Movie Time!!!

Went to see War of the Worlds last night. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but I will tell you that it an interesting theory and was pretty intense at times. It was guys night out for my small group guys. We went to the Colossus where I was able to eat a Whopper, enjoy the movie, and if I wanted to, go upstairs and enjoy a cold beer before teh movie…I love Canada.
I also saw a preview for the Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong. Those are two movies that I’m pretty excited for. I hope that it’s not one of those movies that are filled with special effects and no plot. When I went to see “the day after tomorrow”, I left thinking, “great special effects, but why did it seem like I just saw ‘Left Behind’ for the environment? and why do the hippies continue to hound my use of Aqua Net aerosol hair spray cans???”
I sometimes hate when this happens in movies. Sum41 said it best on their first album title, ‘All Killer and no filler’. Where’s the beef? Where is teh part beyond all of the cool special effects? Where is the part of the movie that will leave me scratching my head or looking over my shoulder making sure that the aliens aren’t going to abduct me and anal probe me? I love and miss those movies.

ron

cd-a mix of stevie wonder, john legend, 311, john mayer, ben harper, etc, etc. It’s all good.

Why is it…

Why is it when things go wrong, people automatically assume that “the enemy” is trying to get in on the action? Why can’t we think that maybe God is trying to teach us to rely on Him or something uber-spiritual like that?

This past weekend our powerpoint/DVD/everything important to a video venue wasn’t working at the Club (the video venue that I lead music at for Cornwall Church). We had to do the unthinkable and worship God through song but without words, we had spontaneous prayers and also a message that was put together 10 minutes before our Pastor went on. I mean for this to be dripping with sarcasm because this weekend was probably one of the most God centered and focused moments in my life as a leader. Maybe God was trying to teach us that we didn’t need technology 2000 years ago to share His message and we don’t need it now (but I still love technology). Maybe this was God trying to introduce our new Pastor in a better way then him giving announcements and instead God used him to teach and tell about how God moved back in the day and continues to move today.

So why is it that we continue to blame Satan for things happening when in the end it all focuses back on God; the reason we are there in the first place. Maybe we give Satan too much credit, or maybe it’s just easier to think that when something goes differently than we expect that it’s more evil than good. I think that our culture is so quick to look at the negatives of the situation that we forget all of the possibilities of what can happen when we put God as the focus and let the Holy Spirit control the service.

comments?
ron

CD-still jamming on Jack Johnson.

Here I Go Again On My Own…

Really, who doesn’t love Whitesnake?

Well, It’s been a while. I’ve been in an intensive class on Western Religions where we learned about Islam, Zoroastrianism, Mormonism, Judaism, and Eastern Orthodox. Why was Eastern Orthodox in a Western Rels class? The world may never know.
Here’s what I really want to tell you: This past week I was leading worship for fathers day. We showed a video of a father who pushes his son in a wheelchair (the son has Cerebral Palsy) and they do Marathons together. Very moving and touching. After the video, I played the song “Your Love is Extravagant” by…Darrell Evans??? Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters happened afterwards when I noticed a guy bawling his eyes out. “What Happened?”, I thought, “Was it the video? Maybe the song?”. I went and asked if I could pray with him and asked what was going on. I couldn’t really understand what happened, but what I got out of it was that he felt bad for the life he and his girlfriend were living. It was at that moment that I realized that it wasn’t an “element” of the service or a song or anything. It was the Holy Spirit.
Paul at Fool for Jesus is a recovering Pentacostal, and one of the things that he and I discussed is how the church relies so much on program and elements to move a service that we forget to let the Holy Spirit into the service to do the real work. It’s not us who is going to move people to live for Jesus or even meet Him, but the Holy Spirit. We are just the mere mortals that the Spirit is going to use.
As I said in an earlier post, I don’t want to convert anybody, I just want them to know the love of Christ through my actions and words. Essentially, It’s the Holy Spirit that is going to move somebody to the point of decision of what/who the are going to love and believe, not the brown kid.

peace beaches,
ron

CD: I stole the new Jack Johnson from my brother. i love it. It sounds a lot like the other Jack Johnson stuff, but it’s good. My favorite track is “Banana Pancakes”.

Another Quiz…

Paul gave us this one. I guess I’m Neo like Keanu. Karl Barth did say, “the best way to share the Gospel is with the Bible in One hand and a beer in the other”…or was it a newspaper?

You scored as Neo orthodox.

You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth.

Neo orthodox 75%
Emergent/Postmodern 71%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 68%
Classical Liberal 57%
Reformed Evangelical 39%
Modern Liberal 39%
Roman Catholic 39%
Charismatic/Pentecostal 36%
Fundamentalist 32%

ron

Another CD I am excited for is the new Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl continually shows people that he can right catchy songs that you will bounce too in the car and that he is more than a drummer.

Drop Your Crap and Join the Revolt.

Slow down everyone
You’re moving too fast
Frames can’t catch you when
You’re moving like that

These are some of musician Jack Johnsons words that have been bouncing around my head as of late. I’ve really noticed that people, including myself, are always on the run. We as a society have filled our day with crap that we don’t really need. Monkey over at Incarnational Orthodoxy talked about how pastors can do this as to not look “lazy” to the congregation. But with all filler and no killer in our lives, where is the time for God?

What can we do to slow down? I think I mentioned about meditation being a lost part of our Christian faith, and I still stand by it. We in western society fill our days with so many different meetings and appointments that we forget to add an appointment with God. Eugene Peterson talks about this in his book, “the contemplative pastor” saying that he often just looks at his schedule and if God is pencilled in, then nobody is getting that time. I like this thought. It’s good to take time out to walk and think, or even meditate.

I’ve been experimenting with meditation and slowing down my pace in life. Those who know me know that I am pretty laid back (It’s the Hawaiian in me), but I get caught up in meetings and everything just like everybody else so I’ve just decided that life is too short to worry about meetings. I show up to them, but I leave earlier from my place and I take my time getting there. My blood pressure is too precious to yell at the guy who cut me off (but sometimes I wish I didn’t work at a big church in a small town so I could yell at them or flip them off). I’ve been meditating and praying a lot more, doing tai chi and slowing my life down, dropping acid and hanging out with spider monkeys down in Saint Bart’s changed my whole perspective on shit (okay, that last one was from Zoolander, but you get the point). I’m going against the grain and telling people, “F-You, I won’t conform to your standards of making me look busy”. If you want to join the revolution against society’s standards, please send money to:

Ron’s New Guitar Fund
Belli-town, WA 98225

CD’s that I am excited about: Two CD’s really:
The Gorillaz New Album “Demon Days”. Dude, De La Soul appears on this album. Does it get any better?
The White Stripes. “Get Behind Me Satan”. I like Jack White and what he does. It reminds me of a kid playing in his garage with his buddy who just started playing drums, but they can’t find a bass player. If you are a hendrix/blues fan, you might dig a lot of what the White Stripes do.

Traditions vs. traditions

A little girl is watching her mother as she is preparing a roast for dinner. She notices that her mother cuts off both ends of the roast and asks her mother, “why did you do that?” The mother looks at her daughter and says, “I don’t know, I guess because your grandmother did it”. At this, the mother calls up her mother and asks her why she cut off the ends of the roast when preparing it, and the grandmother replies, “I don’t know, I always did it because your grandmother did it”. The grandmother calls up the great-grandmother and asks her why she always cut off the ends of the roast, to which the great-grandmother replied, “I did it because the oven was too small to hold the entire roast”.

We in the christian church hold a lot of traditions that we don’t really know why we do them and then some that we do. This is where the distinction of Big “T” tradition vs. Small “T” tradition comes into play. Tradition (big T) is something that we do knowing why we do it without a routine involved, but tradition (small t) is something that we do just because we’ve always done it and it’s was done before us.

1. Why do we read our bibles? Do we only do this to be good christians? Do we read it for the history lesson? Do we read it so that we can soak up the “inspired word of God”?

2. Why is it we only have one or two people who preach? Aren’t there other people who have this gifting of public speaking?

3. Why do we sing three songs and then have a meet and greet and prayer and scripture comes later in the service.

THese are all Small T traditions, but what do we hold as a Big T tradition? I think of Communion as a Big T, but some do this every week…could this turn it into a small T? and if it does turn it into a small t, is this because people do it without the conviction and rememberance every week? Any other Big T’s that churches do?

thoughts?
rizzo

cd I am listening to: Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band…phenomenal.

New Link

Our friend Paul has started the blog, “Fool for Jesus”. I really enjoy it and appreciate his honesty and his hilarious sarcasm. Please check it out unless you are easily offended by pictures of dog’s having sex or taking a dump…I’m Kidding!!! There is no doggie porn there. Seriously check it out.

“And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know. (Wo wo wo).
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson,
Heaven holds a place for those who pray”

ronaldo

Another South Beach Update

I lost 9 pounds in two weeks. this is without me really trying. I stuck to the diet somewhat, but there were times that I ate stuff that wasn’t on the diet. (One night I had a blizzard). other than that, this diet helped me get started as I try to lose weight and become sexy for the sexy church, and also help me get to a healthy weight before it gets too late.

Getting Kind of Scared

As I continue to learn more and more about religion and my faith while attending Trinity Western University, I become more and more scared. Being out in the religious world and not being pointed in any certain direction is a mighty scare for anyone who feels called into the pastorate field. I think that this scare is both an excitement and a fearful feeling.

Learning about other religions is something that becomes more and more real to me everyday. I want to learn why people believe in 330,000,000 different gods, or why walking around naked is part of their religion, or why people decide to sacrifice their own personal happiness for their religion. These are things that I wonder about, but there are also things outside of my christian faith that make sense to me. A buddhist walking alone in meditation makes complete sense to me. I think that meditation or “quiet time with God” is a lost art form in western culture. We are so busy trying to fit as much as we can into our lives that we tend to start filling our lives with crap we don’t need. THen we are focused on trying to work as much as we can to pay off this crap that we went into debt for in the first place. These understandings of other religions is what is so scary to me-the fact that they are so appealing to me and yet I feel dirty if I practice them because I wasn’t taught about it in my “core classes” at my church.

I do have some ideas on how to teach the christian culture about different religions though: I want to start a board game and sell it in the family book store and call it “Bible Verse or Heathens Words” (I think that the name alone would get it in the doors, though I don’t think that they are heathens, but hey, I gotta make a living too). This is a game where we take cards and put the verses from the bible we read or scriptures from somebody else’s holy book and then the christian has to determine if it is in the bible or not. Sounds easy? I was reading the Bhagavad Gita, some of the Hindu scriptures, and found that a lot of what they say sounds like it could be in the Bible. Even in the Q’uran there are some things that sound like they just missed the cut for the bible.

I have a couple of other ideas: “Proverb or Fortune Cookie” where you determine exactly that, and also one that my friend Kurt and I were talking about to sell up front: a candy that would give scriptures or they would tell of the miracles in the bible. We will call them “Testicles”…am I going to hell for that one? You’re going to then, because I know you laughed.

Seriously, back to the issue. i think that if one isn’t really grounded in their faith, they could seriously leave and decide to be a Buddhist. Is that such a bad thing though? Eventually they will come back to what they were raised with. Statistics show this right? Right?!??

ron

CD I am listening to: My own. I recorded a 6 song scratch track cd and my friend tony and I are looking to re record it this summer. We are both listening to it to think of ideas to track behind it all.

A Cool Thought

When asked about an Hindu idol that was found on the ground, the interviewer asked if this was a bad thing. This is how the Hindu replied:

“An image is like a finger: it points into a direction with a much deeper meaning than we see immediately. Unfortunately some people get stuck at the finger and can’t see beyond the image itself.”

Now replace the word “image” with the word Cross, WWJD bracelet, or any other Christian paraphenalia and tell me what you think…not that the cross is a Christian paraphenalia, but you get the idea.

I hope.