My Blogroll E-I

a continuation from yesterday.

Eugene Cho – Visionary. Church Planter. Thinker. If you want to find something to think about regarding faith, the church, life, etc, this is the site to visit. I always walk away thinking after visiting this site.

Faces of Bellingham – Living in bellingham, I enjoy this site. I am always looking for people I might know. I know one person on here. One down, a lot to go. (*Edit: I actually know three people. My older sister, Malia, is #1613 and right beneath her is #1612, a former Ray of Hoper named Angelica.)

George Stromboulopolous – This guy is a canadian interview on a show called “The Hour”. It is one of the most culturally, religously, and musically relevant shows on television. I love it.

Greg Boyd – I’ve read three of his books now. He’s a little controversial, but always pushing you to think. Check out “Myth of a Christian Nation” and “Where is God when it hurts”. Those were really good reads.

InWorship – Brent is a Blogger friend. Actually, the first I’ve ever met. He always has an entertaining view on life and faith. I like visiting his site. a lot. You should too.

I Read Something Beautiful Today.

I love reading through the Old Testament of the bible. Some of the most beautiful imagery comes out of there. Today I was beginning to read through Isaiah and found this passage:

“He will settle disputes among great nations. They will hammer thier swords into plows and their spears into pruning knives. Nations will never again go to war, never prepare for battle again.” (Isaiah 2:4 GNB)

This imagery of weapons being used to retill the earth and help restore it back to something beautiful. My friends Matt Martinson and Shauna Mann – links to their blogs are on the side - used (what I think was) this verse for a compassion project or advent at their church and showed people plowing fields with AK-47’s. That image has never left my head.

When I read this verse I see this: this is what God does in our lives as we use our bodies for what we think is good, but when we truly trust in God he reshapes us and turns us into something better and far more useful than we ever intended.

just a thought.

“I Keep Getting Older…”

Classic Matt McConaughey line. Today I went to the doctor for a check up and I began realizing all of these signs of getting older. Here are a few that I’ve compiled out of my brain for all of us.

You know you’re getting older when:

* You go to the doctor every year and they tell you to “cut back on the salt and excercise more”…every year.

* You “go for a jog” and you’re sore for the rest of the week

* You have to look up words or phrases on UrbanDictionary.com because you don’t know what something you overheard a kid in the mall said means.

* Date night turns into Lowe’s and Costco Dogs.

* You have hairs growing out of your ears and nose, and even your eyebrow hairs are getting longer.

* You grow random gray hairs.

* The movies you watch are “smarter” which really means they are boring.

* You begin to worry if people think that you are the “crazy cat person”.

* Some music becomes too loud or just plain noise and you become the one that kids say just don’t get it.

* If you don’t have kids, you become uncle or auntie.

* If you have kids, you become Mr. or Ms/Mrs. “name of parent of the kid that your kid is playing with” or Your kids name’s Mommy or Daddy.

* You use possesive ways to describe people (i.e. My Lawyer, My accountant, My kids, etc).

* You don’t go out past 10 p.m. because you are too tired.

* If you are out past 10 p.m you go directly home because you are too tired.

* You get excited to go to a show because you haven’t been out in a while, but you are even more pumped because the show is all ages and should be done early.

* You get pissed off when you find out that the show is going to be going late.

* For women, your purses and underwear get bigger as you grow older.

* For men, your underwear grow as many holes in them as you have been living out of your mom’s house…same wallet that you’ve had since then also.

* Clothes you wore in Middle and High School are coming back in style.

* You say something to somebody and follow it up with, “Oh my gosh, I just sounded like my mother”.

* Kids wear shirts of bands that you liked in high school, but usually can’t name a single song or album by that band.

* You research things before you buy them.

* You begin to drink wine because it is a “healthier choice”.

These are just a few of the ones I came up with. What did I miss?

How Do You Preach?

At RCC, we use the Lectionary. We go through the three years of various scriptures set out and repeat when we finish. We build some of our sermon series around them. It’s really interesting, but it seems so foreign to the evangelical church. What do you do at your church for sermons? How do you preach?

Goodwill Hunting and Value Village Treasures!

Sometimes I just have these great days. Today I hung out with my wife and we did a bunch of her errands. Then she asked if I wanted to go to Goodwill and Value Village to look at furniture. I ended up walking out with four books and a CD for under $10. What did I get? Check out my nerdiness:

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

Blue Like Jazz (.69 cents!!!) I’ll probably give it away to the one christian who hasn’t read it.

Walt Whitman’s Selected Poems

Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant

and Tonic’s CD Lemon Parade (they sing the song “if you could only see the way she loves me…)

All in all, it was a great day indeed.

God is Green: Ecology for Christians

I’ve been reading a book lately called “God is Green” by Ian Brodley. I’m only a couple of chapters into it, but it is pretty cool. One of the funny things that I read is the idea that the depletion of the environment is due to Christians believing that God cares from humans first and environment second. I’ve found it pretty interesting so far, and I will talk more about the book as I finish it.

My first thoughts so far is this: of course it is our responsibility as Christians to take care of God’s creation, but I wonder where we fell off course? Was it in the enlightenment when we began to advance in thought and technology only to forget about our environment that surrounds us? It seems that only recently have we begun thinking about this idea of Creation Stewardship. Why did it take so long? Now we have to ask ourselves what does this look like in likes of Christian faith? My thought is that taking an interest in ecology is not only our Christian duty, but also our job in serving others who are not Christ Followers. Creation Stewardship is not for people to see how much Jesus loves them, but instead, maybe it is to show the Christian responsibility to taking care of this planet alongside the rest of the world.

Do you have any thoughts on Creation Stewardship or Ecology and your faith?

Rekindling the Romance with God

Last night I couldn’t sleep. It was 12:30, and I was up in my office looking through various books to share with my worship intern this summer. During this process I came across a book that I’d bought for 25 cents at TWU and I’ve been wanting to pick up and read titled, “A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church” by Father James Kavanaugh. I was thumbing through it and I found this bit:

How did we ever produce the legalistic Church that Christ promised to take away? How did we pass from the gospel of freedom and love to a system that can tear husbands from wives in the name of justice? How did we manage to replace religion with the subtleties of a dead theology? Theology is meant to be a science that tells a man in every age how he can better love his God. It should take the treasures of the gospel and transform then into works and ideas that can tell a modern man how to live and love. Our theology, however, has become a scholars game. It is a code of rules accumulated in the petty wars of religious bitterness. It is a tale of tired truths which only serve to rob man of personal reponsibility and reduce him to the listlessness of a frightened slave. Theology took away his freedom and robbed him of the romance that should attend his search for God…

This passage really resonates with me lately. I wrote about questioning earlier in my posting about Theology and Death Cab for Cutie, and this passage from Father James Kavanaugh really speaks into that idea. Our theology has become simply rules – “a scholars game”. Exactly what Jesus came to take away. When the romance is taken away from our pursuit, our relationship with Jesus simply becomes like that old couple who watch Matlock together but never say a word to each other. Each knows that they are there, but the conversation and romance is long gone. This is what our relationship with God can become if we are not asking questions and discovering new characteristics and ideas of God.

Thoughts?

An Open Letter to Henry Rollins (Fellow Tweet)

…or “Henry Rollins: Poet, Punk Rock Icon, Tweet.”

As you should know, I twitter (ronpai for those who look for me). Twitter is the newest thing for keeping tabs with friends, family and the such. Unfortunately, I have only two friends who twitter (bhauge and InWorship). So today I’m cruising around and I find Henry Rollins is a tweet also. Yes, THE Henry Rollins. So I add him because I am a nerd and none of my friends are tweets.

Dear Mr. Rollins,

I know that we come from two different worlds, but I am excited that I can now semi follow you from a safe semi stalking distance. Not only are we fellow tweets in the twitter world, but I am also a fan. As a fan of your music, I would like to thank you for entering your shows like you were entering into battle. You developed the look of a man of Mixed Martial Arts -  a shredded man simply wearing shorts and taped ankles - before MMA was mainstream or even recognized as a sport in our American Culture. I remember seeing you on television and coming to realize how intense performance really can be and how big you really are. Since that time, my friends and I developed a game we play where we pin rockstars against each other in fights and everytime your name comes up, you win.

Thank you Henry Rollins for your music, poetry, and social commentary. You have made many laugh but also think. You sir, are ahead of the times. You were when you were with Black Flag, and now with Twitter. Thank you for recognizing the power of the tweet. I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

the Brown Kid

What a Great Day.

Today ended up being a great day. This morning at Roosevelt was what, as a worship leader, I like to call the perfect storm…but in a good way. The sermon matched the content of the singing, which doesn’t really matter but it only aided what the speaker was saying. It was one of those moments where even though the setlist was planned over a month ago, the songs and their content aligned perfectly. I think what really hit home for me was leading the congregation in singing and looking to my right and seeing a lady weeping as she sang, “You give me life/You give me breath/You give me a heart to love you with/All I can do is worship You”, knowing that right now in her life she is carrying a lot of baggage. It’s that reminder that God can and will remember and redeem her, and she knows it. Oh, what a wonderful and powerful moment to witness!

After church, I watched “Balls of Fury” and edited devotional entries from my church. As another form of worship, we make devotional journals written by people in our congregation and press them and copy them. It’s an actual liturgy or work done by the people. If you would like a copy, or want to know more about the Devotional Journals, let me know.

Next I drove down to Bakke Grad School in Seattle and am staying in the Baroness Hotel with Cameron Garcia preparing to audit the class on the Missional Church. First off there was no traffic! Second, I’ll be blogging about the class while I am here for the next 3 days so keep checking in. I’m pretty excited to see what God is going to show me. I also finished “The Shaping of Things to Come”…wow! I have been avoiding this book like the plague because of the sources who told me it was great, but after reading it in preperation for this class, I think that this book is legit. Great stuff being said in it. I’ll blog about it later.

Finally, I went to Matt’s blog and read a great conversation on pacifism and our christian stances on different issues. Seriously, Matt is the smartest guy I know but he’ll never let you know that he is a secret genius. We have been friends since we were under appreciated interns/youth directors who took up space in an oversized church and office. Go over to his blog and join in on a conversation well worth your time.

How was your day? Was it at all as cool as mine?

Book Report Due?

Read it at Book-A-Minute

 You’re Welcome