Smalltown Poets: Prophet, Priest and King

A little Smalltown Poets for you this morning. I really liked this song when it came out in 1997.

Headline: Biggest U.S. churches ‘contemporary, evangelical’

Two new reports on the size and strength of American congregations present contrasting pictures of church life today.

The October issue of Outreach magazine is all about growth. It lists the 100 largest U.S. churches, based on attendance statistics gathered by LifeWay Research, Nashville.

Continue with article here.

The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry

Anyone heard of this move? Has anyone seen it? If you have what did you think? Anyone planning on going to see it? It opens this September 18 at the Dickinson 10 in Owasso and around the country.

I would like to hear what people think.

Final Part: God is big enough to… copy

No, not ask us to copy him. No we seem to treat God as big because he inspires us to copy others. Copy the newest church trend. Copy what the culture says is the hot way of doing things. No, it seems God is just big enough to find out and duplicate what works for First Church of wherever.

So, if a church seems to be doing well with a satellite campus, every church has to have a satellite campus. If video preaching is all the rage, every really with it church has to have video preaching.

Where is the movement of God in that? How do we need His power if we are satisfied with simply looking for the newest trend? Then when our church sees any kind of growth in attendance we automatically attribute it to the new trend we have copied?

This has been going on for some time. I believe it dates back to the time when people in the church started holding up individuals as experts on growth when they seemed to have any success. People began to write books and copy whatever was being done.

How many churches have followed this one as it went from one popular idea to the next? How will we see God’s power work among us if we are spending all of our time not looking for God but simply following trends?

I find it interesting that Jesus heals in many different ways. Jesus both touches and simple speaks to lepers who are healed. At times people found healing by touching him while at others it was Jesus reaching out to them. God’s power is evidenced by doing something the same way each time. Jesus ministry should teach us that.

In the end there is an interesting passage about God’s power that we find recorded in the Gospels. It is Jesus experience when he returns to Nazareth. I must credit a good friend Shane Coffman for this insight. The Bible tells us that Jesus could do no mighty works there.

Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.

“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith. Mark 6:1-6

Why? Because they didn’t expect them from Jesus. This son of a carpenter. Nothing special. He surely couldn’t do anything. We seem to forget that God’s power won’t simply be here because we say we want it. No, we have to live and believe it is true. I’m just not sure that the current state of Christianity in America says we believe. I’m not sure our actions testify that we think it is true. To busy looking for gimmicks, celebrating small things more worried about our personal comfort than God moving in powerful ways.

Heaven help us believe. I pray that we repent and really allow God’s power to invade our space. Let’s face it, we need it more than ever.

Switchfoot has a new album in November

What do you think? I have always been a Switchfoot fan going back to Legend of Chin. A lot different than the song they did for Prince Caspian.

Part 2: God is so big He makes me tingle.

Bet you never thought you would read a headline like that. I want to continue with my thoughts on how we view God. We say God is big and we tell people God is big but I’m not sure we treat or expect God to be very big. I just think at times we expect very little from a God we say is so large. I think we don’t ask for much or we attribute some pretty small events to His name.

One of those is our emotional feelings. We often tell people the greatest thing God has done is moved us to an emotional experience. God really worked in a powerful way means we really personally felt something. Well I’ve got to be honest with you, Susan Boyle managed that trick as did Kevin Skinner more recently. I was absolutely touched by their performances on the respective talent shows, and yet surely no one is calling them deity?

Now before you get upset know that I’m not saying God doesn’t move people or the Spirit doesn’t act today on individuals, I’m just saying when did that become the measure of God being big? When did that become what we point to as the greatest expectation we could have of God acting in our lives?

How did something very individualized become the measure of God doing something big?

Maybe that is the problem. We think God does something big when He does it for us. Yet when you look at God moving in powerful ways in the Bible many times it was for a group of people instead of one. God didn’t part the Red Sea so one person could be ushered across, he parted the sea so that a nation of people could find safety.

Maybe we don’t see God doing big things because we only expect him to do something for us. Maybe we don’t see great things because we only ask him to overcome our own personal problems, not those on a larger scale. Maybe because we only focus on self we fail to see the bigger possibilities. When God fed 5,000 we are told that this number didn’t even include women and children. Let’s face it, in our culture if the women and children had found out that they were not added to the number we would have a mess on our hand. The act would have been branded sexist, are you saying children don’t matter…

No, maybe we don’t see God doing big things because we have a very small worldview, the one that is limited to self.

Leeland has a new album

I simply love this song and this album. Check the album out. It is excellent.

Part 1: God is Big?

Really. God is big. Is that what you think? Is that what you tell people? Is that what Christians convey to others? Do we want people to know that God is big?

No. Well if that is the answer than at least that explains some things. I mean the guy who spoke the world into existence really isn’t that large. The God who ordained a place and time for His son to die and managed to do that in a world where He allows freewill? Not really much size to that. Maybe we really don’t think God is that big? That would certainly explain a lot.

Maybe you are someone reading this and you think, “No, I REALLY do think my God is BIG!” Maybe you even threw in a long line of exclamation points in your mind to make your point. Well, that would probably be pretty appropriate. We show people are God is big because we throw out a lot of exclamation points.

I remember reading and listening to sermons where people said you should have some goal that is so big that only God could do it. Unfortunately I have heard that sermon preached about basketball gyms and new and improved sanctuaries. I mean really. Jerry Jones just finished construction on a new football stadium that cost $1.15 billion. It is pretty big from what I have heard. I mean even the video boards are big. I guess it was so big that only God could do it…

God is so big that He helped us raise money to build a gym? Is that really what we want to tell the world? He breathed life into man and by the way he helped us upgrade to a hardwood floor? I have been to fitness clubs with nicer gyms than churches I have played basketball in. What does that say about the size of God? Gold’s Gym is stronger? Bigger?

I think we are far more comfortable saying than expecting or if we are truthful even hoping that He will do. No, if God did something really big it might require us to start living for something bigger than ourselves. It might require that our schedules not revolve around what WE wanted to do.

During my fifth grade year at school there was one particular boy who always told us how smart he was. He always told us he did well on the tests. He always assured us that he was a genius. He often scoffed when we struggled in class. That was why it was so surprising when the teacher one day asked why he hadn’t been doing his homework. I remember seeing that he had to take summer school that year and I realized all he really ever did was talk.

Sounds a lot like the church saying we believe our God is BIG.

Proverbs

“Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” Proverbs 21:13

Be Informed

You should be reading these types of news articles.

81 banks have failed. My father who is in banking tells me there are many more to come. A New York Times articles estimates 150 by the end of the year.

Understand what is happening. People are talking about recovery as if talking about it will make it happen. Years of living beyond our means has caught up with this country. Maybe that is why Jesus warned against it. Not only can it destroy individuals and families, it can bring countries to their knees.

If we are going to pray maybe we should stop worrying about universal health care and start praying for God’s protection when this all comes crashing down. I try hard not to be doom and gloom. I remember a book from the 90’s that said Saddam Hussein was going to bring the world to its end. I noticed a book this past week that was projecting the leader of Iran. It all sounded so familiar.

I’m not claiming to recognize the end, I am saying our thirst for more as a country, the thirst for more when we don’t have money to pay for it, has finally caught up with us. Our typical response is to push it on and on. Well, we have done that for 20 years and it doesn’t seem we will be able to push it much further.

What will happen? I don’t know but I am reminded that this world is not our home. It seems that God may be reminding us all.