Interesting what this evangelical pastor has to say about the church’s involvement in the political process.  All three videos = just over 20 mins…

You know that I think we need to transition American church culture into a something far more effective in engaging the world around us.

The problem most often faced in the attempt to accomplish this goal is an adherence to individual preferences by those not wishing to change.

The attitude of those desiring to be agents of change, when confronted with this obstacle, is that of disdain, convinced of our own accuracy.

It is common among those pursuing change to decry the attachments to these biases as selfish and sinful when they stand in the way of our goals.

The hypocrisy of it is that many times we are pursuing our own preferences rather than that which will be best received by those to whom we are sent; for whom we claim to lobby.

When moving a church, we need to be honest about our own preferences and be as willing to lay them aside as we expect others to be when it comes to their comforts.

What matters is what communicates.  We can’t use one mindset’s failure to communicate as leverage to replace it with another mindset that is equally unable.

It is disingenuous.  The result will be a spiralling loss of relevance that makes our current failures look tame in comparison.

This is the overview of my daily ride.

Click on the picture to go to the interactive map at LiveStrong.com.

My best time was 53:30 until I started knocking it down this week.  I took two minutes off of that on Monday morning to lower it to 51:30 and then another 15 seconds Tuesday afternoon to lower it to 51:15.

I really think I could have even done a lot better, too, but there was so much congestion on the trail in the afternoon that I was slowed several times.  I also look forward to riding this with a real road bike.  Right now I am riding the low end hybrid from Trek – the 7000 – which is a good and affordable bike, but it is basically a mountain bike with road wheels and a little better gear set.

Still, I love it and I’m grateful for it.  I will train on it until I can make the move to something better and then I will probably use it to commute to work.

In the meantime, I’ve lost about 50 lbs. and a lot of that is due to the exercise I’m getting on the bike.  It’s no impact cardio – until you wreck and then it’s high impact.  I wrecked in the spring and was out for about 4 mos. recovering and gaining back about 10 lbs.  I was able to shed that in the two weeks back on the bike.  It’s that dramatic a difference.

Oh, by the way…  I came up on this guy the other day:

As Jason Kearney is fond of saying, “You’re excuse for not riding a bike is now officially lame.”

Let me just add that this guy was moving. I can not even imagine what he would have been capable of with two human legs.

There are three neighborhoods that I believe are the responsibility of every believer:  The one in which you live, the one in which you work (wherever you do what you do, be that a spread out “neighborhood” like clients of a landscaper or salesperson, or a close “neighborhood” like a cubical based office design, or anything in between) and the one in which you worship.

In The Connecting Church, Randy Frazee gives a list of “Rules to Being a Good Neighbor” that might allow us to build relationships in a way in order to make a difference.  I found them to be fairly significant and I’d like to synopsize them for you here.  Obviously this was written for the neighborhood in which you live, but it seems easy enough to adapt the majority of the list to the other two as well.  You can find the full list on pages 146 & 147.

• Take care of your property.
• Visit your neighbors spontaneously. If they are working on something, pitch in and help.
• If your dog barking is an annoyance, solve it. (Or for the office, if you listen to music in your cubical, get earbuds and wear one in and one out so you can hear your music and the office chatter, for example)
• Borrow stuff from your neighbors, giving you common grounds for a conversation. Return what you borrowed promptly and in better condition.  If it breaks replace it quickly. It would also seem to me that you should be a generous lender as a part of this principle.
• Use common sense.
• “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”

Any others you might add?

While preaching last Sunday I found myself in a moment of exuberance and great love for my church. Arriving at the moment with great passion, I spouted out the statement, “The Lord willing, I intend to pastor here until I die.”

I was intending to show my affection and commitment to Skelly Drive.

Later that day a church member told me I shouldn’t say that anymore because it wasn’t safe.

“Not safe?” I inquired.

Turns out she was afraid the statement might motivate someone to hire a hit man. ;)

The chair of our Missions Team sent me an email last night asking what we would have to do to get the individuals of our church starting their own engagement opportunities rather than the team creating centralized opportunities that most will not engage.

This was my answer:

The missional mindset within the individual will never come from an institution. It is caught like a virus from close contact with one who already has the “disease.” This is the biggest point of small groups.

Missional interaction as a small group and the group holding the individuals accountable to be missional is the key to allowing the Missional mindset to make its way down to the smallest level – the individual.

The great problem we have is the baggage we all bring by way of expectations of what the church is and how it should work.

We are so used to the centralized institution doing everything, organizing everything and allowing the few to do the work of the whole, that even good Godly men and women with a heart for service think that changing the church is “wrong” because it is not what they always have known.

What we have to understand in this process is that the only reason for the change is that it is more effective at getting individuals to grow as disciples and engage the world with the message.

Got a few questions recently about why I haven’t posted much.  Couple of reasons…

I went on vacation.  I came back from vacation tired (it was one of those where you come back less rested but also less stressed) to a pile of work, a three day plumbing project and the accusation from the youth group that my new full beard makes me look like Billy Mays.

It’s almost enough to make me shave, but Bonnie says, “It’s sexy,” and after 16 years of marriage, I take seriously anything that elicits such a response.

Anyway, I’ll have to give you the story on my toilet sometime, but I just don’t have the time to do that today.  It’s a long day with much to do.

See you soon.