Month: April 2012

Links of the Week

Nearly blew up the blog yesterday with the baby news. On to the links:

  1. Peter Carroll thinks you can change the world, Donald Miller tells us why
  2. I’m not a huge NBA fan but I found this article to be fascinating. The pay off comes near the end when the author writes: “Consider the NBA at its very best,” but the best line comes in paragraph three: “The stars who win championships allow themselves to be criticized and coached.”
  3. A familiar sounding story…I love the title “Important Things Are Hard To Do“
  4. Scot McKnight’s look in to the future of college ministry
  5. Seth Godin on whether or not to pay attention to the opinions of others

We Are Having…

A baby! See what I did there…

We went to the doctor yesterday for our big mid-way check up and ultrasound, and everything looks great so far. It really is amazing what they can see and show you with that machine. We spent about 45 minutes watching the child kick, squirm, and stretch…apparentely it is quite active.

And we found out the gender.

But we are not telling…

…so stay tuned!

NT Wright Quote of the Week

I just finished NT Wright’s excellent book on character and virtue: After You Believe. In it he argues winsomely to wrap up the quest for Christian character inside the ideas of worship and mission. They all go together. We pursue virtue and character as an act of worship and to help us in our mission.

He writes that the 4 big virtues are humility, patience, chastity, and charity. These four big words contain a bunch of other ideas (i.e. faith, hope, and love, the fruits of the spirit, etc). This section comes from his thoughts on chastity, but I would argue they really capture the essence of the book:

“Christians have always insisted that self-control is one of the nine fold varieties of Spirit’s fruit. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, you have to work at it and discover why certain temptations, at certain times and places, are hard to resist.

“That because chastity is a virtue: it’s not first and foremost a rule which you decide either to keep or to break; it’s certainly not something you can calculate according to a principle, such as the greatest happiness for the greatest number; and in particular, as Jesus himself indicated, it won’t be generated by going with the flow of what comes naturally.

“This is where the genuinely celibate, like Jesus himself…have discovered the joy of a ‘second nature’ self-control which much of our culture, like most of the ancient world, never even imagines.

“By contrast, as those of us who care pastorally, or in families, for people who have embraced the present habits of society will know, the bruises and wounds caused by those habits are deep, long-lasting, and life-decaying. The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure…the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.

“Here Patience and Humility come into play once more. The frantic urge toward sexual intimacy is part of the drive to express yourself, to push yourself forward, to insist that this is who you are and this is how you intend to behave.

“No, says Humility; you don’t discover your true self that way. You find it by giving yourself away. Precisely, agrees Patience: taking the waiting out of wanting is short-changing yourself and everybody else. The virtues are linked together…if you want one of them, you better practice them all.”

Finish Strong

It’s the final month of school for most of our students and people are starting to think about finals, summer jobs, traveling, internships, and all that good stuff. And, it is a super busy season for us…readying new leaders, finishing well relationally, planning new things, evaluating the year, etc, etc, etc. All on top of the normal rhythms of groups and one-on-ones and meetings.

I’m ready for vacation.

But I don’t want to check out early. At our last leadership community I shared with our students the story of Caleb. I always come back to Caleb when I think about finishing well, finishing strong.

Consider Caleb’s example (you can read about him in Numbers 13 and 14)…

  • He was one of only two Israelite spies (Joshua was the other) who saw how good the promised land was and believed the people could take it over.
  • He was sold out by the other 10 spies who freaked out because of the “giants in the land” and their weapons.
  • He and Joshua were the only two people from his generation allowed to enter the promised land.
  • He had to wander around the desert while his contemporaries died out, all the while knowing the good things he was missing out on. He had to question his fate a ton, I would think.
  • He went to a lot of funerals and dug a lot of graves.
  • And then, God picked Joshua to be the leader to take over from Moses. Joshua got the book deal, the twitter followers, the big church. Caleb had his life and his family and a hope for a plot of land.

If anyone had an excuse to give up, to lose hope, to become cynical or bitter or entitled or frustrated or angry or to quit, it was Caleb.

We don’t know much about what Caleb did for those 40 years, but we know how his story ends. He shows up again in Joshua 14. Everyone else had received their allotment of land, and finally Caleb says, “It’s time for me to take mine.”

And we read this:

6 Now the people of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the LORD said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, 8 but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly. 9 So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God wholeheartedly.’

10 “Now then, just as the LORD promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! 11 I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. 12Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the LORD helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”

13 Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. 14 So Hebron has belonged to Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, because he followed the LORD, the God of Israel, wholeheartedly. 15 (Hebron used to be called Kiriath Arba after Arba, who was the greatest man among the Anakites.)

Then the land had rest from war.

Somehow, through all that, he still followed God wholeheartedly. He finished strong.

I love that image of 85-year-old Caleb still looking for a fight, still ready to go, still throwing himself fully into the work God had asked him to do. And somehow all of that contributed to peace in the land.

When I get tired I think about Caleb…I want to finish strong too.

Easters!

We had a great Easter Sunday yesterday. Unofficially 650 people came to REUNION (Sojourn’s church partner), which will be a record. I love the energy in the Hilton when the room is so packed.

And, we hosted friends and family in our home afterwards. It is always great to bring family, church, students, and Amy’s work together in one place because it doesn’t happen often (or at least as often as we would like). It was on mission, and most of all it was FUN.

One of my all time favorite Easters!

Start with Why (Quote of the Week)

Great story from a book that has captured my attention: Start With Why

The story of two Stonemasons:

A stonemason is asked, “Do you like your job?” He responds: “I’ve been building this wall for as long as I can remember. The work is monotonous. I’m out in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day is backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But it’s a job. It pays the bills.”

A second stonemason, working on the same wall, is asked, “Do you like your job?” He responds: “I’ve working on this wall for as long as I can remember. The work can be monotonous. Yes, it can be really hot out here and lifting these stones, day after day, is back-breaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But I love my job…I’m building a cathedral.”

Build cathedrals, not walls!

Something I Like About Weddings…

Amy and  I went to a wedding this weekend…our friends Ramon and Rachel exchanged vows and became man and wife.

There are a million things I love about weddings, and as I get older I get more and more emotional at weddings, and here’s why…

Marriage shapes us. It shapes our character. If we jump in with both feet and submit to the “other” marriage changes us…we allow someone else to be the authority in our lives and to speak truth to us…to mirror back to us who we really are.

It is incredibly humbling and has the potential to be transformative.

I love that.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Ramon over the years about marriage. About why I married Amy. About why I think marriage is great and why I am “pro-marriage” (as I like to say). We argued about it. Ramon said people didn’t need to get married…it was an old-fashioned institution.

In the end though, he went for it. They are going for it. And I am excited because I can see the change already. My prayer is they stick with the process, they continue to submit to and love each other, and that they embrace the adventure. Because it is beautiful.

Northeastern Nailing It…

The Northeastern leadership team took home the Golden Hammer (Nailed It!) Award for the month of March. Here’s how they did it:

Every spring NU holds an event called “Sex Week.” Its intention is to highlight awareness and safety (ie anti-sexual assaults) on campus, but it really turns into a raunchy celebration of sexuality.

Our Sojourn team at NU has long wanted to engage this week and to use it as a platform to talk about sex-trafficking in the city of Boston. The team put together a great event, bringing in a local detective who works exclusively on trafficking cases, a representative from Not-For-Sale (an anti-slavery organization), and providing space for questions and discussion.

The Sojourn event got advertised in the sex week publication (which was great and problematic at the same time…you’d have to see the “magazine” to really understand). Over 60 students showed up (some may have picked the wrong room: our group was in-between a lap dance class and the free condom station). They engaged the presenters and the issue well, asked a lot of good questions, and were really interested in learning and doing more to help the cause.

SojournNU nailed it for a couple of reasons: One, they engaged something already happening on campus. So cool to see them integrate into what most of the students are already a part of there. Two, this was almost entirely student driven. Three, it brought light and redemption to a week on campus that has a lot of hiding and darkness. Four, they highlighted an issue that is significant and troublesome in the greater Boston community.

Proud of the team…they nailed it!