Initial Thoughts from Reading "Radical"

I just started “Radical”, by David Platt. I’ll be honest, it’s a hard book to read. It’s a hard book to start. It’s a hard book to pick back up.

Almost right off the bat David starts discussing a passage out of the bible that has always fascinated me: John chapter 6. At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus feeds about 5 thousand people. Around vs. 14 and 15 you get the sense that the people believe that “He is the Prophet who is to come into the world”. Immediately He leaves, because He gets the feeling they were going to seize Him and make Him king. The next scene has Him walking on water. Once in the boat, it immediately appears on the shore (vs. 21)! As he starts talking to the crowd, He tells them quite plainly that they only seek him, not for the miraculous signs, but because he fed them. As He starts talking to them about believing in “the one whom God sent”, they begin asking about miraculous signs again. Jesus tells them about the manna from heaven, and how God fed the Israelites that way. But he doesn’t stop there. He amps up by proclaiming, “I am the bread of life” (vs. 35). He then continues to tell them that anyone who comes to him will go hungry or be thirsty. As the story escalates more and more, Jesus finally proclaims in vs. 53 “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.”

As David Platt puts it, “Not exactly the sharpest church-growth tactic. I can almost picture the looks on the disciples’ faces. ‘No, not the drink-my-blood speech! We’ll never get on the list of the fastest-growing movements if you keep asking them to eat you.’”

And I’ll be honest: I have to agree. As you read through the next few verses, many of His disciples complain about his teachings being too hard, and that they don’t understand. Jesus doesn’t seem to be very sensitive to their feelings as he proclaims, “Does this cause you to be offended?...” (vs. 61). Again, this type of action doesn’t draw the greatest of crowds. At this point in your average western world Christian church, sermons start to get a little softer. Messages begin to be a little tamer. We do our best to not offend so as to push people away. We back off from the teachings of Jesus, because we are afraid to offend someone. But not Jesus! He amps it up, and people begin to leave. We see in verses 66 and 67 that so many people leave, that its possible only twelve remain with Him….

And that is where “Radical” begins…. Like I said, “ouch.”

The reading of this book has some pretty good timing as our congregation is going through some tough times presently. We have seen people leave, and we find ourselves asking, “What could we have done to keep them?” We also find ourselves asking questions like, “what can we do to draw more people into our church? How can we be more visible in our community?” Don’t get me wrong: ministry leaders should be very sensitive to not burning out volunteers. Church leaders should understand the demographic of the community and what the community needs are.

But this passage out of John 6 strikes a completely differ chord. Jesus knows who the true believers are, and he seems to push the others away. In fact, he seems to amp up the ‘weird’ stuff. I mean think about it: if you are around during Jesus time, waiting for the messiah to appear, you start following this guy thinking He is going to lead a rebellion against the Romans. All of a sudden He gets fed up with all the politics and starts talking about the only way to have eternal life is to eat His flesh and drink His blood?!? Don’t you think you might take a second look at your decision to follow Him? I’m just saying…..

I guess my point is that I think it is time to stop coddling to people and just teach the message of Jesus. We have to put Him first in every aspect of our life. Our finances should reflect spending habits that would make Him proud; not just using the church as a tax right off. The way we talk should inspire others; people should know we are Christians just by how we speak. Our weekly calendar should reflect activities of community service, outreach, and worship on a regular basis. I’m not saying I’m perfect and that I have this down, because I definitely don’t. What I am saying is that we need to start being intentional about our decision to follow Jesus, and make our decisions based on that. We shouldn’t be concerned with how many people might not like what we are doing, if we are living a life that reflects Jesus. Because if you are doing a good thing you will upset people. You can’t make everyone ‘happy’ and that certainly shouldn’t be our ultimate goal.

Change, yet again

One of my college students has started his own blog. Its about his time in Italy this semester. When you get a chance, give it a read. He is a great guy who is considered a leader within our group, as well as, other circles in his life.

Our college group is definitely changing. I like it, and I don't like it: change that is.... We have some new class leaders this semester. In a few months, we will be on our first official mission trip as a group. We have started using "Small Mini Groups" (SMGs) as accountability groups. The college students are responsible for their own class on Sunday mornings. And it looks like the standard for me teaching will be in the summers, for just a few months.

The difficulty for me with college ministry is changing tactics to get others into the group, and then helping them leave the group years later. Each college student is different, and leaves at their own time. Thankfully, God has blessed me with a personality that continually looks at how to change a program or process for the better. For some reason, I can not be satisfied with "how things are". I am always looking at how to improve it. I guess its possible that looking at ministries from this perspective, particularly college ministry, might actually be a good thing.

* Quirky quotes

First I am going to start out by saying that I completely forgot to mention that my daughter lost her first tooth and that my son got to be a pitcher (third string) in his fall ball league. These were quite momentous in 2010. Yet somehow they missed the list. Sigh.

I have two separate quotes for today. One for each child, which makes things nice and even! They even both have a nice combo of sweet/quirky/serious flavors to them. The first quote I sadly did not get to hear and I am only repeating the story as told by his teacher. However she is a reliable source and quite frankly it sounds bang on like something he would say. Today was carving day at school. A delightful day where a great guy came and gave his whole morning to helping third grade boys to carve pieces of wood into snakes. The boys LOVED it and I was able to see some portions of it during but not all. Brian (the guy giving his time) is a sweet spirited person and in ministry work full time. His faith oozes off him. Apparently when they were done with the snakes he had a nice talk with the boys about how much fun it would be to scare little sisters, etc. with the snakes, which I am sure the boys totally agreed with. He then added that as Christians we needed to think of others first so scaring our sisters was probably not a good idea. I am sure this sounded good in his head. However the wheels were turning in my sons head and he announced....

I haven't been baptized yet.

Apparently he felt this was a loophole. His friend in class must have agreed because he mournfully added that he was baptized when he was six. I guess no scaring sisters for his friend but my son was in the clear to scare to his little hearts content...for now... :)

I realize that we have some discussion, among other things, concerning the notion that after baptism there is nothing fun ever again. But the story still made me giggle, and his teacher said she nearly cried from laughing.

Today my daughter lied to me. I can not say this is the first time, but it was blatant. I admit she is a bit more free with the truth than her brother. When he lied it crushed me, with her I guess I was expecting it. Maybe it is the girl in her. :) While cleaning my son brought me two earrings. For about .0005 seconds I was a little excited because one belonged to a pair that I have worn for years and lost one a few months ago. To get the other back would be huge. However my mind quickly moved to the reality that my daughter had brought them down from the tray on the bathroom counter to play with them. Last week she was walking around with my pearls on - having no idea that the necklace she was 'playing' with cost any more than her dollar store beads. In confronting her with the earrings I did a classic parent fail moment. I asked her where they came from. I set her up to either lie or come clean. A better decision would have been to skip the part where I dared her to lie and just go to the don't play with my stuff talk, although truthfully that has clearly not taken deep root in her subconscious or I would not keep having it. Well she gave a lovely doe eyed 'I don't know where these came from, I promise I don't, really I don't I promise, I have no idea.' LIAR. I waited a few seconds and gave her another chance. Told her I knew they belonged in the bathroom, etc. She then said that she took them to play with. A fact I knew all along..., well except for .0005 seconds.

I then told her that lying to me meant that she didn't love me.

Total melt down.

Tears streaming, little girl face pressed into my abdomen telling me that she loves me 'so much.' Only someone truly devoid of emotion could have withstood that moment. (So that you know I am not evil I did give her many hugs, cried my self, told her how important she was to me, expressed that mommy does not lie to her, etc...) Somewhere in this moment I asked

How do I know you won't lie to me again?

Because I am crying!!!

I may be lacking in some emotion. I guess she didn't understand why her tears were not proof enough.

What a day.

* So Long 2010

I will not go into much detail and whining about how I have not updated my blog for months - the only comfort is that others I know have not updated for longer times than myself. Strangely enough life goes on. I miss the updates because they are truly more for myself than anyone else, as I believe this next little story will illustrate.

I just finished reading the post from last year and was much entertained by some events. For those who are not going to flip back and read I will say that the day before I did 'So long 2009' it was college dinner and I made the college group put away Christmas. Off-handedly I remarked that the disorder of my stuff would be December 2010 Michelle's problem. I forgot that I had done that until I opened the boxes this year and it was my problem. Many things in order and some in random places. Opening the boxes was full of surprises. This year I took down the decorations a day before dinner so my stuff would be where it belonged. Lesson learned Michelle of January 2010, the Michelle of January 2011 was inspired to get back in the game a bit quicker!

Enough with that - on with the list of stuff for 2010, which naturally will be ten points long, because that is the only appropriate length.

• Our house was on the market for a long time, by two different companies and eventually at a much reduced price and still did not sell. The market is completely a bummer and we subsequently took our house off the market in the fall. This has caused some introspection. We still wish to move. There are things I want to do that I can not accomplish in this subdivision. God will take care of it and we can be thankful that we were not in a position that we had to sell and lose tons of money.
• My daughter started Kindergarten this year and is loving it. I can just now see some good learning habits and concepts take shape. Admittedly the first few months were all about the friends. But now she can read one vowel words and is getting reading for the step into two vowel rules. You can see the pride on her face when she reads. It is such a milestone.
• My son continues to love school, but I believe his favorite part is the football card trading during snack. He can now sit through a football game and have an intelligent conversation about players and their positions and teams, with his dad of course, his mother does not care. Two days ago he informed me that it was Eli Manning's birthday. Who knew? Apparently they put that information on the back of the cards. So Eli Manning, wherever you are, we wished you a happy birthday.
• My nieces spent three weeks at my house this summer, while my sister was recovering from surgery. That deserved its own post, but sadly fell into my slump of posting. We had a great time and we learned many things. For example, only my son could sleep in the same room as my youngest niece. He was the only one able to ignore her three year old chatter and fall asleep. The other girls would just talk back and things would ramp up from there.
• This October I went on a ten day vacation with my mother to Italy. Another event that deserves its own post, with pictures, but has not quite come to fruition yet. It was a great blessing to have such extended time with my mom with no one else around to take her attention, which at this point is mostly grandkids. Because who looks at me anymore when my kids are in the room?
• The kids got new furniture this year. My son got the typical young boy dream of bunk beds and my daughter finally got a big girl bed, since she has been in her toddler bed/crib bed since birth. That was a big event for us and a marker of their growth. We looked in nearly every store in town and through Craigslist, trying to meet everyone's requirements of style and budget. Exhausting.
• This fall our Children's Ministry leader stepped down to take on the role of Preschool director. This allowed myself and another mom to step into that role. It has only been a few months but I am hopeful for 2011 to see how we can add our personal touches to this ministry.
• Our college ministry continues to grow in so many ways. This year has been one in which they young adults themselves have taken on so much more leadership. It is great to be a part of their lives for so many years and to see God growing them. They now have Prime Ministers of Education and Social Planning as well as planning a return mission trip to Bayou LeBatre led by some of our newer members. God is rounding out the group and bringing in so many different opportunities.
• Also this fall I began watching a little guy while his mom is at work, which has been tons of fun for all of us. He is thankfully an easy baby because we are quite mobile at times. It has been great to see how my children respond in taking care of him, especially how seriously my son works. Although the fact that he negotiated for part of my income in return for his work is another story. He is quite the money saver. He has nearly saved the cost of admission to Disney for a 4-7 days pass, because he intends to go for his tenth birthday, which leads to my final topic...
• We went to Disney for my daughters fifth birthday. How did that not get a post?!?!?!? We managed to keep the trip a secret and it was awesome. While I thought my son would give it away. He himself was not completely sure what we were doing until he read Orlando at the check in desk. It helped that I packed at night and woke them at 4 in the morning to go to the airport. That will throw anyone off their game. My daughter was in heaven, especially her day at the Bibbity Boppity Boutique. This may inspire me to get a post up here all about that trip.

This experience has pretty much reminded more of what I have not done... Oh well. At least this list got done. :)