Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.
-- LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

Border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better.

Most of our imports come from other countries.


George W. Bush

it was one of those conversations again. they happen, from time to time, to most of us. i seem to have my fair share.

someone whose opinion matters wants to talk to you about your life. it usually starts out nice, gets bad really quick, and ends on a staid note.

there are people in my life whose opinion of me doesn't mean a damn. they are perhaps critical by nature. often they have copious opinions about what and who i am. they seem to be concerned, but in point of fact they are far more interested in telling me off than staying friends. they are draining relationships. usually the come with a modicum of gossip. they almost always cannot be trusted with your secrets. they are waiting for you to fail. i have some of those people in my life. people who would secretly delight in watching me humbled, yet again. they hope bad things will happen, that the club will fail, that i'll get my 'come-uppance'. i have learned to blow them off. they speak a version of the truth filtered with negativity.

then there are others who have earned the right to be heard. to be listened to. they have walked alongside on the road of life. they often will not agree with everything i have done, but choose love over false piety. so when they speak into my life i would be a fool not to listen. i try to be honest with them but even when i am not, they don't run. they speak the truth in love. even when the truth is hard to hear.

it is my choice, at that juncture, whether i will hear that truth.

from real live preacher via i.m.

There’s something about the way you use the bible, something about the way you use it as a tool, as a weapon, as a fulcrum, as a means, as an end, as a trump card.

There’s something about the way you see the bible as a thing to be used at all.

There’s something about your intensity and your urgency and the way you have your eyes locked on some distant prize. There’s something about the energy you are putting into this. It’s making you frantic and in a hurry. You will not be present in a sacred moment. You will not wait. You will not keep silence. You will not admit that you are weak. You will not let things unfold.

You cannot abide, so you will not abide. You will not abide the journey. Arriving is all you want, and the bible is some kind of shortcut for you. You seem to be cutting corners and covering your tracks with memorized verses. You enter every room with a blast of pretty Jesus words and a lot of fast talking.

Somehow you have come to think that the bible is like everything else in your life. You think it is something to master and something you can own. The more you know about the bible, the more power you hope to gain. The more verses you can quote, the closer to God you hope to be.

The bible is your prop and your flag. You wave it around and make sure that it is seen. You highlight it and talk about it and make wild claims about its truth and fight over it and win with it and boast about how you believe every word of it. It is your way and your truth and your life.

read the rest here...

Within hours of the writ being dropped, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper punched a hot-button issue from the last election.

In a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Harper said if Parliament supported the move in a free vote, he would endeavour to reinstate the traditional definition of marriage as prime minister.

guess we'll see... animation kind of looks fake. still can't wait.

Vatican rules against gay priests

Richard Selzer, surgeon, writes...
“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles in her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to do well in the evening lamplight, isolated from me. Private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and tough each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“yes” I say, “it will”. It is because the nerve was cut. She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles, “I like it,” he says, “it is kind of cute”. All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with God’s love. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accomodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

darryl has a great link to some "more than guidelines" here.

my fav...It is an honor to be disparaged by small-minded people.

i have been thinking and talking about the church a great deal lately. some people wonder how i feel about an institution i have spent my whole life defending. they wonder if i have given up on organized religion. here are some thoughts.
1. i love controversy. i love making people think. i have a propensity to say things to evoke a reaction. i don't apologize for that anymore. it is who i am. how i am wired up. oftimes though, it is misinterpreted as being caustic for the sake of tearing apart with no real concern. i know in my own heart i do not feel this way, though love an argument.
2. the church is in deep kimshi. we all know that. the world has changed and we tend to hang on to what has worked in the past, the ideals and mores we have been taught. pastors and leaders are not supposed to question such things. truth be known most of us still question if god exists on occasion. we question our own worth. we question if we are investing our lives into something that makes a difference or not. we question everything. i am too introspective. Plato said, 'better a dissatisfied socrates than a satisfied pig'. plato was wrong.
3. when i am taking shots at the church i rarely mean the local churches i am a part of. i almost never mean the church i just pastored - new heights. it is an amazing church. it is one of the best expressions of reality i know. i'm biased. i was there from the beginning. some people imagine that i take shots at my own church when i make grandiose claims about the evangelical church. i'm not. at least i try not to.
4. i really do believe most pastors have little or no experience with real life. we have been given a cloistered existence - raised and trained in a bubble; praised and criticized too much, given the limelight, don't know how to use a cash register or a hammer, given too much flexibility and too little accountability. taught philosophies that don't wash on the street. asked to much of. asked too little of.
5. our church philosophies are messed. things like post-modernism, abortion, gay rights, western alienation, native issues, spiritual abuse, new paradigms of leadership, web 2.0, secularization, christianity as a perceived cult, etc. are not trends of a concern for a board meeting - they are real and pervasive. they are not going away. we as a church need to get our head out of the sand and deal with what is, not with what we wish was.
6. blogs and podcasts and webmeetings and google talk and chat rooms are a place to ask the big questions, not guard the truth. we are not powerful enough to legislate orthodoxy so don't be afraid. i wouldn't want someone like me making those kinds of decisions anyway.

the gist of this rant is to remind us that many of us are doing pseudo-theology on the web. many of us are looking for outlets to vent our frustrations and ask dangerous questions. we band together to try to figure things out. most of those i read are dedicated to transparency, to honesty. they have no desire to destroy the church. most post-moderns i know are not desirous of disbanding anything, let alone turning people from faith. most of these people do hold to lesser amounts of absolute truth, defendable claims and faith credos. simply stated, they want to be real. they want to follow god like the rest of us.

iTunes outsells CD stores as digital revolution gathers pace.
some of us tried to tell musicians to go digital years ago...

the reality of Iraq's hidden war. it's old news now. we've moved on. but the killing continues.

our highest mountain enters politics.

ho ho ho, merry holiday.

Ex-PM Mulroney suing author over tapes. ok but the real story is how my close buddy jordon cooper got a call from his hero mulroney, thought it was a joke, was having a bad day and hung up on him. i've been sitting on that tidbit for weeks.

jessica and nick split. and why should i care?

i read the internet monk when no one is watching...

It's remarkable, considering the tone of so many Christian sermons and messages, that any church has honest people show up at all. I can't imagine that any religion in the history of humanity has made as many clearly false claims and promises as evangelical Christians in their quest to say that Jesus makes us better people right now. With their constant promises of joy, power, contentment, healing, prosperity, purpose, better relationships, successful parenting and freedom from every kind of oppression and affliction, I wonder why more Christians aren't either being sued by the rest of humanity for lying or hauled off to a psych ward to be examined for serious delusions.

Evangelicals love a testimony of how screwed up I USED to be. They aren't interested in how screwed up I am NOW. But the fact is, that we are screwed up. Then. Now. All the time in between and, it's a safe bet to assume, the rest of the time we're alive. But we will pay $400 to go hear a "Bible teacher" tell us how we are only a few verses, prayers and cds away from being a lot better. And we will set quietly, or applaud loudly, when the story is retold. I'm really better now. I'm a good Christian. I'm not a mess anymore. I'm different from other people.

i am involved in a new project. not a church but a church. not a nightclub but a nightclub. not a party but a party. it is hard even for me to completely get my head around what it actually is. but i am easily frustrated. and tempted.

tempted to run down the roads i have tried to abandon. tempted to put my efforts into numbers and money and contacts and networking. tempted to sell out for success... one more time. i am not alleging things like making contacts or advertising are evil in and of themselves. it is, however, part of my past. a past fraught with the church growth movement. with worldly standards for success. with chasing a carrot that never could be attained. i have long since sworn off such things. but here i sit again.

part of me wants to chase that dream and claim the prize. to march with the legions of 'specialists' who have a book or two under their belts and have lucrative speaking tours, touting the methodologies of church planting. within all of us is that need for recognition. i have written of it before, and i do again. and maybe again.

last saturday night some of us gathered to party and pray and love. and somehow i missed the party. i was caught up in the semantics and the problems and forgot why i was there. i yearned for numbers to "you know, just round off the event". it is a feeling i had forgotten. but it came raging back.

as a pastor of a normal church (if my last one could be called anything approaching normal). i subconsciously allowed myself to spend weeks, months, without assessing how things were going. i didn't keep score or take attendance. it was liberating, freeing and wonderful. but sometimes, and i don't speak for any of the other staff, it allowed me to be lazy and coast. you can't do that with a new project.

so i let the stress melt away the joy. i concentrate on what is not, rather than what is. i have an amazing group of friends, and yet i felt responsible for their happiness. i felt like i had to impress them, to be 'successful' for them to stick around. i sold them short and denigrated their level of commitment. we all knew, going in that these things take time. but i got frantic for them.

it is a maddening drive. a temptation to place my priorities on things that do not matter to god or to his kids. i forgot to pray. i was busy pacing.

i'm sorry.

i was surfing blogs today and i happened upon some lessons my friend sue has learned from life. this one particularly caught my eye - "you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever".

in my role as a pastor guy i was privy to far too many secrets. i could scan a room and recall incident after incident of a promise given - to not say this or not expose that - people who were sleeping around, cheating, lieing, stealing, porn, masturbation, drugs and abuse of every flavour. after a while secrets no longer held the same attraction they once did. sue is right, it is hard to know some things and not be tainted or changed. it is hard to have at your disposal another person's deepest darkest secrets and not let it affect your decisions.

last year i attended a meeting where several people had a serious problem with me. i remember in the heat of the moment almost blurting out, "well what about you, you... (insert appropriate sexual misconduct here)". i scanned the room and remembered past slights, recent screw ups, and wanted to set the record straight. it would have been an incredible lapse in integrity. i am glad i kept my mouth shut.

even now, more removed from real church life, i find myself knowing and hearing things that are hard to digest. people often use clergy as a confession booth. others need advice and have no where else to turn. it is a sacred trust. and though i am as guilty as you are of gossip, those secrets i have managed to keep to myself. the secrets that have been divulged to me, even by people who now hate me, i will take to my grave.

it's hard to be vulnerable. hard to share your deepest darkest secrets with someone only to have them turn on you. there is a sneaking suspicion that this person has something on you, and you are forever waiting for the trap to be sprung.

i am fortunate enough to know that pretty much every crappy thing i have ever done is out in the open now. it is freeing, in one sense. there are no lies to harbor and defend, no more secrets to guard.

i hope as i grow up i will let my opinions be less and less swayed by real and imagined shortcomings in others. i believe it is a holy thing to be able to have such damning information and still love, and even respect, another. it pisses me off when people write off someone because they have done something wrong. it seems it happens more in the church than anywhere. non-christians appear to be far more accepting than some of my church friends. there appears to be an inability to hate the sin but not the sinner. i am guilty as well. it is far too easy to simply turn your back on a person you disagree with. i have often said that, based on all the secrets i know, if i wrote off everyone that failed to live up to code i would have hardly any friends.

people tell me things expecting that it will not affect my opinion of them...

(too subtle?)

a while ago i met with some older guys for breakfast and the funniest thing happened. one of the guys showed up with this really bad toupee. you know the type, one colour of hair under and one over, the real hamster hair look...
well we were all kind of shocked and no one knew what to say and then one guy goes - say you look younger. did you lose weight? (knowing full well the guy had a gerbil on his head)
another guy said, and I kid you not, well maybe its your black shirt, black really is your colour (like what kind of a guy would know your colour anyway!)
everyone was totally lieing to the guy, afraid to tell the truth. and at this point i just want to let you know i had not said a thing yet...
but someone needed to say to the guy.... “what’s up with the rug?”

why are we so afraid to be honest with each other?

fire authorities in california found a corpse in a burnt out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. the deceased male was dressed in a full wetsuit, complete with a dive tank, flippers and facemask. a post- mortem examination revealed that the person died not from burns but from massive internal injuries. dental records provided a positive identification.

investigators then set about determining how a fully clad diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire.

it was revealed that, on the day of the fire, the person went for a diving trip off the coast--some 20-MILES away from the forest. the firefighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, called in a fleet of helicopters with very large buckets. the buckets were dropped into the ocean for rapid filling, then flown to the forest fire and emptied.

you guessed it.... one minute our diver was making like flipper in the pacific, the next he was doing a breaststroke in a fire bucket 300m in the air. apparently, he extinguished exactly 1.78m (5'10") of the fire.

some time ago my bud jason and i were having an argument about which root beer was better - barq’s or a&w. i know for sure that nothing is as good as a frosty a&w but he insists that Barq’s is up there. so we’re going back and forth on this when jason pulls out all the stops and says, “oh barq’s is a nectar of the gods. just looking at it in a crystal decanter fills me with a glorious sense of anticipation. when the stopper is removed and the glorious liquid is poured in to my glass, i inhale the enchanting aroma and i’m lifted on the wings of ecstasy. it seems as though i’m about to drink a magic potion and my whole being begins to glow. the sound of a thousand violins being softly played fills my ears and i’m transported into another world...... on the other hand, a&w makes me fart...."

links i stole from jordon...
don't press the red button.

cut off his own testicles in February to celebrate Wales beating England at Rugby (let's see you do that calgary fans...)

Plane allegedly linked to CIA front landed in Canada

"The Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them.... To question your government is not unpatriotic - to not question your government is unpatriotic." - Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), responding to the president's suggestion earlier this week that critics of the war in Iraq are "sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy."

I kid you not. This is an actual news story from the CBC. Some guy killed himself by falling from the 24th floor of the TD Bank in Toronto.

And now, the rest of the story...

So this guy, on the 24th floor of the building is showing people how strong the windows are.
He was running into them, full tilt mind you, with his shoulder.
He did it 8 or 9 times - well I’m not sure how many times he did it but one time - and I like to refer to it as the last time - he goes through the window and falls 24 stories to pavement.

And the point is... what an idiot.

How stupid do you have to be to try something like that and what a sad way to go - not only falling 24 stories but also realizing you were wrong on your whole window theory... in essence... dead wrong.

i don't usually cut and paste bible verses but this one keeps haunting me...

2 Corinthians 7:
The letter upset you, but only for a while. Now I’m glad - not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets; end up on a deathbed of regrets.
And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded
you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive,
more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible.
Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart.
And that is what I was hoping for in the first place when I wrote the letter.

an excerpt from a talk i'm working on...

So easy to live your life passing the blame to everyone else. Some people I know are masters at it. They are never responsible. They aren't wrong, it was something or someone that held them down and forced them to eat the fruit. Someone forced them into it, lead them astray, convinced them to fold, sold them out....

I'm sure alot of Germans felt that way in the second world war. When I was at Dakau Concentration camp they said that the locals, after the war, claimed that they knew nothing of the camp and the genocide. The problem with this claim was that the ovens and the camp were only yards from the town. The ash from the burning corpses landed on their homes, the shots from the executions rang in their ears. The parade of prisoners arrived in their towns. The local nazis bragged about it in the taverns and played fox and the hound with prisoners in the town square for sport. The locals were commissioned to deliver food the the camp and dig the graves for those murdered. But they had no idea what was going on right?

It can be argued that to stand up against the Nazis would have been suicide, that there is nothing one person could do. Ever heard of Anne Frank, or Dietrick Bonhoffer, or Cory Ten Boom or the French underground, or the resistance fighters, or of the thousands of germans who hid and fed the jews when to do so meant certain death.

The point is not to gross you out but to point out that we all have two choices in life. To go with the flow or to swim upstream. It is easier to go with the flow right. Not supposed to cause any waves, be politically correct and don't question policy. Its another thing to be a rebel for a reason.

I see so many who just blindly accept whatever they are told, who march to the beat of television psychology and never question the mess we are creating. Like Adam it is easy just to eat the apple, don't question the source.

If I give food to the hungry, they call me a saint; if I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
Archbishop Dom Helder Camara

via

loser.

working on some stuff. came across some sweet quotes.

Alexander Graham Bell
When one door closes another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.

"Better to be known as a sinner than a hypocrite."

"The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity"

"Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive."
C.S. Lewis

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. Christopher Robin to Pooh"
A. A. Milne

"When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter."
Tom Robbins

A God who is uncontainable, uncontrollable, and unpredictable is, well, scary to minds that crave control, uniformity, security, and an atmosphere free of “supernatural” phenomenon.

more here.

i had an amazing experience last week. well maybe amazing is not the exact word i should use. perhaps interesting, or bizarre, or enlightening.

i decided to go on a date to the big box office boffo 'alley cats'. i did not know anything about the show other than that it was big budget and big sound, big cast. a real treat.

we got to the show and sat waiting. at the time we did not notice that we seemed to be the token heterosexual couple at the play. we just thought alot of couples must have been together for a long time because the men were sitting talking together and so were the women.... and rubbing each others backs.... and shoulders... and whispering in each others ears... it dawned on me how conservative i am. how given to prejudice i am. how full of crap i am when i speak of acceptance and inclusion.

i don't consider myself homophobic. we stayed for the entire play although i'm still redneck enough i had to avert my eyes when the guys kissed. too much saskatchewan in me. the issue was not the plot or the actions, it was the ambush. there were no advertisements to this effect. i assumed one thing and received another.

i know how to impress a woman...

I think the BS of parents can have a profound effect on their kids. It can unwittingly shape their perceptions of security, worthiness of love and the handling of responsibility. Despite a kid's best intentions to rise above a family breakup - I think there is something so incredibly wounded that a parent would choose 'their life' over the 'child's life'...Maybe the parent couldn't see it in those terms, but to the kids who get left, that's how it feels...
more here.

i love the movie 'the incredibles', for alot of reasons. one of the great moments in the movie is when dash's parents are trying to explain to him his lot in life. they explained that yes, he was special, everyone was special. to which dash replied something like, 'that makes no one special'. profound actually.

when everyone is from a dysfunctional family...
when everyone has been emotionally abused...
when everyone is adhd...

... no one is.

from time to time people come to me for counselling, because they don't know any better. they will sit across from me and tell me they are emotionally abused in their relationship... and of course i don't believe them. why?

because it's become an old record. we are all emotionally abused. someone doesn't pay enough attention to you, you are abused. someone talks back to you or yells at you or forgets your birthday or gossips about you or talks down to you or burns the cheese sandwich and you are abused. the phrase has lost it's meaning. it is now a scapegoat and an excuse for bailing, for refusing to grow up, for just about anything.

and it vastly diminishes those who have endured real emotional abuse. those who are really from a disfunctional family. those who really do struggle with adhd. (add your own examples here). it has become an excuse for everything. it has become an excuse for doing nothing, for whining, for bailing, for being a jerk. it isn't your fault. you were abused.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
Author: George Bernard Shaw

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues. Author: Bertrand Russel

...clubchurch

i am much distracted of late with the concept of success. like many of us i have oft found myself trying to dive onto the fast track to achievement. there is something inside of me that wants the accolades of the crowd, the respect of coworkers.

i think it's a natural drive. one that is not inherently evil or selfish. there is something within all of us that wants to do well, wants to make a difference. but it can also be a twisted need.

as a pastor i knew that there were levels of success. i have written extensively on the subtle pressure to stand out above the crowd.

churches compete. anyone who doesn't think so has not walked in the circles i have been a part of. local churches compete for souls and exposure. it is absolutely unheard of for a wealthy church, for example, to fund the efforts of another church in town who may be of a different denomination or pursuation. it is just not done. lay people get frustrated when they see their congregation buttressed up against a mega-church with ample resources. they wonder why the larger church does not look upon the smaller church as a mission. there are budget constraints and sociological issues for sure. but the plain and simple fact is that churches look at each other as competing for resources, attenders and popularity. small churches love to take shots at the larger bodies, swearing they will do it differently when they 'make it'. it never happens.

pastors compare numbers and buildings the same way that competing banks do. we proclaim loudly that we are all part of the same whole, then badmouth each other privately. it is interesting to think about, especially in light of the fact that virtually all churches have similar mission statements, goals, hearbeats and convictions. we have institutionalized our cultures.

obviously there are attempts to bring us all together. city-wide events are well attended and energetic. the average attender pines for something inclusive while boards look for ways to be unique. we are many flavors with differing philosophies. and we are jealous.

jealous when another pastor writes a book that sells well. jealous when the church down the street experiences dramatic growth. jealous of each others musicians and leaders and sunday schools. in a recent post of spoke in passing of church spies. many people may not realize it but churches like to gauge other church's success. when we started the church in mission literally hundreds of people from other churches came to check us out. they had no intention of staying... so why come?

i sometimes find myself shmoozing someone who is an important part of another body. i subtly suggest the ways we could serve them better, though deny i am doing it, even to myself.

i am involved in a new, somewhat offbeat, project. tonight we will hang out and it will be a small group. i am not used to a small group. i am from a larger church, by canadian standards. it is hard to watch the door again, after all these years, and wonder if someone will show up. it is tempting to solicit people who are perfectly happy where they are at. it is tempting to challenge people i should not challenge. it is normal. it is a problem.

Leaving the path we have known in order to discover the path yet walked, calls us to fear and wonder all in the same moment. Which in reality is what we all experience in the face of death...fear and wonder.
more here.

I mean, how hard would be to at least pretend to be a loving, open, genuine, forgiving, intelligent human, just for a week? Would it kill you to be nice?

"sorry I'm stupid..."

Religious people are stuck in a religious points system that keeps track of everything. They are actually pretty confident that hell can be avoided based on their own point tally. By contrast, keeping track is the last thing spiritual people want to do, because their track record condemns them.

as kids we all wanted to be picked first. i remember picking sides for a sports game and knowing who would be chosen last. it was always the same people - the uncoordinated, the fat, the ugly, the unpopular. i was one of those who usually did the choosing. i knew it was a popularity contest... but i didn't want to lose. or lose face.

growing up i would do anything to be popular. most of us would have. it seemed that fitting in was the most important thing in the world. it branded you. it gave you friends or shooed them away. seems not much has changed.

here i am at the age of... well at least 30... and i still sometimes drive for the limelight. there is still that something inside of me that begs to be noticed, to be admired, even feared. i may not eat a bug anymore but i still find myself, on occasion, prostituting myself in order to fit in.

this past year i have understood anew the need to be noticed. i have moved from a position of authority and occasional respect to a job a monkey could do. i have seen, as i have previously written about, much of my reputation come under attack. i don't mean to whine. it has been a good experience to realize how much of my ego was tied to things like status, ordination, public recognition. there have been times when i pine for the ways things were, only to realize that you can never go back. it's easy to colour your past in such a way as to make it seem idyllic.

i have always preached that we are all equal before god, though i did not really have a clue what such a statement truly entailed. i am learning that the desire for recognition, something i believe we all struggle with, demands a re-understanding of our own value and the value of what we do. as a child who is slowing growing up i am learning more and more that the need for external affirmation is a defining sickness in our shared experience. we have an unhealthy need to be praised, we define ourselves too much by our relationships. most often we allow relative strangers to dictate our beliefs, our actions and our attitudes. though we grow older, we continue to live through our insecurities.

one of my favorite speaking topics was about living our lives for an audience of one - that one being god. i'm not sure anymore if such a theology works well late at night when you have too much to think about. it is an idealistic belief, though probably a valid one. i find that i have a tendency to live my life for one... hundred. too many opinions and factions decide what i should believe. the temptation to do anything to be loved is overpowering.

i love fonzie. you know the guy. yes you are that old. fonzie didn't give a rat's ass what people thought about him. he lived his life by his own precepts. people were attracted to his personality. many of us who grew up in the era of 'happy days' wished we could be more like him. most of us never were. we are 'tossed to and fro' by too many self-proclaimed prophets, are influenced far too much by those who are more forceful, sound more authoritative, push their agenda.

for today i am going to try to live my life for fewer than one hundred. maybe someday i'll whittle that down to the one. but probably not today.

wendy has a very good post on the meaning of remembrance day. i was going to do one but she beat me to it, and did it way better than i could have. as a military brat i am always very conscious of this holiday. with two cousins and an uncle over in the war torn areas it seems especially poignant.

lest we forget...

great link from jordon

Scott,
When I read your confessions of pastoral pretention my heart withered at the resonance of truth. I am lazy. I am self-important. I do complain. But I can't leave the ministry or the people who have been entrusted to me. So, what would you say to me? How do i maintain a lifestyle of working hard, living in reality etc. while remaining in full-time ministry? Is it impossible?

what would you say?

Link

i recently had a rather pointed run in with a local religious organization. it was over a funeral and their seeming lack of care for the grieving spouse. it became so heated at one point the lady yelled at me over the phone that she didn’t appreciate my attitude and that i should be less critical of her organization. she barked that she wasn’t accountable to me but only to god, he was her judge and she felt just great about “the best they were able to do. but her best was woefully inadequate.

the funeral took 13 days to put together. during this time there was only contact made with the common-law spouse if it was instigated by the bereaved. there was no pastoral visit, no funeral consultation, no bereavement counseling, little or no contact… thirteen days. this organization was incredibly upset, however, that i would call them into accountability. it was, after all, none of my business and they would thank me to butt out.

i’m not very good at butting out, and i was mad.

i guess what disturbs me the most is that this sort of treatment is so common. so often the church is satisfied with pitiful measures or token responses to people whose life is falling apart. i know i’m guilty of this. my hectic schedule, the demands on my time, the constant needs around, all serve to deaden us to the plight of the hurting. this family was not a part of any church, they were not upwardly mobile, the man died of a drug induced drowning. they certainly were not noteworthy citizens or important people. she called me upset, hurt, lonely, tired and skeptical of a christian faith that did not seem to care.

the question begs to be asked, who cares?

i was nervous. we had worked for a long time on this project and 7:30 was quickly approaching... and no one was coming.

i grew up in the church growth movement. i remember, in vivid detail, the rallies, the denominational pushes, the cheasy campaigns ("1000 by 2000!"). regardless of what was being said privately, numbers were all that mattered. the denominational superintendent wanted monthly tally sheets. the fastest growing churches were featured in print and public.

i know of what i speak. i was one of those churches. at one point i had the fastest growing church plant in north america. magazines would call, there would be phone interviews, and the denomination looked for excuses to feature the church.

but it never seemed to be enough. i somehow thought that i would be happy. finally i was beginning to see some results. my insecure ego was being stroked. i was a big fish in a small bowl.

but for some reason i wasn't happy. if only we could grow to the next level, break the next barrier, then i would have 'made it'. we studied the binders on "breaking the 200 barrier", then the one on the 400 barrier, then the one on the 1000 barrier. it seemed that success was constantly just over the horizon. we had enormous outreach events, we talked to consultants, we strategized numbers with the church growth expert. i've been there.

if there is anything i have learned in the past years it is this subtle philosophical maxim - the church growth movement sucks. powered by our need to succeed and driven by greed, it is a psychotic rollercoaster of insecurity and pain. it robbed the joy out of the moment, every moment. sundays became about who was not there, not who was. our motivations became suspect, our desires twisted.

the church growth movement, though it served a purpose, destroyed the hearts and egos of a generation of pastors. the trail of broken dreams and feelings of inadequacy stretches out as far as the eye can see. if you were to talk to some of the pastors and leaders that i have you would find them joyless and frustrated.

so last night the clubchurch opened. maybe 40 people showed up and half of those were well-wishers, friends and spies. i expect next week to be smaller yet.

yes we will continue to advertise. yes we will work hard. but for some reason i can't find the motivation for mass marketing and kamikaze advertising that i used to live or die by. bigger no longer feels better. i want to be effective, i want to make a difference, but something has changed inside of me.

i was nervous last night. threw up as usual. but i also had fun. fun at church. it's been a long time.
i genuinely like the people i'm on this project with. they aren't "parishioners". we are all volunteers. after expenses i came home with 5 bucks and some nickels for next week's float.

i want real. i want community. i want cappuccino.

so both my son and i were going to be out on halloween night. i told him to simply make sure the doors were locked and the lights low. people would see that we were not home and pass us by.

i came home to a sign on the front door, written by my kid. it simply said, "we're poor, no candy".

my boy (in hat) suffering for jesus in hawaii.

OK, we all know that 666 is the number of the Beast, but did you know that...
670 - Approximate number of the Beast
DCLXVI - Roman numeral of the Beast
666.0000000 - Number of the High Precision Beast
665.9999954 - Number of the Pentium Beast
0.666 - Number of the Millibeast
/666 - Beast Common Denominator
666 x sq. rt (-1) - Imaginary number of the Beast
1010011010 - Binary of the Beast
1-666 - Area code of the Beast
00666 - Zip code of the Beast
1-900-666-0666 - Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute. 18 only please.
$665.95 - Retail price of the Beast
$699.25 - Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
$769.95 - Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
$606.66 - Wal-Mart price of the Beast
$566.66 - Costco/Price Club price of the Beast
Phillips 666 - Gasoline of the Beast
Route 666 - Way of the Beast
666 F - Oven temperature for roast Beast
666k - Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg - Reco