12 Witnesses

Just one pic today - Mammoth, a natural geological feature in Northwest Yellowstone National Park. It’s near Ft. Yellowstone and the original entrance to the park commissioned by Teddy Roosevelt.

When is it alright or not alright to invite lost people to church?

When you shape a conversation toward God, what’s your lead line? Is it ever an invitation to church?

Do you aim for getting lost people in church? Why?

The follow up post on this will give my answers as well as some interesting statistics.

For now, let’s see if we can still generate a conversation over here…

Check out the full crew of Spiritual Disciplines bloggers at Joe Kennedy’s fraggelriffic blog, Word’s Are Not Enough: Live from New Orleans.

Every person is a leader. We all lead, but the question is always “Which way are you leading?”

Another pertinent question is “How are you leading?”

24When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. 25Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Matt. 20:24-28

The essence of our relationship to Christ is service. It is who He was and who He has specifically said that we should be.

The heart of service is that we would offer ourselves for the betterment of others, which is in opposition to the Gentiles in the above Scripture, who used those under them for their own benefit.

As a minister, it took me a long time to learn this lesson. I started out twenty years ago with the idea that I was in charge. Frankly, I held that idea through the next 14 years to varying degrees - which is why I think God never let me be a Lead Pastor until this last year. I only started learning this lesson 6 years ago.

The Pastor as authoritarian leadership model that has been so prevalent over the last generation has had a horrible impact, in my opinion, on the church. I have suffered under such leadership as a staff member, and that is one of the best reasons for me to attempt to avoid it at every turn.

As I started out with, however, service is a discipline for every Christian, as we are all leaders.

After 20 years in ministry, it comes as no surprise to me that every week produces its own stress. You may have a “light” week, but you are going to have to deal with something.

It does amaze me, from time to time, what the source of stress turns out to be. It is hardly predictable, and often times astounding. Sometimes it is friends, family or members of your church that you have come to trust.

Of course, this is not just true for church staff. Everyone deals with stress.

How do you deal with it? Does it work?

What surprises you?

What do you do that doesn’t work? (I eat - not good. Makes me feel worse and, of course, it’s not healthy.)

Is their something spiritual that you do to help? What?

Some things that some friends have told me that I need to do:

Take a vacation - I haven’t had one since I got here over a year ago.

Take a quarterly sabbatical - two days out of the office to pray, plan and decompress.

Confront those who stress me in an ungodly way - if someone is treating me poorly, don’t take it, but confront them in the process of Matt. 18.

Your turn…

Be sure and check out more pictures on my Photoblog.

This is a spacer to keep cars from going through the wall and out onto the street below in St. John’s Hospital’s Parking Garage.

Clock Tower across the street from the above mentioned parking garage.

The whole building. I like the architecture. Not exactly symmetrical, but lots of straight lines anyway.

Utica Square clock tower. Lots of patina and character on the clock.

Here are the standings so far.

Feel free to claim your team and talk your smack now.

The highlighted team, the Ramblin’ Wreckers, would be me. I would be 2-0, except Joe Ball in week 1 had Randy Moss go insane with like 183 yards of receiving and 80 some odd points. Grrr.

That’s why they play the games.

I’m gonna mount a comeback, though. 200+ points this last week. Yeah baby.

Joe Kennedy’s list of bloggers blogging the Spiritual Disciplines.

Submission.

Well, I don’t know anybody who is really good at this. We all have a bent toward our own selfish motives. It’s the sin in us that desires that we have what we want at the exclusion of what everyone else wants and even what God wants.

The role model for us in the is Christ, obviously. Phil. 2 tells us of all He gave away in order to do the will of the Father. Do remember that His life and sacrifice were acts of submission. It is poorly put to say that “Jesus died for us.”

Let me clarify that, so that you don’t freak out and miss the point. He loves us, His sacrifice was in order to accomplish the propitiation of sins, but His life, death and resurrection wasn’t done with us at the center of His mind and heart, but with the Father at the center. To do His will. To submit.

I know, that deserves some more unpacking, but let’s save that for another day, shall we? Suffice it today that we remember the Garden where Jesus asked that the cup of sacrifice pass from Him, if possible, nevertheless, not His will, but the Father’s be done.

Submission.

For us it must be first to the Father. Without submission to Him, submission to others is impossible.

I equate that to the writing of a blank check. Sign it and turn it over, saying, “Fill it in and cash it, Lord.” In other words, you commit before His asking, that whatever He asks, you will do. Your agreement to do what He asks is not dependent in any way on what He asks.

Being submitted to the Father gives us the humble heart we need to submit to others in leadership over us.

The flip side of this, as alluded to earlier, is rebellion. The prideful, self centered heart, that only sees things for how they will relate to self.

Have you ever known a person that never does anything wrong? They get fired from every job they have because the manager is an idiot and won’t listen. They struggle with friendships because their friends inevitably do something or need something that costs them, and that’s not why they are around, in their mind.

Ever know anyone like that?

Ever BEEN anyone like that?

I have.

Sometimes, I still am.

Just for my own amusement and my family’s ability to get to my pictures online (some are of my family), I have created a photoblog as a subdomain. If you would like to access my photoblog, you can do so here:

photoblog.twelvewitnesses.com

With the help (as always) of David Phillips, this blog is a direct connect to a flickr account set up for just this purpose. It siphons off the photos, sets and recent uploads, as well as any I mark as favorites, which I have not done. The home page is a full sized picture of whatever I uploaded last, which you can cycle through backward at full size. An easier way is to look at the sets of pictures, which will launch thumbnail pages. If you click on a thumbnail, a larger size will appear and you can scroll through the set, forward or backward, if you like.

I’ve enjoyed taking pictures since I was a kid. My Mom was a professional photographer, so I grew up around it.

I use a Canon Rebel xti DSLR to take the pictures and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to process the RAW data, which is the way I record the digital data.

Flickr now also receives photos through email. This will allow me to post pictures I take with my camera immediately to my photoblog, which I look forward to doing. Camera phones have revolutionized culture, it seems. If you have a flickr account, you have a secret email address that will receive your photos. Login to flickr and go to www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail/.

Wait, there’s more. The photoblog is photoblog software, but I might also like to upload pictures from my treo to this Wordpress powered blog - the main domain site - and post a short article to go with it. I can do that, too, though it is a different process. It also works with blogger, typepad, moveable type and other blogs styles.

If you would like to post to your blog from your phone, you have to first set up the interface with flickr and your blog. You can do that by going to www.flickr.com/blogs.gne and following the process there.

After you get that set up, then go to www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail/blog/ and get the add on to your secret email address that will receive your email picture, post it on your flickr site, and then send it all to your blog as well.

Should be fun for random “out and about” posts, but also could be interesting when live blogging a conference.

Enjoy.

[HT: Mark Ghosh]

Starbucks in KC

Originally uploaded by atr1300

Testing mobility blog posting.

(Or Phriday foto 09-17-07)

Marty Duren, high profile SBC personality and all around force of nature, has officially endorsed 12 Witnesses.

Seen here browsing 12 Witnesses on his brand new iPhone, Duren was highly complimentary.

“Art Rogers is clearly one of the brightest minds in the SBC, that live on his street in Tulsa,” said Duren. “His inability to evaluate Mac as superior to PC is clearly is gravest shortcoming, but he compensates well by championing that poor Treo of his.”

When asked about the recent endorsements and their reactions in relation to the blog he passed on to the management of others, SBC Outpost, Duren was resolute. “Clearly, the picture of me with 12 Witnesses on my iPhone is an endorsement, not only of every word ever written by Art Rogers, but every word and, indeed, every thought that shall cross his mind, past present and future.”

Asked if he were apt to vacillate on the endorsement, Duren quipped, “I don’t care which Seminary President calls me or which one called him. I’m staying with Art at least through lunchtime tomorrow.”