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Showing posts from November, 2010

Ethnic Blends: Mixing Diversity into Your Local Church

As far as books about the church go, this is one that ought to be required reading! I thoroughly believe their thesis, that to effectively speak into culture (and to maintain some kind of relevance and authority) the church must become a heterogeneous body composed of every ethnicity, not the homogenous body it currently is. This is the image of heaven, when people from “every tribe, tongue and nation” will be joined together as one, being the body of Christ and enjoying Him forever. As background, I work at a church that has very little (like two to four people out of 200) diversity. On an average Sunday in our little town, we have one to three Hispanic individuals, one Asian, and possibly one other race represented. Are there a couple of Anglo's who add diversity to our congregation because of their immigration? Yeah. Do we do a lot of things to allow us to build bridges (how many churches that are 90+% white and English speaking invite Mexican pastors who speak very litt

Trading the Creator for the Created

I was thinking this morning about the current state of my life, where I've come from, where I've been, where I'm going, and came to a couple of conclusions. I realized that I have come a long, long way in many, many ways; while in many others I have regressed to a startling extent. That was rather frightening in a couple of respects, because I also caught a couple of those things as I worked towards prepping the series we're going towards, called "Retro" (and as a reminder here, God speaks all the time, the question is whether we listen or are looking for what He has to say!). It reminded me of a couple things which you get to share (oddly enough, I suppose that's why this is called a "journey of faith" because we drag each other along the road whether we want to or not!) today. The first thing I realized in my evaluation was that I am a much better overall person, yet no better spiritually. Why? I read my Bible, I pray, I mean, I'm a

Our Story or His?

This morning I started with this reading: ___________________________________________________________ Bumping Into God By John Greco " In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. " Joshua 4:6-7 TNIV IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, when the nation of Israel crossed through the Jordan river into the Promised Land, God told them to place twelve stones at the site as a memorial. He wanted them to remember what He had done for them and to tell their children. Their stories had bumped into God's, and the pile of stones would serve as a way to bring it up in conversation: "Those stones? Yeah, those are from when God delivered our people. I was there you know." The stories of people meeting God don't end w