Notes from the Trail

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Taking a cue from Scott’s entry, I’d like to invite you all to a little two-week adventure - The Friday Friend Challenge. Starting today, I’d like you to carve out 30 minutes to an hour, and write some notes to friends. Yes, I said write. That’s with a pen. You may have to hunt one down. They’re slender instruments with a small rolling ball on the end that is inked as it rolls by an attached ink cartridge. Of course, you can always use graphite. Just don’t use a keyboard.

We’re talking snail mail here. It’s a lost art. And yes, you’ll probably have to look in the phone book for an address. Sigh. Those 30 seconds of hunting down an address are sooooo inconvenient when you could just send an email. But don’t. Don’t click.

Write as many notes as you desire in that 30-minute to one hour interval. Before you begin, make a list of folks who you feel like writing. They may be relationship-based (family, friends), ministry-based (folks needing encouragement, support, advice) or recognition-based (leaders, teachers, influencers). Then just start writing. Those that you don’t get to today, you can begin writing next Friday.

Let’s try this for two weeks and see how it makes you feel to pick up pen and paper.

I have a shelf for "must-read" books in my house. If I ever get an office again where people can find me (I work out of the home predominantly, and there’s not room for my stuff at Journey), it will be moved there. These are books that over the years have deeply impacted my thinking, character, philosophies, and ministry.

Let’s add one today. The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges.

One of our small groups at church is currently going through it, and as I mentioned before, I just finished reading it with Ryan.

It’s a short read, but a powerful one. In fact, I would even say that in this day of reading, it’s a book that every believer needs to not just read, but digest.

It’s not about church trends, fads, emergent this or that. It’s about holiness. Holiness is a concept far removed from most of our experiences, yet the Lord says, "Be holy as I am holy."

It is holiness that marks us from our corrupted world and society. Church attendance or membership does not ensure your holiness. Neither does naive hype or hand-raisin’. Bridges says that we fundamentally misunderstand holiness.

"Our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered," he says. (p16) In other words, we are more concerned about conquering sin for our own benefits and self-worth than we are because our sin offends God. Because we see our struggle with sin as a success-failure game, we strive for "success" or "victory" over sin, which results in our attitude toward sin being mainly about us rather than about God. There are few tears of confession and repentance in our churches and lives these days over our sin because we see our sin mainly as personal failure rather than divine rebellion.

In addition, Bridges comments that "we have misunderstood ‘living by faith’ to mean that no effort is required on our part." I agree wholeheartedly. After teaching for many years, first to youth then to collegians, and now to folks of all ages, I see that as 21st century believers, we appreciate good exposition and application of God’s Word, but we fail to go home and match what we’ve heard with personal, disciplined effort. There’s a disconnect between our ears and our hands. It requires much sweat, effort, decision-making, resolving, and scheduling to change our habits, attitudes, and lifestyles to be in accord with the teaching of Scripture. We will not be holy without change. Change requires effort.

He also adds that "we do not take sin seriously enough." If every sin we committed incurred immediate, divine wrath, then perhaps we would begin to conceive how hateful God is toward sin. However, it is His grace and wisdom that stays His hand. His grace cost the life of His Son that we might not incur his immediate wrath, while His wisdom allows us to experience the consequences of our sins so that we will realize with distaste how unhealthy our selfishness is.

We pick and choose what sin we will consider unacceptable. Sexual immorality in the church is greatly frowned upon; however, pride is not. Yet it is pride that is preeminently hated by God. We whisper about embezzlers but laugh with gluttons. We fail to take sin seriously. We cannot choose what parts of God’s Word to obey and what parts to fudge on. "We cannot categorize sin if we are to live a life of holiness," says Bridges.

I’ll be reading this little book regularly for the rest of my life. It has immense value because we live in continual spiritual compromise.

Order your copy today, or be the first to comment and commit to read the book, and I’ll order you a copy as a gift.

It turns out that the hype and excitement about the mega-hit Christian animation series Veggie Tales being on NBC was a little overdone. It turns out that NBC’s censors have gotten ahold of the show, much to VT creator’s Phil Vischer’s dismay and quashed (or is it squashed?) references to God that are “non-historical.” In other words, they’ve ripped the ending out of the show where the veggies relate the spiritual and scriptural application. Gone is the final tag, “Remember kids, God made you special and he loves you very much.” Unfortunately, NBC must think that God loving a child is worthy of censorship. (Source)

Brent Bozell had an excellent commentary on the matter here. He concluded with:

This is one of those moments where you understand that networks like NBC are only talking an empty talk and walking an empty walk when it comes to the First Amendment, and “creative integrity,” and so on. They have told parents concerned about their smutty programs like “Will and Grace” that if they’re offended, they have a remote control as an option. The networks have spent millions insisting that we have a V-chip in our TV sets. Change the channel. Block it out.

But when it comes to religious programming — programming that doesn’t even mention Jesus Christ — just watch the hypocrisy. Instead of telling viewers to just change the channel if they don’t like it, or put in a V-chip for Bible verses, they demand to producers that all that outdated old-time religion has to be shredded before broadcast.

It’s truly sad that this anti-religious hypocrisy would emerge. Today, no one in network TV fears what the children are watching — unless it makes them think about God.

This entry is long overdue. My love for and admiration of the people of Journey Church has always been somewhat understated and undercover. When we began the process of starting a new church in our community in 2003, I was then serving as the campus minister at the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at UAM. I started there in 1995 and enjoyed every moment of it.

However, we sensed the leadership of God in the intentional beginnings of a new church, with a decidedly different structure and strategy, and I resigned to start Journey. At that point, we did so in faith that God would provide for and meet our needs. Carolyn had started a Noble photo a few years before, and the Lord continued to use that business as a primary means of provision for us. In addition, I started Noble Design since my background was in design, journalism and advertising. Business from it comes and goes in spurts.

Carolyn and I continue to receive our primary income from these two sources of self-employment. I have great hopes that MonticelloLive will eventually become my primary focus as it begins to draw in advertisers and sponsors.

That brings me back to Journey. In the beginning, we received a meager housing allowance from Journey as support. As Journey has grown, it has begun supporting us with full housing allowance and with health insurance, but we do not receive a “salary,” so to speak, from them yet. The church just isn’t at that point quite yet.

All that to say this… when I first helped start Journey, and we were meeting in our living room, I was very hesitant and even reticent to talk about it with folks that I knew. At that time, most folks I knew, obviously, were members of churches already. I did not (and still don’t) want fully-participating members of other churches to leave their own church to come to Journey. I don’t encourage “church hopping.” However, in the past three years, that hesitance has become a habit. What initially began as a wise principle to prevent proselytism (”stealing” other churches members) has become instead a phobia of perception. I think somewhere along the way, I grew quiet about Journey to others, simply because I didn’t want to be seen as “bragging” or “boasting” about the church.

However, a church is not a building. It’s a people. It’s ordinary folks - friends, neighbors, co-workers, students, and children - who have given their lives to following Jesus Christ. It’s normal folks like me who are discovering daily just how true and real the presence of God can be in our lives when we follow His teachings and submit all of life to Him. That’s why I’m so privileged and honored to be a part of a church like Journey.

I see all of its members imperfectly pursuing a perfect God. There’s not a single one of us who “have arrived.” But I sincerely regard each person as seeking to allow Jesus to be Lord of their lives. Everyday folks are “being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3.18) simply by following the teachings of Scripture and loving one another. That’s really what being a disciple of Christ, a follower, a learner, a Christian, is all about anyway, isn’t it? It’s not meant to be hard, but something so simple a
child is held up as an example.

And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. (1 John 3.23)

Believe - really, truly, and deeply and love. Believe and love. Give your mind and your heart. Radically.

I don’t know what this entry has meant for those of you reading, but for me, I had to get it off my chest. Journey is an amazing church.

Not because of its innovative structure or strategy of servanthood. Not because of its dynamic small groups. Not because of solid biblical teaching. Those are the things that folks might point to, but it’s not what makes Journey a great church.

Journey is not even a great church because it’s full of great people. The truth is that not one of them/us considers themselves “great.” They would all deny the description. Truth is, they’re just ordinary. Sinners being transformed into saints. Recovering hypocrites. Wretches who testify to the truth of “Amazing
Grace.”
The people of Journey are great because of our Great God. It is He that has made us and not we ourselves.

We are being transformed daily by Him. We are seeking daily because of the glimpse of Him that we’ve seen. We are striving daily to be more like Him.

And it’s the continual dailyness of these amazing, ordinary, grace-filled, God-glorifying people that compels me to write today…

Thank you. Truly.

In the past week there has been an upsurge in traffic on Notes from the Trail. Lots of new folks getting their feet dusty with us on this journey. I attribute much of this to the immediate and encouraging success of MonticelloLive. Did you know that last Friday it had just shy of 200 visits and more than 1300 page views? That’s pretty huge for a new website in a rural community! Thanks for your help in making that possible. I particularly want to thank Paul Griffin at Shelter Insurance. An email he sent to some friends got forwarded… and forwarded… until it made its way to the emails of teachers in the Monticello school district and at UAM. Many of the hits came from there, I believe.

For those of you just stopping in for the first time, let me encourage you to comment. It’s what makes blogs fun, participatory, and ongoing. It encourages the author, and it encourages others to participate as well. Often, what you have to say is much more important than what a blog author does!

By the way, for added exposure and traffic, if you’ve got the time, swing by and submit Notes.

Finally, for those of you following the minivan saga, I think it’s sold! Yahoo!

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