I have to tell you about a new app I’ve been enjoying. I k now, I know, the last thing you need is another app to navigate and figure out and to make sure you have enough space on your phone. But this app is very simple, and in a weird way, life changing in regards to the relationship in our lives.
For the last year, We’ve been talking about the new novel we’ll be publishing this spring called “Flat Earth”! The story is finished, and is the novel is in the last stages of editing. We think you’ll love it!
But today, we wanted to share with you a little surprise!
In the past, I never wanted to be part of a house church. There’s nothing flashy about that. There’s no place in “America’s Fastest Growing Churches” magazine for my little house church. I’d see these large churches with massive buildings and thousands of attendees and thought, “man what a testament to God’s Spirit being poured out.” Until you get involved in larger churches and then realize that most of those people aren’t even followers of Jesus. That was the part that kept nagging at me. All the time and effort (and tons of finances) poured out to grow the gathering but not adding to the Church.
One of the things the internet was supposed to do was bring everyone together in sort of a one world scenario, but ironically, the opposite has occurred. It was so interesting at first to have all of the people over the last 40 years of my life (35 when Facebook really got kicking) together in one place talking about times back in Northwest Ohio in the 80’s, or Pensacola, Florida in the middle 90’s, or from my 20 years here in New England. Over time, however, we took sides, and our bias created our new world tribes. This is what people are saying when they say the world is so divisive right now.
This morning at a wake someone looked at me and said, “I have no idea what to say, I just stood there and cried and hugged.” Across the room someone listening in to the conversation replied, “Perfect! They need your presence right now more than your words.” I don’t know why Solomon wrote this, but in Ecclesiastes, the king ponders, “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.” It is a stunning declaration that there is something “better” about what happens beyond death than what has happened in life. This could point to the afterlife but it also could communicate how important the memory and the connection of the loved ones community is the world after that person dies. When someone you know dies, who can you connect with in their family or friend group that could benefit from your presence. We live in such an individualistic, my life first, and death opens us up to our mortality, and that we are better together.
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The gateway drug was “Velvet Elvis”, Rob Bell’s first book that anybody had ever heard of, and it was amazing! I read through it in a matter of hours over the course of two days and afterwards I pretty much devoured anything he wrote or anything he said online via his messages. I could not get enough of what Bell had to say, and it begun to have a serious influence in my life. One book/video after another he began to break down the systematic theology I believed until I all of a sudden, it became easy to ask myself, “Is this ‘Jesus dying and rising from the dead’ thing just like all of the other things I broke down?” And I was a pastor!
How you approach it depends on how you might approach learning itself. My Dad is into origins, and enjoys studying original Greek and Hebrew. Some new believers might like this. They could read with a concordance, looking up “Grace” or “Love” or “Mercy” and be led to specific sections of scripture. This is great for people who like to chew their meat a lot. Others might want to start with more basics, such as the Gospels and, as Al mentioned, the three letters of John. I love Ephesians. It’s practical and offers great tools for new believers, such as putting on the armor of God, a powerful analogy for equipping yourself for the spiritual battles to come.
The Holman Report is an online magazine for people who love Jesus but are tired of playing church.
1050 men singing their hearts out “I belong to You!” It’s cool outside in the beautiful and plush Waterville Valley two hours north of Boston in the White Mountains, but hot and stuffy in the local Ice area. The men lift their hands to God, amidst the strobe lights, fog machines, and the driving band leading the way.