Tag: life

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I want the kick drum.

The other night at the Derek Webb concert I had a blast. Very few artists can make me think like he can. His perspective on life is amazing.

I think my favorite song on his new album (which he plays ALL of at the show) is “The Spirit and the Kick Drum.” It is a resounding call to the church, all caught up in our sound and lights worship services, to remember that we are not the point. The three lines that stick out from the song, and form the frame onto which each verse is woven:

I don’t want the Spirit, I want a kick drum.

I don’t want the Son, I want a jury of peers.

don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine.

What is it that we want out of Christianity? Do we want God, so that he can give us something else, like health or money? Or do we see HIM as the blessing of the gospel?

How often, if I am honest, I look to what God is holding out in his hand to me, and miss the point that it is the sight of God’s hand at which I ought to marvel.

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The Perks of the Job.

I have a confession.

I love raising support.  I know, it’s strange.  How totally and completely un-American.  To ask people to contribute money to our ministry, so that we get paid, is so counter-cultural.

But as we have been doing it full time these past few weeks, I have noticed that being forced to ask people for money also forces me to depend on others, and sheds light on my fierce anti-Christian self-dependence.

So, while I don’t always enjoy the phone calls, or constantly initiating with folks, I do cherish the reminder that I am not in control.  Apart from Christ, I am a wreck looking for a place to happen.  But in Him I have all I’ve ever needed.

What a treat to have a job that forces on a regular basis to deal with my junk.

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…We felt it important to go the plants, then pets, then progeny route, and got our first plant, a flowering perennial we named Dr. Stee Ruggle, (he had a rough existence) to prove we could keep something alive for more than a few days….

About Us

The Non-Blog portion of our website was in need of a refresh.  This is a line from our updated “About Us” page that now actually mentions the fact that we have a child.

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The shock of being an insider.

This is a quote that rocked me to the core last week.  It’s something Tim Keller references in his study Gospel Christianity 101 (which you should immediately purchase, read, and use as the curriculum at your small group)  He quoted Richard Hays from his book The Moral Vision of The New Testament:

God’s… invasion of the world has wrought an inversion: God has reversed the positions of insiders and outsiders.  Those who are in positions of authority and privilege reject Jesus and the message.  However, people of low or despised position in the social world of first-century Jewish culture receive the gospel gladly, for their need is great… Those familiar with the story should not  under-estimate the shock of this inversion.

It’s a great quote.  It’s not something terribly new to me, but what rocked me this time as I was reading it is the harsh realization that in my church, in my ministry, and in my life I consistently become an insider.  In fact, at times it is my primary goal. I get a new teaching, or a new way of doing things, and I make and “inside” and an “outside.”  I’m always an insider, scratching and clawing my way to be recognized, applauded, and accepted by the other “insiders.”

The gospel alone forces me to admit being an outsider.  But once I am out in the cold, with no way of saving myself, that same gospel shows me (and in some mysterious way gives me) a righteousness that is unshakable.

May God continue to push us out into the cold, lest we believe the compelling lie that there’s something we did (or can do) to save ourselves.

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I’m anxious enough to sing.

I was driving today, listening to conservative talk radio (because it’s as funny as Jon Stewart during the Bush years) and all the flailing and panicking and minor-key interludes that accompany advertisements for reseeding packets and buying gold.  Then, I turned off the radio, and looked over the tops of the brilliantly colored red and yellow leaves to notice a hawk flying high on a background of white, wispy clouds.

Despite what is clearly an attack on our way of life, and the worst economic meltdown of the century, and the rise of fascist dictatorships, and eminent inflation, and the end of life as we have known it, and the rolling over of the founding fathers in their graves (according to the show I had just turned off), it was strangely peaceful.

Almost as if God is not worried.

Almost as if the designer of the beautiful leaves and amazing blue sky didn’t stop painting and creating long enough to fret about his kids worrying and thinking he’d left the throne.

God is so worried that he started painting.  Maybe we should take that hint.  We Christians ought to be so vexed and perplexed that we start singing.  The tomb is empty.

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