...she phoned me today. she has to whisper because of the tubes that were in her throat and is still missing a piece of her skull but apparently is normal.... beautifully beautifully normal.

I have become more vocal lately and participating in some blog conversations, to try and show how most of the more vocal critics really are misleading people with the broad and sometime even absurd generalizations that some extremists make. I blogged about these before here and here.
more from dan here.

"Which is better, to be the pastor of a small family or to be the pastor of a megachurch?"

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
And you begin to wonder why you came
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness (the fray)

i spoke a bit ago with a friend about forgiveness. about moving on. there is a great deal of discussion lately in my circles about the nature of forgiveness. i find that after so many years of full time church for some reason i do not have a great deal of experience with, as sue said in her post, learning to "get on" in life with those i need to forgive or be forgiven by.

here are a few thots:
forgiveness is not condoning: too many of us equate forgiveness with giving permission for others to be or act in ways that we cannot condone. we are afraid that if we forgive a past slight that we are in fact proclaiming our support for the very thing we fought so hard to hold accountable. there are clear examples in the bible and in common literature of forgiveness without complicity. i am reminded of various holocaust survivors who, after experiencing a nightmare on a scale we can hardly imagine, chose to forgive those who tormented them. to conclude that they therefore encouraged such behavior is laughable.

forgiveness is not about a pound of flesh: there is an incessant need to exact some sort of tangible repentance from those we feel have harmed us. we need to see them pay, or to suffer. forgiveness short-changes that process and allows the other to "get away" without paying our perceived penalty. it is therefore not a natural act.

forgiveness is ultimately not about me: in the final analysis forgiveness is about restoration. restoration. we forgive because that god-something in side of us longs for wholeness, but we need to understand that forgiveness is not about my feeling redeemed. those who forgive rarely receive the reward they had hoped for. the rape victim, the assault victim, the battered wife, the misjudged, they are forced to accept a second-rate solution. there is rarely vindication in this life. those who have harmed us usually go about their lives with impunity. this is not tv - there is not pretty solution in 22 minutes. forgiveness allows us to go on, it does not make everything better.

some years ago my best friend, in my estimation, harmed me in a deep and significant way. i carrried that pain for years until one night, through tears, i poured out my heart in a letter that dripped with anger, pain, frustration and rage. i began that tirade by saying, "you will never get this letter". it was my intention to throw it out after writing it. i believed, for valid reasons, that simply writing such a letter would help me to close that chapter. i wrote the thing, put in in a safe place, and went to bed.

the next morning i slept in. my wife got up, noticed the letter, and proceeded to mail it (believing that would obviously be my intent). she mailed it.

two weeks later i received a hesitant phone call from that friend. i was to learn that he barely was conscious of the event and did not understand at all why i was so upset. i had carried that anger and pain for seven years. he had not. i was in prison, he was free.

i still struggle with forgiveness. i would like a pound of flesh. it is still not natural to let someone off the hook. but i hope i can learn... for i have much to be forgiven of.

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7:2

if you need to know i don't wanna know...

"how can we worship a homeless man on sunday and ignore one on monday"
from the irresistible revolution

i'll try to remember that tomorrow morning when together with a couple of youth kids (no adults were available) we move a hurting friend, who lost her job, whose kids are in foster care, who lost her apartment... into homeless.

The church needs a Jesus that is strong enough to deal with meth.

True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of
all that is, has been, will be and will not be.

annette writes about matt's new bedroom here.

from darryl:
If you are involved in church ministry, this post by David Fitch is a must-read:

I have often pondered the church planter's tasks versus the mega church pastor's. To me, what the smaller more organic missional community leaders do is much more difficult. Here's why.

It is more difficult to take 10 people and grow a living organic body of Christ to 150 than it is to transplant 200 or 300 people (or I have heard even 600-800) and then grow that congregation to 5,000. Because a crowd draws a crowd. And if you have all the bells and whistles, 5 pastors and a youth program, all from day one, and a charismatic speaker with spiked hair (no shot intended at anyone in particular) and you don't mind putting the smaller less flashy community churches out of business, it will be harder to stop attracting a big crowd from all the people who want Christianity to be more fun and mesmerizing...

And there's more. Really worth chewing on this post for a while.

sorry for the lack of blogging. i haven't felt inspired, i've been sick, the dog ate my homework, i was from a dysfunctional family, people have been mean to me, i've had hemorroids, doctor gave me a prostate exam, i was spanked as a child, i'm losing my hair, my parents didn't understand me. pick the one you like the most.

rumor has it she is out of the coma and awake and responsive, though not speaking. more to come!

amanda is currently still in a coma and they are waiting for her to wake up. they stopped giving her medication this week to induce coma (they needed time for her brain to heal). there was some initial improvement but now she remains in the coma.

the club was weird tonight. most weeks if you stop by the club on a saturday nite, and happen to be there during clubchurch, you will probably hear loud music, nothing really familiar to the worshipping ear. you might hear someone speak, you will always hear heckling. and laughter.

tonight was the juncture between good friday and easter sunday. the in-between time. so we decided to do something different. several people told stories, the music was perhaps a bit more introspective than usual. and we had communion.

we've never had communion at club. it's not the kind of venue that fits well with communion. or so i thought.

tonight one of our regulars, b, had communion for the first time. in fact he had never even heard about communion. he is new in faith. he had no idea what communion was all about. lately he has started coming to our small group, stumbling though something he has never even imagined before.

sometimes i wonder why i bust my hump, week after week, for this thing. it seems like i am always at work. it seems like it's not making a difference. and i feel so unworthy.
then i think about b.

i remind myself that it's no longer about numbers and popularity. there is no money involved, no paycheck, no affiliations or great growth. no schedules or programs or committees.

it's all about b.

spent some time with the family today and here is what i can tell you...

- amanda is in stable condition though went into cardiac arrest twice yesterday
- the driver of the vehicle is not at fault as far as we know
- amanda has had a piece of her skull removed as well as some of her brain
- she is not conscious at this time
- they need to wait 5-7 days for stabilization before they deal with the other injuries
- i have asked for permission to see her in icu at royal columbian over the weekend.
- i will update again should anything else happen or after that visit.

please remember her family this week as well as the driver of the jeep. i can not even imagine what he must be going through as well.

if you are so inclined please pray for amanda thompson, who while crossing highway 7, was struck by an oncoming jeep on monday. amanda has a baby daughter, and is a good friend of club365, new heights church, and my family.
last status report was that amanda is in a coma, having sustained life-threatening injuries, including a substantial head injury. she went into cardiac arrest more than once during surgery.

more updates as they come available.

"god is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass and i'm the ant he’s pulling the legs off,” whines bruce. god is ignoring him, he continues: “he could fix my life in five minutes if he wanted to.” assuming the role of the critic, he addresses the heavens and gives god a thumbs-down: “the only one around here not doing his job is you!"

he’s heard bruce’s complaints and has decided to let him try being god for a week and see if he can do any better. this one-time arrangement, confined to the buffalo area, contains only two rules: he can't tell anyone about it, and he can't mess with anyone's free will.
i am bruce almighty! my will be done!

how many times i have yelled this. i am scott almighty! my will be done!
- we don’t trust god because he might disagree with me.
- we believe the parts of the bible we like
- subtly believe I know better... well i do...
[when I was twelve I met our cigarette lighter….sure my parents had said stay away from it but i was bored…(but i knew better)
when i was 10 my parents told me to stay away from the gas can… (but i knew better)
my parents warned me about smoking pot and doing drugs… (bikb)
When i was 17 i knew everything….my world was small]

--- this isn’t burger king… you can’t have it your way.

In The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird writes: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. When schoolmates asked, "What happened to your lip?" I'd tell them I'd fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me. There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored--Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy--a sparkling lady. Annually we had a hearing test. ... Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back--things like "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?" I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, "I wish you were my little girl."