a spiritual “action plan”

Philip Yancey started writing in a journey what he thought God would want for a spiritual “action plan” for the rest of his life. Here’s a sampling: 1. Question your doubts as much as your faith. 2. Do not attempt the journey alone. 3. Allow the good—natural beauty, your health, encouraging words—to penetrate you as deeply as the bad. 4. For your own sake, simplify. Eliminate whatever distracts you from God. 5. Find something that allows you to feel God’s pleasure. 6. Remember those Christians who peeve you so much—God chose them too. 7. Forgive, daily, those who caused the wounds that keep you from wholeness.

broken

Am on vacation visiting in-laws. Have watched a lot of TV, a lot. News has been on morning, noon, night. I’ve been reminded of how broken our world is. There was the nuclear blast in North Korea. There have been murders every night in Memphis. And then at a local Wal-Mart a young woman that was shoplifting threw the baby she was carrying at the policeman who caught her. Threw the baby! The child may have a concussion but will be okay. But our world is not okay. It’s broken. Something’s wrong. It’s called sin. And personally, nationally, and internationally we need to repent.

family

With Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, I’ve been thinking about family. The meaning of “family” has changed significantly in my lifetime. Today the average middle-aged adult has more parents than children. One of the fastest growing trends is couples who choose to be childless (a third of all married adults.) The number of single-person households and blended family households has increased dramatically. Families headed by women stands at an unparalleled 29% of all households. There are now more single adults than there are married adults. There soon will be more step-families than birth families. What I think is important for us in the church to embrace is that we all are adopted into God’s family, whatever the shape of our earthly family.

buy nothing day

As an antidote to the media’s consumerist noose that’s strangling so many people, a “Buy Nothing Day” has been proposed. Go just one day without buying anything. Television advertising makes this difficult for a lot of people. They’re in its grip. A recent survey found that the more TV a person watches, the less a person saves—$208 less saved annually for each hour of television watched per week.

private Christians?

I know persons who consider themselves Christians, but they consider it a private matter. “Christian” and “private” don’t go together. Faith that’s not active in the public sphere, in the real world, is not Biblical faith at all. James 2:17 says: “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

9 years

This weekend it’s been 9 years since I moved to Roanoke to start Journey Church from scratch. In the beginning I lived in the Rescue Mission with other homeless people. I remember attending chapel services with the transient men. Many of them reeked with the smell of alcohol, yet when they sang “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” it was a wonderful experience of worship. I learned quickly that worship can happen in unexpected places…like a movie theater.

the “good old days”

In the “good old days” men worked 72-hour weeks, life expectancy was 35 years (colonial America), serial marriages were the norm (the average marriage lasted 12 years in the 1880’s because one-third of women died in childbirth), 50 percent of children never reached the age of two, millions of people died from pneumonia, diphtheria and polio. How quickly we forget what the “good old days” were like.

not religious, spiritual

It is possible to be deeply “spiritual” and never get off your duff. This makes a mockery of Biblical spirituality. A noted “religious” leader writes: “Hardly a week goes by without someone saying to me: ‘I’m not religious, but I am spiritual.’ They assume I will be happy about this. I always ask these people how much money they donate to help people in need. Or about the last time they visited a hospital to see if anyone needed a sympathetic ear. Or about their diet, and what they are doing to minimize animal cruelty, environmental pollution, and exploitation of Third World laborers. The usual response is that these have nothing to do with spirituality. On the contrary, without care of the world spirituality is a self-serving waste of time.”