Year: 2009

The “sex appeal of missions”…

Now I know that this post might come across as either bias or as complaining… so I’ll start off with this, every living soul deserves the opportunity to learn about salvation through Jesus. So no matter the place nor circumstance of people we the Church should be at least sending a mesage of equality when speaking about world missions and local outreach.

I bring this topic up because, in my observation, the Church tends to lean towards “heart” tugging programs and locations where it is obvious what kinds of physical needs can be met. The overwhelming majority of these missions organizations do incredible work and bring knowledge of Jesus in very tangible ways. I’m not against this at all… but I do have a question to ask…

How can we address the very real need for places like Europe to learn about Jesus? How do we raise awareness in the Church about this less appealing, less obvious, but still as disparate place? Not to mention the thousands of places like it around the world!

This past week’s summary

  • Full day ahead, more peeps to talk to, more stuff to find and dinner w/ friends! #
  • Where are you discontent? Is this maybe an untapped passion? Seek it out, it jusy lead you to God's will. #
  • Where are you discontent? Is this maybe an untapped passion? Seek it out, it just might lead you to God's will. #
  • I think I have the beginning of a migraine – having a hard time remembering anything, and most names, and losing peripheral vision. Ug. #
  • I'm going home, headache is slightly better, but I feel overall weak, and as if I have low blood sugar, but I just had lunch. #
  • ug I can't get ahold of Alexis to pick me up, nor anyone I can think either 🙁 #
  • I think the headache is gone, I don't feel 100% but seems like I'll be good. #
  • No headache today! Thinking about a lot of things – missions, church, leadership, etc… I think I feel a blog post coming on. #
  • Izve made out like a bandit today, more later – maybe even two blog posts! Gasp! #
  • Ok time to stop feeling out on my phone and be "with" people! #
  • Ok time to stop geeking out (not feeling) on my phone and be "with" people! – learning my keyboard. #
  • Emma decided for an hour to tell us a story… at 2 in the morning! #
  • Watching God do amazing things in people's lives! #

This past week’s summary

  • Learning some more Polish – jest dobry! #
  • Hey friends! Learn more and stay in tune about our work in Poland – signup for our newsletters here: http://eepurl.com/dkbH #
  • Good night tweeple! I'm up far too late! But it's been Good, because God is good, love getting lost with Him 🙂 #
  • I've got my first "red" holiday cup from Starbucks this morning, is "wishing" what the holiday are really about? Come on now… #
  • A big shout out and thanks to our veterans and happy independance day in Poland! #
  • What is it with multipage resumes? #
  • Today is going to be a loooong day – anyone wanna do lunch downtown? 🙂 #
  • NO! It seems the media center computer has decided to have a corrupt registry. I think disk i/o errors were a warning! New 1tb HD egghead? #
  • NO! It seems the media center computer decided to have a corrupt registry. I think disk i/o errors were a warning! New 1tb HD frm NewEgg?! #

Ur Video: The Prosperity Gospel

This caught my eye while browsing my blog/news subscriptions today and so I thought I’d share it:

Shared by TravisM

Click on the link in this article if you want to truly see some of the issues we face as a Church (the global Church) – this is the stuff we are fighting against, the false teachings that Jesus warns us against. Sometimes we get a little to close for comfort on these things – there almost always a hint of truth, which makes it hard for some good intentioned people to understand the real truth.

Christianity Today International, Out of Ur’s publisher, and The Lausanne Movement, a worldwide movement of evangelical Christian leaders, present The Global Conversation: a year-long series of essays, short films, and photo essays about issues facing the church worldwide. These videos highlight topics to be addressed at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization being held in Cape Town, South Africa, in October 2010.

In November the Global Conversation focuses on the prosperity gospel—the teaching that true Christian faith results in material wealth and physical well-being. While it has its roots in America, it has found fertile soil on other continents as well. To accompany the lead article in Christianity Today by Ghanaian scholar Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, director Nathan Clarke went to Ghana to explore the forms the prosperity gospel takes in that West African nation.

The Prosperity Gospel from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

Click here for the original and full post

Read all of my Google Reader shared items

This past week’s summary

  • Productivity will be down today, the office coffee machine is offline 🙁 but hey it's PDX I can find better coffee elsewhere! #
  • Woohoo! Just discovered a TriMet Bus 9 "limited" might actually get me home faster than MAX! #
  • Lost in Polish land… not sure I'll speak English or Polish by the time I'm done. #
  • Fantastyczna! A ty? #
  • Hair cut is good! Thanks Audrey! #
  • Nothing much to say today, but feel compelled to update my status… lame, I know. #
  • Time for some new tunes on my phone. #
  • Ready to have fun! FORGE starts in 10 min (or so) ! #
  • Going to miss my bride and daughter for the next 5 days! 🙁 #
  • So with Alexis and Emma going to Seattle today, who wants to go to a laid back show tonight in the Pearl? #
  • Wow! The Korean short rib taco from @KOIFUSIONPDX is fantastic! Try it out my PDX peeps! #

This past week’s summary

  • Hello world – my bride wrote "Love you" on my napkin in my lunch – isn't that just the best? #
  • Dear #TriMet please fix transit tracker for MAX so actual arival time shows again, the "scheduled" times are not helpful b/c trains R early! #
  • PS #trimet, at least you seem to have fixed the delays on MAX after the Green line opened – yay. #
  • At home watching Emma while Alexis enjoys a movie w/ the ladies 🙂 #
  • Sleep, sleep, sleep! #
  • How do you make average days different? #
  • off to the dentist for a filling… #
  • Fillings all done – got three instead of two! Trying to avoid another root canal! #
  • Long day, need sleep! But first some worship with @easthillfamily! #
  • Off to see the wizard. #
  • Bad morning, alarm not on, missed bus, woke up Alexis & Emma for ride to MAX & almost ran out of gas, missed train, got gas, on MAX finally #
  • Very nice video of Amazing Grace at the Coliseum in Pula, Croatia – where Alexis and I our honey moon: http://bit.ly/wEoD #
  • ummm, 1 year olds don't understand that today they were suppose to use their "saved" hour to sleep! #

This past week’s summary

  • Attempting to plow through some Sunday work 🙁 – and then Small group! #
  • Wet jeans are no fun to work in. #
  • Ok people, I didn't wet my jeans, the dryer didn't dry my jeans, so that's that. #
  • Yep, it feels like a Monday… confirmed. #
  • Super busy day at work, and attempting to deal with "life stuff" in a gracefully truthful way. #
  • Wow, tonight's message @easthillfamily exactly what Alexis and I needed to hear, we will rise, Christ has conquered the grave & we stand! #
  • Off to the dentist for a cleaning, and probably a scolding b/c I haven't had my wisdom teeth taken out yet.. 🙁 #
  • Ready for tonight? We are! #
  • It's Friday – this has been a strange week – but things are moving forward thanks to some stirring! #
  • Dwelling – in a good place, g'night world. #

Parenting

The following is a mobile post, meaning it may have typos, incomplete thoughts, it may not even make any sense – enjoy!

Yesterday Alexis posted on her facebook status a parenting question, one that was really more rhetorical in nature than advice seeking, nonetheless people chimed in. The question centered around, how much do we keep telling Emma that pulling on either of our cat's tails is a "no no"?

Now, the deal is both of our cats are really very patient with Emma and as of yet she has not been scratched, but yesterday the cat who we have never heard hiss (aka, Janek the nice one) actually hissed at Emma after she once again yanked his tail. The other cat hisses all the time, and scratches adults commonly, yet hasn't scratched Emma yet.

So, wer'e at this point of knowing the inevitable, Emma's going to get scratched at some point, even though we're watching her constantly, it's really a fact of nature that if you harrass an animal for too long, even the most kindest of animals, will get annoyed at some point. Where is the point where you let a child learn the "natural" consequences? I think it's at the point where Emma is, where she knows what NO means. But she doesn't quite see the "why" behind it. Of course we'll prevent it as much as possible, we're not to put her and the cats together and wait for her to get scratched. We do know at some point though, it will happen.

So, we'll continue to say no, and we'll continue to tell the cats no as well when they hiss or bat at people. Since we know that the life God has called us to involves all kinds of environments out side of our control (mainly life) we'll do our absolute best to explain life to our children, and that includes natural consequences which we'll do best to explain ahead of the events and consule, love, and bring light to their world after bad things happen.

It's hard for me to not be in agreement with other parents, especially my friends, but I also realize that God has shown us a lot in life through things. One piece of it is the fact that we don't have full control over Emma or even our own lives. what other parents do is what they have the option to do, even if we are not on the same page.