Day 119 - sickness.

Day 119 - and I've got flu.
Some call it stomach flu, of course its not really stomach flu its really gastroenteritis.
So it hit.
4am in the morning and growing.
Thought it was the broccoli I ate last night. I think its right to blame the broccoli ...it deserves it.

Hey hopefully 48 hours.

Huge weekend.
Was meant to run my first half-marathon since my forced lay off ....but tendonitis hit me two weeks ago.
Was meant to eat out tonight with two good friends ....sorry friends.
Was meant to fix sprinklers tomorrow - yep, something good is coming out of this!
But the size of this weekend was bigger than any of these things.
Penultimate weekend of the Premier League.
36 games played in the league and there is a 1 point difference!
Chelsea lead Manchester Utd.
Chelsea play at Liverpool; Man U play Sunderland at home.
Need Chelsea to slip up and Man U to win.
Huge weekend.

Is my gastroenteritis symptomatic of what this weekend is going to be like?
But hey, hopefully 48 hours will see the world sorted!
At least my world.

I know there's a bigger world. But sometimes we live in shrunken worlds - our own.
I know that gastroenteritis isn't that major.
I know Premier League results isn't world peace.
But sometimes we allow our world to shrink to the things that only bother us.

Doing this series Consumed:What's Sucking the Life Out of You?
Really a series about the idols we bow down to.
Was just thinking today that one of those idols is bowing down to our own little worlds.

Weird.

Here I am thinking about preaching on the very things I'm doing as of Friday evening!

Is my sickness really my gastroenteritis or is my sickness deeper.

But its 9:10pm and I need to sleep.

Ponderings, musings, thoughts......blame my sickness.
I guess the question is what sickness?

Day 118 Living by mending.

Day 118.
I read today these words "Man was born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue."
It's from Mark DeYmaz's blog and he attributes it to Eugene O'Neil.
Interesting line.

I guess theologically its espousing the theology of original sin.
Interesting theology - maybe more Greek in origin than Hebrew - but that's a debate for another day.
The grace of God is glue - so true. Excellent truth.
But its the line "he lives by mending."
That's an intriguing line.

Everyday is a mending day. Something of my brokenness can get fixed. Day in day out.
So maybe my intentional follow today was undergoing some mending.
But do we always know the mending?

Maybe it happened during lunch as I talked with a friend and learned more about another culture.
Maybe it happened as I sat and listened to a pastor speak about why we should love the church?
Maybe it happened as I had physio and with ice wrapped around my ankles I reflected and meditated.
Maybe it happened as I read Scripture.
Maybe it happened as I wrote.
Maybe it happened tonight as I sit with my family.
Maybe it happened ........

Spiritual soul mending isn't logical or rational.
The mending is a work of grace - and grace is bigger, broader, un-relentless, unorthodox. You maybe don't know where or when it seeps into a broken part of your soul. But it does. Wonderful.

The thing I can be sure of is that the mending wasn't maybe.
Maybe I don't always know when it happens.
but there's no maybe that it does.
God's grace.

A surrendered life is a mending life - even on the days you don't act very surrendered.

Day 117 Em.........

Day 117 and I'm just home from teaching the first part in a two part Alpha Course teaching on the Holy Spirit.
Remember last nights blog on a normal day and why would you want a normal day when you can have an inspired, God present day. Well, tonight's teaching more or less told us that the inspired, God present day can be the normal when you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit.

Em .......does that mean that my previous blog reveals than I'm not always indwelt with the Holy Spirit?

You could say yes.
You could say 'I leak!'

But after tonight's talk wow ...I wish I didn't leak as much.
Here is the life of God - His presence, His salvation waiting to saturate, soak us ...wow.

Jesus said people who drink of him would never thirst again, but would have God's life bursting up within them.

So after another night of teaching on salvation, water, baptism .....I'm back wondering about being baptised again in June?!

Em.........

Day 116 - a wake up call.

Day 116
Tired.
Monday was an 18 hour day.
Tuesday yuck.
Found myself awake at 3am on Monday.
At 3.45am still awake and felt a stirring in my soul. Began writing at 4am what I was feeling. 5.30am thought about a couple of hours of sleep, but ended up out running and the day just kept going.
Monday evening had the chance to share with church leadership what I had written.
Slept deep on Monday night.

So what was Tuesday about?
Tired or something else?

Mick McCarthy the manager of Premier League Wolves football team celebrated on Saturday his team staying up in the Premier league for another season - amazing achievement. But today at a news conference he talked about how the rest of the week he's been depressed.

Could relate to that.

Monday was huge.
Inspiration, a sense of God, His nearness, vision, things clicked.
Tuesday ........normal returned.
But who wants normal when you can have inspired, hearing God, holy stirrings.
Normal is dull. Normal is tiring. Normal is depressing.

But most days we live in normal.

Here's the point:
Easy to be intentional in following when you have a 3am Divine wake up call, much harder to be intentional on a normal day.
That's the point.

Day 114 - what really happened?

Day 114 and today's preach spoke loudly that the Christian faith believes in a Redeemer. His redemption can change your circumstances or change you in the midst of your circumstances.
Maybe I was challenging Bart's comments from last week (although I agree with loads of Bart's thinking) - but core to the Christian faith is solid hope and a solid Redeemer who does change destiny's.

My intentional follow was to represent Christ well. Yes, our choices can thwart his redemptive changes, but Christ is a Redeemer.

Preachers sit and ponder what people will do with your message after they hear it:
Will they walk out, go for lunch and forget it?
Will they leave feeling good but untransformed?
Will they leave and talk about what they heard over lunch and on into the next week (certainly Bart achieved that)?
Will they take action?

To represent Christ well is not to simply teach truth, but teach inspired truth. To have heard the Holy Spirit correctly during the week, crafted your insights correctly and been a vessel that God uses to flow through to bring change not just information.

We applaud many preachers, but truly only eternity will reveal good preaching.

So my intentional follow - maybe I won't know if it truly did until eternity.

Day 113 - reality.

Day 113 - yard work again...aaargh.

But tonight I'm sitting watching the movie The Informant.

Interesting.

What's interesting is the central character Mark Whittaker who can be in the most important discussion involving major issues but his mind has wandered to the biggest load of trivia you could think of ....like how do Polar Bears know their noses are black which they hide when they hunt for penguins!

The best parts of the movie are the comments he's thinking inside his mind that distract him from reality. Fascinating.

Or, is the trivia reality.

Where does reality sit?

Who determines what's reality?

It's real to Mark Whittaker.

Here's my intentional follow ........ try to match my reality to God's, He is ultimate reality.
Today I've tried to live in the truest reality there is - I've tried to focus my thoughts through prayer on what God is doing.
Today, more than many days, I've tried to line my reality up to His.

Yard work was easier, being Mark Whittaker is easier.D

Day 111 - should I get baptized again?

Day 111.
Drove with two staff up to Pine Flat Dam .....it's that time of the year again to film a video about baptism.
It's a bit like Christmas and Easter - every year you've got to find a new fresh way to talk about something that you've preached or taught every year.

Fortunately the incarnation, the resurrection and baptism are loaded with layer upon layer of truth and theology.

Is baptism simply declaration or is it a sign and a seal?
Is baptism just telling others you are a follower of Christ or is something sacramental happening in the mystery of how God comes to us?
Is it demonstrating salvation or is it forming the union with Christ that expresses salvation

It is all of these.
Baptism is a layered truth .....the deeper you peel the more there is.

Today was unpeeling another layer to help people .....but it was also an act of worship for me.
as i taught on film another layer of baptism, my heart at more and more for the wonder and the amazing grace of our amazing God.

You'll need to wait and see the film in May - but even although it is over 30 years since I was baptized ...I'm thinking about doing it again!

Day 110 - sorry for the lapses.

Day 110 and its looking more and more like a 'every second day' blog. Hey, unless you blog every single day quit complaining!

The sad thing that it has got me reflecting on is "could his mean that I'm only intentionally following Jesus every other day?"

The truth ........maybe!!

Every day i wake up I mean to blog. So could it be that every day I wake up I plan to follow Jesus - but .... stuff happens, things come in, other things take over.

Its the truth.
(So I guess that's my intentional follow of Jesus today ...major on truth!)

Now this doesn't mean that every day I don't hold to a Christian world view.
It doesn't mean that I go out and commit some cardinal sin.
It doesn't mean that I deny Jesus.
But it does mean that some days slip by and really, my life is no different than the people around me who don't claim to follow Jesus. Nothing is distinct.

Makes you wonder if the more weird/extreme forms of following Jesus that some Christians portray might be better .....even on off days either by how you dress, attending yet another church service, speaking some King James language and/or clearly being "not of this world" at least you remain distinct.

My problem - because I believe following Christ is not done with the extremes of clothes, language and being oddly different, but from being "in the world" while not being of it my distinctions require intentionality. This authentic following cannot happen at the surface level. It is deeper. Christ's transformation happens within the soul and when we live it out it is with substance and meaning, not trivia or surface.

So on a day when I get cluttered up with junk, when I spin too busy, when I feel sucked dry or just crappy ........I don't look any different than people who don't follow Jesus.....and while I may hold still to my faith in Christ ......my lack of intentionality means I do a lousy job at representing Him.

So maybe my lapses in blogging reveal unintentional lapses in authentic following.

Excuse me if I remain sometimes lapsing in blogging, but don't excuse me if I fail to follow intentionally every day.

Day 108 - Sigh.

Day 108 and it could seem that my daily blog has turned into a every other day blog. Sorry folks. So wanted to blog last night, but my Stockton hotel room didn't have wifi! Yep another reason not to visit Stockton!
I had just dropped Bart off at the airport for his red-eye flight back to Cincinnati, for the first time since 6pm on Friday I was alone for the 2 hour drive to Stockton. When I dropped my 3rd cousin off and heading to the I-99 I took some deep breathes. I was good to breath freely, because for the last 48 hours I hadn't. Bart just has this knack of getting me agitated.
but very quickly after taking some deep, silent breathes (Bart also can talk solid for 48 hours!) very quickly the silent breathes turned into sighs.

Sighs of exasperation that sometimes my own radicalness gets tempered. Bart appears somewhat free in expressing his radicalness.
Sighs of tiredness at what could be required to get the revolutionary flames burning brighter again in my leadership.
Sighs of fear. slight fear, but still fear that to truly live out some of the theology I hold will see me more misunderstood and yet again misinterpreted and accused of being a heretic.

Maybe it was just the tiredness of a busy constant 48 hours, but my first response to Bart's visit was to sigh.

Gladly it wasn't my lasting response.

By my stop at Turlock and some processing, my response turned to vigour and enthusiasm to take a hard look at so much of what happens in my own life and in the life of Redeemer's Church and how it represents Jesus.
Thanks 'Jovial Cynic' for your encouragement.

So ....that was Day 107....Day 108 I'm at a meeting with a bunch of pastors in Stockton - SIGH!

Day 106 and Bart Campolo stirs me again.

Day 106 and Bart Campolo is staying with us and as usual its a theological stirring.
The topic is incarnational Christianity.
Others would place Bart in the new monasticism movement. Bart would avoid any categorization.
He lives with his family in the ghetto of Walnut Hills, Cincinnati (yep, it doesn't sound too ghetto'ish, but it is!).
The conversation revolved around his inability to truly incarnate himself into that culture and context.
Christ did.
But Bart can't.
He remains a privileged white guy in a black urban sprawl.

That forces some interesting incarnational ministry rethinking.
Even more Christological amazement.

Other stirring rethinking to date on this visit is the idea that some people won't ever get fixed.
It wasn't a throw away comment by Bart, Bart works with some majorly broken people. He spoke this carefully and deliberately.
His experience is that some people will never be fixed.
The church language of transformation, of come to Jesus and everything will be fixed ....is not the reality of people attending the Walnut Hills Fellowship.
OUCH!

But really, if you think about it, we see untransformed lives in all our churches. We see untransformed lives by people claiming to have been Christians for 40 years.
Think of people in your church that are angry, short fused, lazy, jealous, selfish ......and have been for all the years of being Christians.

Transformation?
The bad stuff gone and new stuff showing?

Bart's bold comment resonates with every pastor's reflection of some of the people in their churches.

So what does this mean?

Does it mean transformation never happens? No.
Does it mean it rarely happens? I don't think.

Maybe it means that transformation is a miracle. But as miracles go, common and/or always is not vocabulary you can use.

It's got me thinking. Wondering. Disagreeing, but now perhaps agreeing.
Certainly processing.

Thanks Bart for stirring again.
Intentional following needs critical thinking.

Still got a supper, a Sunday preach, a Sunday lunch and a ride to the airport to be stirred even more by the guy always carrying a spoon to stir it with.

Day 104, a thankful day on the I-5.

Day 104 and I spent half of it on the I-5 heading south to Tujunga, S.Cal. Redeemer's Church is working with a church in Tujunga CA and another church in Tacoma WS to help them turnaround. Every month I get to visit these churches and aside from bringing come coaching I get to hear stories of pastors, staff and leaders getting 'it'.

Today was no exception. When asked the biggest challenge the pastor was facing, without a blink or pause he told me 'Christians!' He then preceded to tell me that after many years of going the extra mile with Christians, of giving them priority even over his own kids etc ...he was drawing a line and for ungrateful, complaining, 'not getting it supposed Christ followers', he was showing them the door.

Wow!

This pastor had been pushed around, complained at, criticised and wrongly accused for years - but no longer. Christ, His vision and His mission, reaching lost people, extending God's kingdom, introducing people to grace - all this, rather than being pushed around and used by self absorbed seeming Christians who want everything and everyone to revolve around them, this - Christ and His mission (the Missio Dei) was finally getting his talent, time and calling.

Today made me even more grateful for Redeemer's Church and the people who own its vision and purpose. People who have ditched inward focused, selfish Christianity for getting behind a leadership that is all about reaching as many people as possible, and Redeemer's Church outworking it full redemptive potential.

Thank you Redeemer's!

My intentional follow of Jesus was to listen, to help and then on the I-5 journey back home to thank God for the community of Redeemer's Church and the thousands of people we're going to reach for Christ in the coming years.

Day 102 and I've been thinking.......

Day 102 finds me in a reflective mood.
Been thinking about the difference between compassion and justice. We have several global partnerships (Kenya, Tijuana, Guatemala and perhaps something new in Haiti emerging), in each partnership we act with compassion but been reflecting on where our justice is. We treat the wound but not the cause of the wound.

Been thinking about what we do every Sunday on our campus. Is it incredibly easy to invite people to church on Sundays? Who am I inviting in? Are we filled with Christians who invite?
The new Reveal publication "Focus" reminds us again that to be missiological is to understand the culture and the culture wants to be wowed on Sundays. For right or for wrong we need to live in our culture, while being counter cultural. There is a difficult line to hold to where you are cultural enough to be attracting, but counter cultural enough to not be selling out.

But my biggest reflection these past few days comes from a thought in the book by David Olson The American Church in Crisis. Here's what he writes "On any given Sunday, the vast majority of Americans are absent from church and if trends continue, by 2050, the percentage of Americans attending church will be half of what it is today."

He then goes on to suggest to avoid this dismal future the American church needs to engage with three critical transitions:

1. The transition from a Christian to a post-Christian society.
2. The transition from a modern to a post-modern society.
3. The transition from a mono-ethnic to a multi-ethnic society.

The first transition was the reason the INS accepted me to work in the US. I come from a post-Christian society (the UK). In my lifetime it has shrunk from 25% church attending to 4% attending. For years the church did not waken up to this reality. Not waking up costs it dearly.
Sadly, I see mirrored in most US churches and denominations a stubborn but ignorant refusal to accept reality. We are moving fast to a post-Christian society with secular overtones. Been heading this way for the past 20 years .....we are only a few years away from full arrival.

The second transition from modern to post-modern freaks the life out of most Christian leaders. For years I've been reading and studying in this arena and while I cannot claim full knowledge I can agree that a seismic shift is happening at the philosphical level and we actually have already moved somewhere. To too many church leaders this shift is a threat to truth and orthodoxy. Not so. But this fear is causing us to react too slowly and too abstractly. In many ways we are in danger of remaining holding onto the flannel graph in the digital age.

As for the third transition - this is huge. Possibly only 8-9% of Evangelical churches are multi-ethnic or multi-cultural. WOW!! We have been amazed that Redeemer's Church is 50% white, 45% brown and 5% other! Amazing. But my reflection is to realise that we are not too sure how this has happened (not great leadership) and, we are guilty of putting on the cruise control and not digging deeper and being passionate about truly outworking what God has been doing. This one needs more fuel added to it and needs my leadership placed fully on it. Watch out Redeemer's!!!!!

Intentional follow of Jesus ...reflective consideration of where we are, where we are going, and what needs to be done.
A`Sabbath' activity.

Day 100 and sitting in the pew.

Day 100.
Wow!
100 days gone of 2010.
100 days of trying to intentionally follow Jesus Christ.
Day 100.
Fitting it was a Sunday.
Not so fitting it was a Sunday I wasn't preaching.
Preaching makes it so much easier to follow Jesus.
I preach the truth; point people to Jesus; lift Him up - boom a successful follow.
But what about when I'm not preaching.
What then?
I guess this puts me in the same spot as the other hundreds of people who don't preach every Sunday.

How do you intentionally follow Jesus as a member of the audience?

Place your tithe in the offering basket as it passes?
Follow along the reading of Scripture?
Quietly line up and take communion?
Sing the worship songs?
Greet the people around you with a smile and a warm hand shake?

As I mulled this over I realised the major mistake I fell in to. Sure I get to preach the amazing truth of Christ and that is followership; but that takes 40 minutes, twice a Sunday - 20 minutes more than an hour.
There are 24 hours a day.
If all the following I do on a Sunday is 80 minutes of a script ....ouch!
If all I do is listen for 40 minutes on a Sunday - that's not the best following either.

Sunday needs to be more than that, at least for me.

So I bought lunch for people.

Forgive me telling you what my right hand did (sorry left hand you're not meant to have found that out).
I just needed to do something.
Something more.
Having listened to a Sunday morning all on the topic of friendship - it was time to be a friend.
buying lunch wasn't trying to buy friends, it was trying to express friendship to a group of guys who are my friends.

Something small.
Something quite simple.
But it felt like more than simply listening to a message i was trying to put some flesh on to what we sat and listened to.

But ...imagine if I did that every Sunday, imagine the other 799 people at Redeemer's Church did every Sunday.
Imagine what that could lead to.

It's been good not to preach, but still to intentionally follow.

Day 99 Gardening.

Day 99 was spent tackling Satan.

Gardening.

This was my intentional follow of Jesus.

Damn you Satan!

Blisters.
Sweat.
Back-ache.

Don't even mention Eve.

Tomorrow can't come quick enough and a more gentle following of Jesus.

Day 98 and thanks to a fly I get it.

Day 98 and as I headed out to the car tonight I sniffed and a fly went up my nose!
Didn't see that coming, neither did the fly.
I de-sniffed and the fly came back out.
Intentional follow of Jesus Day 98 .....practise sniff resurrecting.

Seriously, I was walking innocuously to my car, my thoughts elsewhere, my work for the weekend under my arms, and from nowhere I get a new experience.

When last did my faith in a miraculous supernatural God grant me such an newness?

My fly encounter has given me food for thought.

Not that I'm a sensationalist, or a theologically woolly charismatic. (I am a third-way believer for anyone interested.)
But a new experience, more than yesterday would sometimes be appreciated in this faith walk.

The sad thing is every day Christ invites me into new experiences but I miss them.
Every time I share my faith with someone - the Holy Spirit hovers around me and something eternal and supernatural takes place.
Every time I help the poor .....the presence of God is there in all his supernatural presence.
Every time I pray ......boom how supernatural an experience is that!

So the list could go on.

One innocuous fly moment and my spirit is thumped into taking hold of the supernatural experiences Christ invites me into everyday.

Thanks fly ....or was it God?

Day 97 - I'm British!

Day 97 and excuse the gap in my blog. Things happen. Only the thing that happened was unexpected and threw a pretty big curve ball our way. Just three weeks after Carolyn's mother passed away, Carolyn received news on Easter Sunday that her father passed away as well.
So ....another 12,000 mile round trip and another funeral service.

Easter Sunday saw us talk about death in a very blunt way. Easter Sunday afternoon saw us deal with deal in a very real way.

Powerfully poignant. Death has a way of being like that.

So, the past few days, instead of reflecting on Easter services and the great time we had with so many people attending and our Arts Team pulling off an incredible portrayal of the Passion, has seen us be more introspective than usual.

It's amazing what Lent prepares you for!


Just today I was walking into our new Fresh & Easy store to be accosted by a protester telling me not to shop there as they are British!!! Wait for it ............I smiled, told them I was British and loved having something British in town!
It was funny (to me).
Hello ...free market!
Hello ... global marketplace!
Hello ....everywhere you go in the UK there are American stores!!

However, leave aside the rather weak, if not somewhat ironic, certainly hypocritical union issue at stake ...it was fun to say "hello I'm British!"

So, what would it be like if I walked into stores or shops and announced I was a Christ-follower.
Strange idea.
But, I wonder if by announcing that statement before I ate or shopped ....would I eat and shop differently.

Part of the joy of Fresh & Easy are the British products they sell. Small reminders of our culture.
What sort of impact would my Christian claim make if I wore it proudly as I entered a store?

Would I buy junk?
Would I buy cheap?
Would I buy only the essentials?
Would I buy green?
Would I buy healthy?

So today .....I used cash (thank you Dave Ramsey .....not quite Jesus!! for keeping me on the cash course - no more credit or debits cards); I bought a simple loaf of bread; and I bought the cheapest laundry stuff (yep, gotta do that for a week!).
I ignored the candy aisle, and got only the thing I needed to do dad's cooking tonight boys, and 'here's a help with the laundry'.

I walked out of the store and I'm sure I heard the protester whisper to her colleague "he's British"...or did she see my self-control and my simple shopping bag and say "he's a Christ follower?"

Day 91 - a very Good Friday.

Day 91 and what a day.
Good Friday.
A memorial service where we taught about heaven.
Finishing writing Easter weekend preach about death.
Watched final dress rehearsal of Easter services dramatic presentation - a reworking of the crucifixion of Jesus.
An amazing end to Good Friday.
Seeing Jesus, suspended between heaven and earth and breathe his last - wow!

Easter services (Saturday & Sunday) @ Redeemer's Church ....make sure you come and invite, invite, invite.

What a Good Friday.

Everything forced me today to reflect on Christ's death.
Made intentionally following Jesus deeply moving today.

What a day ....what a tomorrow and Sunday a comin'!

Day 90 - just trying.

Day 90. April 1, 2010.
Holiday isn't finished even although vacation is.

Getting set for Easter weekend. For past 2 months been reading about death. Here's the logic - only to the level you understand death can you ever understand resurrection.
Easter Sunday is all about resurrection, but that journey requires grasping death.

Hard reading.....and you'll need to to wait until our three Easter services are ended to hear what I've been learning (sorry).

All I can say. ........ my over 40 phobia is perhaps more spiritual than you think!

So, another day of studying and writing, and hopefully intentional follow of Jesus.
Was it in my writing - Saturday and Sunday will tell.
Was it foregoing a much wanted private lunch to sitting with a church member and listening - maybe?

Or, was it just getting up and trying to do my best.

Take your pick.