My cell phone

The other day I heard a twelve-year old boy say, “I have two iPod Touches. One is for music, the other is for games and apps.”

I don’t know…call me crazy, that just seems a little excessive to me. I mean, I'm 36 and I have an iPod Shuffle that I bought used and my cell phone is held together with duct tape. (Yes, I know that an iPod Touch is not a cell phone, but role with me here.) I am not complaining. I love my cell phone. It makes calls. I can text when I need to. And it makes me feel like a good ol’ Georgia boy to walk around with something stuck in my pocket that I fixed myself using duct tape. But two iPod Touches? I just don’t get it. I'll pass along my duct tape phone to my boys when they turn 14 and they can buy their own iPod.

Three Amigos and a dying world...

El Guapo. Just say the name around any male in their thirties and immediately they will laugh hysterically and begin quoting from the classic movie Three Amigos! It is one of my all time favorite movies and it never gets old. Here is one of my favorite scenes:



As funny as that clip is, I also think it's a pretty sad allegory of the Church in America. Do you remember the woman at the well in John's Gospel? She was a woman that if most people walked past her in Target, they would inwardly call her a slut, grab their child's hand, and briskly walk past her while desperately trying not to make eye contact. Yet Christ sits next to her, tells her about the Living Water that only He can provide. He cares for her, spends time with her, and doesn't bother about her sinfulness. She is a dying woman that needs a drink.

Our world is dying. It is filled with people like the woman at the well. They look like Martin Short and Steve Martin, emptying their canteens in desperation, only to find a drop of water and heaps of sand. A 2006 Baylor University study stated that as low as 17% of North Americans are in church on any given Sunday. Most churches that are growing are doing so because of church hopping, not because more and more people are giving themselves to the saving grace of Christ. Let me say it once again, people are DYING and they are desperate to be saved! We CANNOT sit around, swishing water in our mouths, carelessly spilling the Living Water onto the ground, while offering only lip balm to the parched, dying people.

It's time that we stopped being selfish fighting over trivial things like whether or not we should sing hymns or contemporary music or have VBS in the morning or evening; it's time we started passing the canteen...lives depend on it.

Lessons from Amos

Here’s a little ditty from the sheep farmer turned prophet Amos. Speaking words directly from The LORD, he says:

²¹ “I hate all your show and pretense—
the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies.
²² I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings.
I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings.
²³ Away with your noisy hymns of praise!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
²⁴ Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice,
an endless river of righteous living. (Amos 5:21-24)

In Amos’ day, God’s chosen people were divided into two kingdoms: Judah in the south and Israel in the north. At times, both kingdoms had their problems of idolatry and unrighteousness, but at this time Judah was living under a king named Uzziah. According to Scripture, Uzziah “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” The northern kingdom however was not living righteously, despite having a king who was a brilliant general and expanded the boarders of Israel. He allowed the people to live in luxury, but Scripture says that he did not depart from the sin of his father. The books of Hosea, Amos, and Joel all harshly criticize the sin in the land.

One of the sins mentioned repeatedly is the lack of justice for the poor, the widowed, the orphaned. While the wealthy lived their lives, others were horrendously oppressed. Although they attempted to have some sort of worship to YHWH, His response was rejection and a call for repentance.

I look around at the attitude of many churches in America and I wonder if these words could be spoken over us? Does God look at our Sunday morning activities and say, “I hate all your performances. It is just noise without meaning. Show me that you are about justice. Show me that you will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned. When you show me righteous living, then will your worship be genuine” ?

This is the kind of Church that I want to pastor. I want to see “a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.” And when that happens, the worship that we will experience will be sincere, boundless, extravagant, and irresistible!

Stepping onto the trail...

So here is the short version of where we are. Maybe I'll go into more details another day, but for now:

I married an amazing woman who I have been in love with since the 8th grade. About 7 years and three children into our marriage, she looked at me and said that God was calling me to be a pastor. Two years later God miraculously provided the resources for us to move to Kentucky so that I could go to seminary, and I began studying at Asbury Theological Seminary. Now a year away from graduating, God is beginning to show us where we are headed next.

Henry Blackaby, a pastor and author, wrote in his wonderful study Experiencing God that we should look for where the Holy Spirit is moving and then join Him in His work. Well, I have looked and seen the Holy Spirit working in incredible ways in the Anglican Church. Through an organization called Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), God is planting churches that are dynamic, Spirit filled, evangelical Bodies of Christ that have an ancient foundation.

Right now we are praying about planting an AMiA church in Marietta, GA, our hometown. We have some friends that are interested in helping and the doors are wide open. Now we need to pray, fast, and seek guidance. Could I ask for each of you to support us through prayer? Send us an e-mail and give us your thoughts. We would love to hear from you.