I’ll cut to the chase.  Sunday morning at Fellowship we’ll be hosting a great author, an author of a book one of my fave pastors, Andy Stanley says, “I Can’t put it down.”  His name is Jon Acuff, and he writes the popular blog “Stuff Christians Like”.  He’ll be speaking at our 10:30 am service, and frankly, I can’t wait!

Here’s one of my favorite posts from him about “Our prayer requests that aren’t big enough”:

“Uh oh,” my friend said the other night at the end of our men’s group, “I don’t think I should share my prayer request anymore.”

Why did he say this? Simple, he didn’t have a “big prayer request.”

After hearing everyone’s very serious, very heartfelt prayer requests, his suddenly felt small and insignificant. He didn’t want to say it out loud. He was struck with a bought of prayer envy or “prenvy.” And you hate to see that kind of thing strike a kid so young. It’s a shame, a dang shame.

So to help him, and others out there, I thought it would be a good idea to review some ways to prevent feeling like your prayer request isn’t “big enough.”… (read the rest and more here)

This Sunday.  10:30.  Fellowship Church.

Many know by now that Easter is another word for Ishtar, who was a self-proclaimed, real life Babylonian goddess, said to have been married to the biblical figure of Nimrod (Genesis 10:8-10) and long before it (meaning “Easter”) was celebrated by Christians around the world, it was celebrated by pagans worshiping this goddess who happened to specialize in fertility (I guess if you’re going to specialize in something…).  This celebration apparently drew world wide popularity because King Herod Agrippa celebrated it after killing James, one of Jesus’ disciples and then decided to imprison Peter during the party, which at the time had no connection to the resurrection of Jesus. (see Acts 12:1-5, KJV)  It happened to occasionally connect with the Jewish celebration of the passover.

Years go by and the church becomes official and the church becomes THE CHURCH.  THE CHURCH decides, in honor of their risen Savior to mix holiday metaphors a bit, and copy the culture that exists.  Easter then becomes a THE CHURCH holiday.  The problem is the former holiday never really goes away, but the two begin to meld together in a bunny loving, egg coloring, candy eating, oh yeah, and by the way, Jesus rising type of way.

By the time it’s too late, THE CHURCH becomes THE CHURCHES and wonders what all the confusion is about – this thing, after all, is about one thing.  The one thing that, somewhere along the way, was not enough, and needed to be pepped up or apologized for or altered a little bit, because it’s been years since anyone’s seen anyone rise from the dead.

So this Sunday, THE CHURCHES are going to do everything they can to ‘pull out all the stops’ and wow you with classy production, excellent gimmicks, and the pastors best 3 point outline.  None of those things are wrong and none of those things are going to be demonized here, but none of those things are also the reason why we meet together and call ourselves “followers of Jesus” or “Christians”.

But the reason we are gathered as the church is not because of a holiday or a tradition or because we’re supposed to, but because a man walked this earth (many have done this), did amazing, miraculous things (many have done this, too), could not be found guilty of anything (no one else has done this), gave His life for the glory of God and for the salvation of mankind (wait for it…), then three days later rose again, after he was indeed (not figuratively) dead. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

The hope that we have because this happened is unimaginable, as our trust can now be placed firmly outside of our own hands and into the hands of a Savior and a God who made a way for our world to be healed and redeemed back into His arms.

Call it whatever you want, but just celebrate the right thing.

I don’t blame the mainstream media for making fun of Christians, because there are times that I certainly want to, like the one and only time I visited Des Moines, Iowa.  I traveled with a vacation Bible School organization known as Neighborhood Bible Time in the summer of 1996.  For the most part it was an amazing time.  3 weeks of training in Colorado led to 10 weeks of going to 10 different churches in 7 different states with another “NBT evangelist”.  The stories I could tell from that summer are endless, but you have to start somewhere, so I begin here, in the central United States, a hot bed of conservatism and the corn fields of moon pies and RC Cola.

My partner, Dave and I had traveled to Ohio and Michigan, and for week three we had the honor of hanging in the 4 lettered state not known as Ohio or Utah.  I had only traveled through the state, so I looked forward to spending the week at this most important of political states (cough, cough).

Though we worked as a team, Dave and I had our separate functions on the team.  I worked with the elementary students, teaching, singing songs, and showing magic tricks like nobody’s business, and Dave worked with the teenagers, playing football, throwing water balloons, and eating lots of junk food – so basically having a way better time than me.

I taught two sessions per day.  One consisted of all the 1st through 3rd graders who came to “Bible Time” and the other included all the 4th through 6th graders who were along for the ride. I met with each group for about an hour.  Training was actually long and arduous that took a lot of effort, yet provided a lot of fun too.  One magic trick I used was called the Burning Bible. The point was to teach kids that the Bible is forever, that it is God’s Word and it will endure.

For whatever reason my bosses instructed me never to show this trick to the younger 1st through 3rd graders, but to restrict this particular trick to the older children.  So week after week, when it came time to run through my games, music, stories, and magic tricks, I would skip “the Burning Bible” for the young kids and go with something a bit less daunting. This week in Iowa the kids were crazy!  They cheered louder than the places I’d been so far, and they were having a blast with Mr. Marty and his most excellent entertainment techniques.

On the 2nd of 5 days of meeting, the 1st – 3rd grade kids were just going nuts, which meant that I was on my game.  They were captivated and laughing and silent when I asked them to be.  I had them in the palm of my hand.  Things were going so well that about half way through, I turned around and grabbed the first thing that I could find because I didn’t want to lose momentum, and in my head as I grabbed the Burning Bible trick I said,  Ya know, it’s just this one time, and I have no clue why I can’t show the kids this anyway, so…

As I suspected, the kids were enamored with my new trick.  Their mouths dropped to the floor and it was almost like they weren’t listening when I explained to them that the Bible was God’s Word, and that it will endure forever.  They were so quiet, I then went into story time, and the rest of the morning went so smoothly, I continued to dwell on the fact that I was the man, and that my 20 year old self was an amazing teacher to these young children.

I thought nothing of the event as the rest of the day went great and that night Dave had a great time with the teenagers too.  The next day we had the same great kind of a day as before, minus the Burning Bible trick, though some kids asked for it again, to which I ignored them and continued doing the other things I had been trained to do.  After the meeting that morning, Dave and I were quite tired, so we headed out the door around 1:00 pm for lunch and a nap (I believe we called it “Bible Time Five”).  As Dave opened the actual solid wooden door out of the church, he hit this lady in the head.

“Oh, sorry,” Dave said quite apologetically.  The women smiled, appearing to be forgiving and very nice.  “That’s okay.  Is there something going on here for children this week?”  “Absolutely!” Dave said with much gusto  “Neighborhood Bible Time is happening here this week!  You should bring your daughter tomorrow morning!”  Dave said this while motioning to the 6 yr. old blond girl standing directly behind the  woman, “It’s a great time for kids.”

The woman continued while smiling, “Oh, yes, I was just wondering, Did someone burn a Bible in that meeting yesterday?”

In that one moment, everything became clear.  I knew I’d seen the little girl before, and I knew why I wasn’t supposed to show the Burning Bible magic trick to the young children.  Stupid Marty!  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Dave smiled trying to be funny, “Yes, maam, that’s what happened.”  I quickly interjected, “No maam, that was me, and that’s not what happened.  You see, I was doing a…

As I talked the woman lost her smile in between the words “I” and “was” and spoke quite loudly while taking a step back and pointing at me:  “I rebuke you, in the name of Jesus”.  A look of relief came out of her face as she walked away, grabbing the arm of the confused 6 yr old and back towards her car.

“Maam, I’d love to explain to you what happened if you have another minute,” I said, trying to save whatever bit of Christian fellowship I could with this woman.  As she continued to ignore me like I didn’t exist, I then resorted to a touch of sarcasm, “Ummm, maam, can we talk about this like mature Christians?”

At that, the woman flipped me off, called me an asshole, got in her car, and drove away.

Since our church is participating in that One Prayer thing, I’ve been thinking a lot more about unity in the body of Christ, and also about unity in my life.  You see, I like people.  I like a lot of people. I love a lot of people. But there are some that I just don’t like - Even Christians (or should I say, especially Christians).
So then I run into this verse yesterday with my small group: 1 John 2:9-11 – “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.  Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.  But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness;  he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.”

So here’s the thing – I like a lot of people, but even though I’m pretty friendly and like a lot of people, there are still some people in my life that I choose not to  be around a lot for various reasons.  I’m sure many of these people also choose not to be around me.  One might even say that I don’t like them and they don’t like me.  Simple question today for a simple Friday:

Is “don’t like” different than “hate”?

I’ve found a few interesting posts in the last hour that you should read if you get a chance.
First of all, this post with a big picture online that says “Sorry Pats”.
It’s by the Boston Herald, apologizing for the false walkthrough report.  Another words, Mat Walsh, the guy who all Pats fans everywhere victimized for being an idiot liar, never said that he filmed a super bowl walkthrough.
But in the end, let’s be serious here, they don’t need to be apologizing to the Patriots, the Pats need to be thanking them.  Why?  You might ask.  Well, as this guy says here, it’s a matter of perspective.  Because of this story, nobody actually cares about the physical evidence that they actually have, they only care about this supposed super bowl walk through, so when there is no “super bowl” tapes, this mess can all go away.  It’s a bit like telling the parents that you wrecked their car, and then saying, “Just kidding, I just drove it after you told me not to.”  It’s still wrong, but now they look at it from a different perspective.

Also, this blog, and the latest post associated with it, is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. 

This blog is an unofficial poll about what kind of worship music churches are using.  He has a lot of good things to say, and here’s a good place to start.  Plus, he’s met Andy Stanley, and that makes him an indirect hero in my book.

Lastly, it’s Wednesday, so join Randy Elrod and me around the Watercooler today for all things culture related.  You’ll be glad you did.

Please let me know about a blog you enjoy reading.