy is doing well. Also, I was blown away by some of the Phriday fotos posted in various places: Timmy Brister - and again, Steve McCoy, Joe Thorn (although this appears to have been posted on a Thursday…), Joe Kennedy who has tons more from his trip around N. America recently- search his site and some of the best from John Stickley.

Meanwhile, I was astounded by some of the most profound posts and pictures by Rick Thompson. Rick has posted some of the more reasonable and profound posts on the internet. I don’t know how well read he is, but he ought to be read more, so I am going to do my part. You need to read his series of posts on his recent mission trip and in particular, the parts about the Bedouin people - one of the least evangelized people on the planet.

1. pray for the bedouin
   
2. buildings not made with human hands
3. the invisible women

Pick up your copy today.

Along with participating in the Spiritual Disciplines blogging series, I have been considering for some time blogging a personal series on powerful preaching.

Having ministered to teenagers for 19 years before serving this last year as a Lead Pastor, my opportunities to preach on a regular basis have been slim. Of course, my Bible Studies have always been more sermonesque than the vignettes that most Youth Ministers offer. I have noticed a trend that this style of speaking to youth is growing. I think that is good, to some degree. However, that is not the discussion I would like to have.

Rather, I have spent a year coming up with three sermons a week and have begun to compare my previous experiences with new ones. Also, I realize the dangers of self reliance.

I have been the subject of many a poor sermon. Knowing the preacher as I did, and the congregation as I did, I can safely say that it wasn’t just me not connecting to the kerygma - the preached gospel.

That is not to say that the Truth was not being proclaimed. OK so sometimes we only got psycho-babble with a poorly related verse of Scripture read at the beginning, but for the most part, truth played a part in some point of the sermon.

What makes the difference? I have several ideas I would like to explore. In the meantime, you tell me. What makes a powerful preaching? What separates that which is mundane from that which transforms? Why do we have so much mediocrity in the pulpit?

This is a statue of St. Francis of Assisi by a hospital named after him in Tulsa.

This is Richard Harrison, a church member and neighbor, taking a break from mowing his lawn to talk to the preacher. He also is one of the faithful who mows the church lawn, and that’s no small task. We have acres of greenspace.

Joe Kennedy sent me an invitation to join a group of bloggers that were going to be blogging the spiritual disciplines on Tuesdays starting today with introductions.

First, I won’t be blogging all of the disciplines, but Joe will be posting a weekly rundown on those who are posting every Tuesday for a few months.

Here’s the list:

Introduction
Meditation
Prayer
Fasting
Study
Journaling
Simplicity
Silence
Solitude
Submission
Service
Confession
Worship
Guidance
Celebration
Conclusion

Pretty long, huh? 16 weeks of hardcore spiritual challenges.

Truth is, I may need this more for myself than anyone that benefits from what I write. I used to be very disciplined, spiritually. I carved out time for God every day, no matter what, but that was the beginning. It got much deeper than that for me.

As time passed, my life started catching up with me. I got married, had kids, started full time staff ministry instead of the flexible stuff I had done for a while, like Youth Evangelism. Now I’m a pastor with a special prayer study built in my church’s facility - albeit without reasonable air conditioning - and I am so busy I can’t get in there.

It is past time for me to start saying “no” to some things and start saying “yes” to my growth in God.

There was a time when a man told me something that shaped me spiritually. Although I have not lived up to this as well as I could lately, it is still my heart’s desire and the mental picture of myself when I am spiritually healthy. He told me that if I would take care of the depth of my life, God would take care of the breadth of my life. That is to say, focus on growing in God, and God will handle all of the things that clamor for your attention, but that you can’t possibly cover in total.

I spend all my time trying to keep up with things I can’t possibly catch and time to grow spiritually slips away.

Well, back to it, then.

Let me say one profound thing, before taking off for Youth Camp on Monday. (I am writing this on Friday night and setting it to drop on Tuesday morning.)

The disciplines are about true rest. If you are truly participating in the disciplines listed above, you will find yourself rested in ways that you would never have guessed.

When we say we want to rest, what we really do is substitute things that do not refresh for what truly refreshes. Now, I know I am about to start sounding like John Piper here, so don’t think I am plagiarizing. I give him credit for shaping me through “Desiring God.”

The reward of finding God that comes from the pursuit of God is that which truly satisfies. The poor substitutes are the obvious: tv, xbox, surfing the blogs, golf, guitar, photography or whatever happens to be your hobby of the moment. Whatever burns your time with “no real demands on you.” Boy, is that a foolish standard. You seek rest in something that promises not to tax you further. The tragedy is that it so often does.

The next group is slightly more stealthy: vacations, weekends, fellowships at church, supper with friends. These things actually tend to offer something restorative, but when you are done, aren’t you always more tired than when you started?

The final group is the ultimate deception: Quiet Times, Worship services, Sunday School, Bible Studies, Devotional Books, Theological Books, Books and more Books - or audio/video sermons by preachers of whom you think highly. These actually rob you when you 1) approach them legalistically or 2) view them as an ends in themselves instead of means to an end. In other words, their potential benefit is short-circuited.

Obviously, legalism is something that hollows you out, spiritually. Scripture is replete with its exposure as a robber of goodness. In itself, it views the disciplines as means to an end - that end being worldly prominence among spiritual people. Wrong end.

The end in itself view fails to see a personal interaction with God as the ultimate end. How is this not legalism? It is mere shortsightedness.

When I was a young man, I loved God with everything I had. I just didn’t have much and wasn’t getting much. Nevertheless, I did spend time with Him, but because I was supposed to, not because I loved being with God and He restored my soul in that time. It was time with God, but it was out of a sense of “rightness.” I didn’t think I “had” to do it. I didn’t think I would impress God and didn’t really know enough to realize that I might try to impress others with a false depth. Rather, I read the Word and thought about God and then moved on.

This is where the 5 minute “Quiet Times” come in. You can have a QT for 5 mins if you aren’t pursuing God, but are “simply” doing what you should.

Think I’m splitting hairs?

Maybe I am, but I see a difference in the motivation and expectation of the one over the other.

Obviously, spiritual growth, or depth, is refreshing on levels that can’t be measured in any other qualitative way than for the child of God to know peace. Peace that passes understanding. Peace that comes from a sense of His presence.

Real peace. Real renewal. Real rest. Real discipline.

After 19 years in various positions of Youth Ministry, I am the Lead Pastor at my new church of now one year. There are a lot of things about Youth Ministry that I really miss. I miss hanging out with teenagers. Honestly, they are fun and funny. Generally. One of the things I don’t mis is the drama. Every Youth Group has its drama queen, and yes, typically it is a girl. That’s probably a good thing, as a male drama queen is an entirely different problem.

I always said that camp was my favorite thing to do in Youth Ministry. It’s usually a week of great worship, combined with teenagers making decisions for the Lord. I was always challenged, too.

This week, marking exactly one year with my new church, Skelly Drive Baptist Church in Tulsa, I am going to camp.

You see, our church goes to the legendary Falls Creek near Davis, Oklahoma. Falls Creek has a storied past of which I have heard for years, but had never seen for myself. I heard it said one time that during a point several decades ago, half of the “Foreign Missionaries” on the field had made their commitment to serve as missionaries at Falls Creek. I am sure it was not quite that high, but it is sure that many had made their commitment there. Dedication to service has been a hallmark of this camp for years. The above linked website quotes, “More missionaries have experienced their call to a lifetime of service at Falls Creek than at any other place on the face of the earth.”

On top of that, Falls Creek is the largest Youth Camp in the world. There will be about 6,000 campers there every week through the summer. The BGCO has just finished the indoor Tabernacle that has been in the works for the better part of a decade. This is its first summer of use. Prior to this, 6,000 kids had to meet in the outdoor tabernacle, which was a roof and one back wall and it was hot, to say the least. At least they got a/c before I got there.

And, yes, this is an enormous chapel that will actually be used to capacity on a regular basis, just for all those who were thinking it and wondering whether or not I would say it. Just for kicks, see if this looks familiar.

Anyway, I’m off to camp. I’ll let you know if it was everything its supporters claim it to be.

I have several things written and set to drop throughout the week. Tomorrow is a post I especially hope you read.

I hear that there is some Internet connectivity at Falls Creek, so I am not out of the discussion, but limited. I hope we all have a great week.

Ok, so Tulsa has this thing with penguin statues all over the city. They are each decorated differently and are sporadically placed all over town. This one is near downtown between two of our hospitals that I was visiting.