Here are some ideas I’ve had over the last few weeks.  Feel free to use any of them you wish:

Online service only
We are going to do this for Good Friday at Fellowship on April 10th, 2009.  This will be a part of a 5 week series we’ll be doing, but will not be on a Sunday, only online at this site.  I’m looking forward to joining our church family in one of two services on Good Friday at noon or 5:00 pm.

What I’ve done
This Linkin Park tune was a killer a few weeks ago to close up a service where we focused on the story of sin.

Picture video of my life
Ever since I was introduced to Animoto on Brad Ruggles blog, I’ve ideated about making a music video of my life from birth through the multi generations I’ve lived until now.  The only decision I would have to make with the aforementioned site would be the theme song for my life soundtrack.  Ideas?

Work on a project with Clay
As one of my closest friends since junior high, I feel very strongly that this founder of conservatismlives.com is a genius.  But I have yet to work with him on some project since we have both blossomed into adulthood.    But one day…

One Prayer pastor/band switcharoo
Last year our church participated in One Prayer, a movement of churches who came together to show the unity we have in Christ.  For 4 weeks we were treated to the wonderful video teaching of some of the best preachers in the country.  So I had this idea to take it to another level.  Would another pastor and church be open to trading places with the pastor of this church (that’s me) and  the bands would trade places too?  Just an idea.

A Marty Party
I would love to have all my closest friends from the entirety of my life and from the many places I’ve lived to come to a party where I can connect them all and convey how much I appreciate them, and I would love this party to take place well before I’m 80 and not to coincide with my funeral.

Surprise Lunch
Using the wonderful technology of Facebook, I would like to announce to all my friends an inpromptu lunch at a specific place in the area I live.  It might be interesting to see who would show up.  Could I end up having lunch with 5 people I haven’t seen in a few years?

Heck No!  We won’t go!
A bit of reverse psychology – I think I’d like to form a picket line around a non profit organization that is doing amazing things here in my area.  Then I’d write negative sarcastic jokes down on my posters about that 501c3 organization, and act like I’m really angry that they exist, then I’ll watch as they gain more support after I picket them than they have had for the last 5 years.

I Scream Sunday!
There’s really no interesting idea here, but thank you to One Bad Pig, the 80’s Christian metal band from Austin, TX for singing these words with all the heart they could muster.

Don’t go postal on me
I think it would be neat to prepare a box lunch of some sort for my postal carrier sometime, especially since she’s pretty ticked off that our box door always sticks.

No email or social networking day
No doubt you’ve received the “please fast from your computer” pleas from friends and family alike, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m thinking that with all the emails I send out and internet communication I do, it might be nice to take any general day and say “Today I’m not going to communicate at all via the internet, but if I need to communicate with someone I would have emailed, I will push myself to make a phone call or go visit that person.”

So that’s the rough draft of my recent idea list.  the next step is…

Communication breakdown!

With the outbreak of technology we’ve had in the last 10-15 years or so, communication has never been so easy, and so confusing, as it is right now.  I remember watching my dad minister in the 80’s and early 90’s in Ohio, and he had two options:  meet with the person or make or receive a landline call.  This was probably a lot better for focus unless he was at home and his children were busy running around the house yelling at one another.  Now we have a landline phone (anybody know what this is?), a cell phone, Instant messaging, texting, Facebook wall, Facebook  messages, Facebook chat (and Facebook pirate or vampire invitation), Skype, and video messaging coming at us very fast.

So here are some questions that have been stirring in my head.  I’ve answered them myself, and feel free to share your answers with me as well:

*When it comes to your close friends, how much (and how) do you communicate with them?

I have a whole pile of close friends, both here and away, and my answer looks like this.  My friends here I talk to on the phone about once a week, and my friends abroad I talk to about once a month.  I also tend to text a good bit to friends both here and away.  I don’t use email a lot (since the development of Facebook) because if I’m going to go into detail, I’d rather do it by voice either by phone or in person.

*As far as emailing invitations to events, how much is too much?

I wish I knew the answer to this.  Any help here?

*How much do you enjoy communicating live with people vs. communicating electronically?

Personally I love technology, but I love to hang with people more.  Playing games, shooting the breeze, talking life, love, and other mysteries is where I’m at, though I certainly understand why a lot of people enjoy communicating electronically.  It’s a lot easier to be authentic, and you can shut it down when you want it to stop.
This post might help you think about where you’re at communication-wise.

*Has the onslaught of technology helped our communication to become more authentic?

Yes.

*Has the onslaught of technology helped our communication build more community?

No.  It’s helped spark some community, but I wouldn’t say more community.

*If you could have one tool of communication, and only one, which one would it be?

Definitely a cell phone for me.  I think a laptop would be too easy to hide behind.  Plus people would find out that I’m not the All-state QB I said I was from my online persona.  Though sometimes I do like the idea of church online.

*As far as communication, what do you have to practice more of in your life?

Definitely I’d like to have more community between Carie, myself, and other friends in regular intervals throughout the week.  I don’t just want to sit back in the evenings anymore and feel bad for myself because I live in a cold tundra.

Your turn.  How do you communicate?

There are a lot of good reasons why we don’t like to focus, and why we think doing one thing amazing will limit our choices and keep us from utilizing the talents God gives us.

For instance, we believe that if we focus on that thing we’re the best at, we’ll miss out on opportunities to do other fun things.

Or we think we’re the best at more than one thing.

But we probably could be way more effective if we just learned to focus on and give ourselves to that thing.

Not only would we vastly improve our excellence if we worked on that one thing, but also we would learn to master that which we are attempting to focus.

Neither adding too much to our plates or doing nothing will bring us closer to accomplishing that which we desire to accomplish.

Yet we typically take the easier roads of doing the aforementioned exercises, because it’s easier, at times more fun, and requires less stress than not having to master that which should be mastered.

So we go about our days, trying to be good at everything we get our hands on, while everything we really want slips away.

Until next time.

What do you think?  Should it he burn it?

But don’t tell my wife I shaved my head.

"Use my soap, and I'll throw you a Marty Party"

Donald Miller used to use this amazing illustration about the church feeding into darwinistic theology by teaching that “if you get right with Jesus, your life will then be better.”  He paralleled this by using dish soap advertisements.

Marketers would have us believe:  “If you buy our dish soap, everything will be great in your life.  You can have extremely clean hands.  The extremely gorgeous blonde on this commercial will want you, or you can look like her in her perfect suburban home.  Oh yeah, and by the way, your dishes will be really clean.”

This is what the church advertises when we say that if you meet Jesus, your life will be all good.

Then I think about my mom, who’s been in bed for the last 25+ years.  She certainly is not perfect, but everyday she prays for healing, and everyday she stays in bed, praying for everyone she knows, because her relationship with Jesus has never been better.

And I think about a friend of mine I met with recently who has gone through a whole life of mierda (I just cursed in spanish; Carie would be so proud).  He can’t even see God work anymore, but he’s served in church for years and has such a sacrificial giving heart.

It would be easy for me to get theological here and try to explain these things away by sharing all the sin in the lives of my mom and my friend  You know, sin reaps consequences and all that…but then again, I’ll leave that for the seminary boys club.  Then I think about Jesus, who was perfect in every way, yet he found himself hung on a tree, dying because of my sins – under a divine curse because of my broken communion with God.

So I guess this next Sunday morning when I preach about Jesus the week after I talked about sin, and two weeks after I talked about God, I can’t really say that “If you take Jesus, everything will be all great in your life.  You’ll be all free of sin, and someone that looks like me will want you, or you can look  and preach like me in my perfect little suburban church.  Oh yeah, and Jesus will make everything go right too.”  So what do I say?

I guess I will say that by accepting God’s precious gift of Christ, you are reconciled back to your creator because of the shed blood of Jesus.  And that’s a very ugly picture, in case you haven’t seen “The Passion of the Christ”.  And by being reconciled to Him, you’re able to work on making Him all you need.  Because before that whole first man and first woman eating the fruit thing…

That used to be good enough.

She would probably love Fellowship!

Nearly 4 years after the point where our church leadership decided that we would use Sunday mornings @ Fellowship as a catalyst to reach people who are far from God rather than cater to people who think they are close to Him, We are seeing the fruits.

When the church leadership decided at the same time that instead of pretending that knowledge was the most important thing in a church, we would begin communities of people that would be authentic, be transformed from the inside out, and reach outside of their comfort zones to people who need help, we are seeing the fruits.

I love that we let other churches play Christian ping pong in church attendance,and that we’ve committed to reaching out.  As I write this, the song “History Makers” plays on my itunes playlist.  Once again, I think of you.  It hasn’t been easy, but it’s all been worth it!

I love you people.

I wanted to knock out my friend with this box

Its no surprise to people that I like to win.  I enjoy it very much.

So last night I ran into a bit of a quandry as 4 other guys entered my house for an inpromtu game night.  We decided to play “Settlers of Catan”, a trading/build your own civilization type board game.  Usually this particular game is four players, but we happened to have the expansion pack, which allowed us to have 5-6 players.  We had 5.

So how much do I like to win?  This is a question I have asked myself alot in the last several years.  I certainly have toned down my competitive nature in the last few years, which has been good for events like board games and pick up basketball, though in life, it has tended to make me a bit complacent (But that’s for another post).

So as we started the game, two of my friends playing found themselves on the outside looking in, and it quickly became a three player game in practice.  So as the game progressed, the other two turned their attention away from winning to making sure I didn’t.

We finished the game, and I was pretty irritated.  One of my friends, (who’s probably reading this now, and who I will not name, nor do I want him to name himself) who was particularly helping the winning competitor, started calling me a “sore loser” for being irritated.  I don’t really think I was actually being a “sore loser”.  I was only irritated because it felt like if I’m going to invest time into a 3-hour game, I would prefer there not to be an asterisk by the winner’s name.

All that said, I had a great time last night with my friends, and I realize that nights like that are much more than who wins the game.  But I ask you now, because I value your opinion:

By being irritated, was I being a “sore loser”?

A long time ago I did something really stupid.  I made some decisions that affected a lot of people, hurt my reputation, and disappointed people who were close to me.  The last consequence I wrote was the one that really got to me.  I knew that I had hurt two people in my life that I really cared about, and I had disappointed each of them when I told them of my failure.

At the time, and even today, these two people had poured so much into my life and I really cared what they thought and how they felt about the way I was going about my life.  So when I told them what I had done, I totally regretted the decisions I had made to get myself into this particular predicament.

They both gave me sound advice and were very bold in the way I needed to treat the matter for the future, and they both reiterated their love for me.  But the damage was done, and my heart pounded like a sumo wrestler trying to outrun the bulls in Spain.

How much better of a friend and father is my Heavenly Father, who created me and cares for me every single day of my life?  How much more amazing is my God who loves me through every decision, good or bad, and walks me through things I could never journey through alone?

So what is my disappointment level when I let Him down?

Pauline was an amazing lady in our church who was very much a second mother to me.  She even stood in for my mother in Carie and I’s wedding to light the candles surrounding the unity candle because my mom couldn’t go up the stairs for health reasons.  Sadly, Pauline passed on to be with Jesus  in 2006.

Anyway, someone told me a story about her yesterday, and I had to tell you:

Pauline was driving one day with Patti, one of her closest friends.  They stopped and picked up a friend of her friend.  We’ll call him Dan.  Dan and Pauline and Patti were making conversation in the car as they drove, and Pauline noticed that Dan continuously said the words “Jesus Christ.”  So Pauline says:

“Dan, can you use the F word?”

“I’m sorry?”  Dan asked.  “What did you say?”

Pauline replied, “You keep saying the words ‘Jesus Christ’ with no purpose and as a cuss word, and I happen to have a personal relationship with Him, so it offends me a little.  So instead of saying that…

I’d like you to use the word F@#$%!”