Nativity Grace

Today we set up our Christmas decorations, tree and Mandy's little nativity set. I looked at the nativity set with fresh eyes as we are looking at these characters in the Gathering. When we look at a typical Nativity set, the people we see are the least likely people to be involved in a King's birth. Poor, dirty Shepherds; Pagan, Gentile Magi, a poor, young, unmarried pregnant girl from a dumpy small town, etc. And I was reminded of the abundance of Grace seen even in the birth narrative (not to mention Jesus' geneology). This was the birth of the King and the birth of a Kingdom with completely different values, priorities and expectations than the culture. Even in Jesus' birth we see the upside down and countercultural Kingdom that He came to establish. After the message, Jim Echels (our church's worship leader and the Gathering drummer) sent me the lyrics to "So Long, Moses" by Andrew Peterson. I thought they were beautiful.

"Will he be a king on a throne

Full of power with a sword in his fist

Prophet, tell us, will there be another king like this

Full of wisdom, full of strength

The hearts of the people are his

Prophet tell us, will there be another king like this

And Isaiah said:He'll bear no beauty or glory, rejected despised

A man of such sorrow, we'll cover our eyes

He'll take up our sickness, carry our tears

For His people, He will be pierced

He'll be crushed for our evils, our punishment feel

By His wounds, we will be healed, we will be healed"

Ringing in the New Year at 30,000 feet

On Monday we were asked to lead a mission team to East Asia. Within 48 hours Mandy and I are both going and we are very excited about the opportunity. We look forward to teach, counsel, help out the missionaries (our good friends there) and do whatever else the Lord would have us do. We will leave on December 31st and bring in 2008 while on the plane. It is a little bit of a whirlwind as we get prepared, figure out plans with Caroline and raise support. Pray for us and for the trip.

cultural addition

One of my favorite subjects to discuss is how to engage culture with the truth of the gospel. We talk at FEFC about learning what we need to receive from our culture, reject from our culture and also in what ways we can look to redeem our culture. Marvin Olasky has an interesting article with a great quote on this subject. I am not into politics at all and strangely enough this article is about politics. So putting the politics aside, I appreciated this quote that seems to get at how we can engage culture.


"Instead of working fruitlessly to subtract evil from the land, add the good. American conservatism can have a bright future, with God’s grace, if we are strong and courageous in developing positive alternatives to the cultural negativities around us. But if we merely praise our own Christian circles and curse the darkness outside them, we will soon be surrounded by it. This type of guerrilla cultural warfare can be more difficult than an invasion of Canaan—but God calls Christians to help transform the societies surrounding them."

Also, tonight I just read another great post on this subject by my friend Jonathan Dodson. Check it out.

Crowder

This week I spoke at the FEFC youth retreat and the Dutton Band led worship. The Dutton Band used to fill in for David Crowder at UBC when he was touring. So they played a ton of crowder songs this weekend, which I really enjoyed. But I was out blogging and read this article on the character of David Crowder and was even more impressed. It is great to see that he is not just talented and creative, but truly is trying to live what he sings.

Consuming me some church

This week Shaun Groves wrote a post about if he should even keep going to church. I realize that it is tongue and cheek, but I think his premise in the post is the wrong approach. His entire post is talking about things that he should be able to get from church and then how he can get those things better in his cul de sac.

We have a long way to go to change our view of church away from the consumer (meet my needs) to the gathering of missionaries living in community, the body of servants (utilizing spiritual gifts), etc. And also we have some difficult ground to break to teach ourselves that church is not a building, but rather a people who are part of a movement for Jesus. Now to be fair, he does come around with somewhat of a counterpost explaining that he is not going to stop going to church.

Don't stop going to church because we need you, your gifts, your encouragement, your mercy, your teaching, your exhortation, etc. That is why you go to church.

Lars and the Real Girl 2

One of the most telling lines in the movie is when Lars says to Bianca (his doll "girlfriend") that the fake flowers are beautiful. He says they are great because since they are not real, they can never die. For Lars, real life community has been hard because his parents died, his brother moved away and everyone abandoned him. Therefore, Bianca is perfect because she is not real, so she can never abandon him.

Lars is so paralyzed by the fear of being abandoned that he won't engage socially with anyone. Today, the youth pastor at my church was telling me that his High School Kids fear abandonment more than anything else. That fear suppresses authenticity, because if they are real and vulnerable, then they will likely be rejected and abandoned. Just like Lars, when people let us down, we run after things that are not real in order to satisfy us. We justify it by saying, at least they can never let us down. I am so thankful that we don't have to run after futility and instead can run to God who says that "I will never leave you, nor forsake you."

Lars and the Real Girl

On Friday night, I saw Lars and the Real Girl because of Cheryl Fletcher's recommendation. She lives in L.A. now so her movie recommendations are that much cooler. I definitely recommend the movie. At first it looks really weird and it will make you squirm a little bit with some painfully awkward moments. But it truly gets to the need for community and the power of community. The messiness in Lars' life is pretty out there, but it reminds us that living in community involves loving each other despite the messiness. The ultimate message of the movie is pretty redemptive. And it is playing at Alamo Draft House, which is definitely the coolest place to watch a film here in Austin.