Monday Music - Festival Crowds Can Be Fun

CLICK HERE OR ON IMAGE

Crowd waiting for a Green Day concert in Hyde Park does a pretty great performance of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Sunday Supplication - To Reach Across Barriers

O God, we are so thankful for your mercy and love. We thank you for your Son, Jesus, and for the life and salvation he has made possible for us.

Help your people to be a living demonstration of your power to save. Transform and renew us. Make us a true community of grace.

We acknowledge our sins and thank you for forgiveness. Help us to turn away from darkness and to love the light. Make us willing and able to forgive others as you have forgiven us. Help us to nurture relationships, create peace, and bring honor to you.

Thank you, Lord God, for Jesus, who did not cling to equality with you, but emptied himself and became a servant. Help us, like him, to reach across barriers, to welcome the weak, to serve, and to look to the interests of others.

It’s in His name that we pray all these things. Amen.

Saturday Smile - Faking Sense

Friday Favorites - Dakota County Fair

Coming soon!!!

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Thurs Thinking - Growing Deep: Making Disciples

I have always wanted to help our church become a discipleship community. A place where we are trying to grow deeper, not just bigger. After years in ministry, the biggest question I have is whether or not there really are that many people who truly want to be disciples of Jesus. It seems to me that most churches are focused on proclamation of a gospel message, attracting people to church, leading people to become Christians, trying to build community, and encouraging service. My experience is that while those for things may grow or strengthen a church, they don't necessarily produce committed and growing disciples.

I am hoping that in the months and years ahead, the church I pastor will make some strides in helping our people understand what it means to be a disciple and how to measure progress as a disciple. Jesus said you can know a tree by its fruit. How can people in my church know they are growing disciples?

What follows is a quotation from an article I came across earlier this week. It has me thinking, but it also gets me back to my question of how does a program or strategy actually become a tool for discipleship? How do we move our church people to turn the "want to" switch to the on position? Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

From Grow Your Church Deeper by Ken Stewart

Your church probably provides numerous opportunities for people to grow spiritually. Worship services,  Bible  studies,  small  groups,  prayer  events,  classes,  socials,  ministry  teams—all  are offered in the hope that participants will be built up in their faith and strengthen their relationship with the church.

It  is  the  perpetual  temptation  of  churches  to “program”  these  activities  and  then  rely  on  the program, forgetting that spiritual growth is a spiritual, and individual, process. Even more, it’s the reason the church exists.

Heavy reliance on programs also can lead to what the software geeks call “scope creep,” where the project expands beyond the original goals. A church must continually revisit and recommit to its goal of making disciples. Otherwise the church can become about adding programs rather than building disciples.

Wednesday Words - Summer Song

Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer’s smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?

"Summer Song" by William Carlos Williams from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939.

Tuesday Tome - Surprise the World

I've been reading this little book and discussing each chapter with a friend from church. It's a gem and gives practical advice on positive ways Christians can engage with the people around them. I've decided to use it as a springboard and companion book for my next teaching series – "Your Surprising Life" – that will begin in September. Beyond the inspiration to live out and share our faith, the goal of this book and my teaching series will be to give our church community some measurable and practical strategies for doing so.

Surprise the World
by Michael Frost

Christianity is a surprising religion. It has changed the world in remarkable ways throughout history simply through Christians living out their faith. More recently, we’ve become afraid of a habituated Christianity, thinking that routines will rob our faith of its vitality. The net effect is that we’ve replaced the habits that surprise the world with habits that mimic the world―and both we and the world suffer for it.

Integrating the five habits in the BELLS model―Bless others, Eat together, Listen to the Spirit, Learn Christ, and understand yourself as Sent by God into others’ lives―will help you spread the gospel organically, graciously, and surprisingly.

Michael Frost, a world-renowned expert on evangelism and discipleship, makes evangelism a lifestyle that is fulfilling, exciting, effective, and easy to live out!

Monday Music - Steve Earle: Tiny Desk Concert

TINY DESK CONCERT - APRIL 25 2011
Steve Earle has lived through the sort of horrors that have launched a million country songs: addiction, affliction, heartbreak, even prison. He wears them in his voice, but what's most appealing about him is the wide-eyed, unmistakable fearlessness with which he goes about his life these days. The singer, author, actor and activist showcases many of his talents at the NPR Music offices.

Sunday Supplication - Wisdom to Take Hold

Almighty God, you have sent your only Son into the world to save us from sin and death. We thank you for his sinless life, his selfless sacrifice, and his example of godly life.

Give us the wisdom to take hold of all Jesus has so freely given. Thank you for his redeeming work in our lives and in our world. Help us to follow daily in his steps.

We look to you for forgiveness and ask you to help us turn away from wrong.  Transform us and give us the faith to press toward life, healing, restoration, holiness, and good deeds.  You are so gracious to us, and we ask you to make us able and quick to be gracious and forgiving toward others.

You have shown mercy to us, O God. Give us the attitude of Christ Jesus that we might be a testimony of your grace and instruments of your mercy to everyone around us. 

We pray in the name of Jesus, our merciful Savior. Amen.

Saturday Smile - Global Norming

Friday Favorites - Sunday Night at the Zoo

SUNDAY, JULY 30
Steve Earle & The Dukes
The Cactus Blossoms
The Mastersons

Thursday Thinking - What Get in the Way

What is the point of life? What is the point of it all? What is the highest good for being human?

In this short video excerpt, Greg Boyd explains that the Christian answer to those questions is for us humans to enjoy loving God and for God to enjoy and love us. This is the Christian vision of the blessed life. But of course there are some basic things that stand in the way of this ultimate goal.

CLICK HERE OR ON IMAGE (4 minutes):

Wednesday Words - The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

“The Vacation” by Wendell Berry from Entries, Copyright ©2012 by Wendell Berry.

Tuesday Tome - The Jesus Way

I'm currently enjoying this book by Eugene Peterson. Some good ideas that dovetail with my current teaching series at Valley Christian Church.

THE JESUS WAY
by Eugene Peterson

Publisher's description...
The Jesus Way ― part of Eugene Peterson’s meaty "conversations" on spiritual theology

A way of sacrifice. A way of failure. A way on the margins. A way of holiness. In The Jesus Way Eugene Peterson shows how the ways of those who came before Christ ― Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah ― revealed and prepared the "way of the Lord" that became incarnate and complete in Jesus. Further, Peterson calls into question common “ways” followed by the contemporary American church, showing in stark relief how what we have chosen to focus on ― consumerism, celebrity, charisma, and so forth ― obliterates what is unique in the Jesus way.