Crockpots versus Microwaves

October 28, 2019 by

When deciding what to cook, it’s important to make sure that you are using the correct equipment to get the right results. You either want your meal to come out tasty and savory or quick and fast. Above all else, you want it to be edible.

You have several different choices to make this happen, but for tasty and savory I choose a crockpot. If I want it quick and fast, I choose a microwave. It’s important to know the difference between a crockpot versus a microwave.

Crockpots aren’t necessarily slow, they just utilize energy differently than microwaves. Microwaves disrupts and sometimes mutates the molecular structure through waves of energy thus creating heat whereas crockpots create energy through intentional and sustained heat. This is why you cook a pot roast in a crockpot and a hot pocket in the microwave. You want the molecular structure of the pot roast to stay the same, you’re hoping that the hot pocket’s molecular structure will change into something remotely healthy.

Filed Under: Thinker

Do You Have to go to Church?

October 20, 2019 by

The simple answer is No. You don’t have to go to church.

But you do have to be part of the body of Christ. And the very best way to be part of the body is to create intentional and purposeful opportunities to build relationships with others in the body. That is best done through serving and worshiping alongside one another.

You can do this in a variety of ways, however, the simplest way is to discipline yourself to attend a weekly gathering where you have the opportunity to engage and serve with members of the body whom you wouldn’t normally encounter in your day to day life.

Filed Under: Leadership, Pastor, Thinker

Is the Bible a Start or an End?

October 19, 2019 by

I read this quote somewhere, but I can’t find the link. However, it’s so good that I wanted to share it with you.

The Bible in Jesus world was a scroll that you saw someone reading in the center of the room, in the midst of community.

And then you all discussed it. You surrounded the words…you encircled them literally, physically…and then you engaged with them. Together.

It was a communal experience.

Picture all that energy swirling around the room, picture all those opinions, picture really wise people saying interesting and profound things, picture that crazy uncle rambling on and on and making no sense.

And then you’d come back next week and do it all over again.

The Torah started the discussion.

For many in our world, the Bible ends the discussion.

Filed Under: Leadership, Pastor, Quotes

Age Effectiveness in the Local Church

October 18, 2019 by

I’ve been thinking about the effectiveness that age brings to the local church. It seems to me, that as leaders in the church, we fall into three separate age groups of effectiveness.

Ages 20 to 35
From age 20 to 35 – you’re learning and establishing what kind of pastor you will be – education, influence, success and failures. Lots of rebellion, lots of hard times, lots of growing. You can fight with older pastors/churches – but you aren’t going to win.

Ages 35 to 55
From age 35 to 55 – you are building the culture of the church. The culture is established by what you determine is important, how well you lead your church, how well you disciple the people in your church, etc. You are trying to recruit people younger then you and learn from people older than you while creating the church that God has placed in your heart.

Ages 55 and beyond
From age 55 and beyond – you are simply a caretaker for the next generation. They aren’t going to do church the way you want them to. It’s going to look different. It’s going to feel different. They are going to treat the church differently then you would. And you can fight it or you can trust that God knows what He’s doing by putting these people in charge. The worst thing you can do is complain about the younger generation.

How do you see age effectiveness in the local church?

Filed Under: Leadership, Pastor, Thinker

Did God Abandon Jesus?

October 17, 2019 by

Sometimes I read scripture and and struggle with understanding it fully. A great example can be found in Matthew 27:46 where he calls out in a loud voice, “My God, My God, why have forsaken/abandoned me?”

Here’s the question that I have – is Jesus symbolically quoting Psalm 22:1 as a way of expressing human emotion or is Jesus actually stating that in this moment, He has literally been abandoned by God?

I would contend that Jesus, despite his obvious pain and suffering, maintained a high degree lucidity throughout the crucifixion experience and in this moment, quoted David in order to accurately convey the distinctive human emotion of feeling/sensing separation and distance from God. I would contend that Jesus cognitively recognized that God had not abandoned Him, but rather choose to quote David as a way of conveying to future generations the necessity of turning to scripture in those times of great need and stress when it appears that God has abandoned them.

However, there seems to be a popular belief that God actually turned his back and literally abandoned Jesus during this time. Proponents of this belief seem to argue that because Jesus took on the sins of all mankind and that God cannot stand the sight of evil (Habakkuk 1:13) and cannot tolerate the sins of the wicked (Psalm 5:4-8) that God abandoned Jesus because of this sin (Romans 1:28).

That seems inaccurate in light of Jeremiah 16:17 where God clearly says that He sees every sin and does not turn His back on the those in need (Psalm 22:24). 2 Corinthians 4:9 clearly tells us that we are never abandoned by God and John 3:16 would support the theory that because God saw the world and all of it’s sinfulness, that He gave Jesus in order to give us eternal life.

Here’s the dilemma I find myself facing.

I cannot find any scriptures that state that Jesus was abandoned on the cross by God.

I cannot find any scriptures that state that Jesus was not abandoned on the cross by God. 

What I can find is that God does not abandon man simply because man has sin in his life. God sees that sin, He hates it and cannot tolerate the sin, but he still loves the man enough to pay the price to cover the sin in order to restore the relationship between God and man.

I can find a primary supporting argument in Hebrews 2:14-18 which reinforces the fullness of Christ’s humanity. From this perspective, Jesus had to be made like his brothers, like man, in every respect so that he might become the high priest in order to make the sacrifice for the since of the people. This would seem to eliminate the argument that God would not abandon man, but would abandon Jesus simply because Jesus was God’s son. Or that Jesus had some supernatural strength of some sort that allowed God to abandon Jesus, but not man. In order to make the sacrifice for our sins, Jesus had to be made like man in every respect.

I can also find a primary supporting argument in Hebrews 4:14-16 which reinforces the affirmation that because of the fullness of His humanity, Jesus has experienced every temptation that we have, including the temptation of believing that God has abandoned Him in his time of need, but that He experienced these temptations and did not sin. 

A secondary supporting argument to this can be found in Romans 14:23 arguing that temptation to lose faith in God is akin to sin and because Jesus didn’t sin, Jesus could not have actually believed that God had abandoned Him otherwise that would have meant that He had sinned.

Therefore, based on on the primary and secondary supporting arguments, I believe that I can say with confidence that God did not abandon Jesus on the cross, but that Jesus, in the fullness of His humanity, experienced the very same emotional response that every human being does in times of high emotional and physical stress. And that as a result of that stress, the words that people heard was that Jesus felt as if God had abandoned Him in His time of need. However, the truth of this phrase is that in this time of crisis, Jesus turned to scripture in order to give Him the strength to continue on.

So, that said, I’d be interested in some scripturally-based feedback on this topic.

Filed Under: Pastor, Thinker

Understanding Toxic People

October 15, 2019 by

Toxic people/customers are always going to have a particular kind of response. They’ve self-aggrandized their position in life and have lost the core competencies of what it means to be a human being. As such, you can either seek to reform/reeducate them or you simply have to walk away. Confronting them does nothing because, from their perspective, they are in the right.

Filed Under: Thinker