Tag Archives: church

Worshiping on Saturday

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I worshiped last week with the Cascade Hills Church of Christ, a church plant that launched at the same time that we did almost five years ago. We drove down to Salem on Sunday morning to be with them. Jason, the leader there, referred to that day as their church Saturday. What he meant by this was that Jesus died on Friday and resurrected on Sunday, and on Saturday God was just…well…dead. Followers of Christ celebrate the backwards nature that God brings life out of death, and on that Sunday Cascade Hills was dying. They had not yet experienced the full reality of the life that would happen as a result of their death, and so they celebrated their “Saturday”. Jason said some powerful words that resonated with me. He listed some of the top things he had learned in planting Cascade Hills.

  1. Responsibility makes you old (makes you grow up)
  2. The best way to learn something is to teach it or do it
  3. There is more to do than we’ll ever be able to do
  4. When everything goes wrong…things then tend to be just about right
  5. In order to do church you’ve got to go where people are
  6. A few people can make a huge impact
  7. Prayer works
  8. Building faith takes time
  9. Failure and faithfulness often go hand in hand
  10. People make the church (not vision statements, strategies, buildings, programs, etc.)

Stuff Christians Like

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You’ve got to go to the Stuff Christians Like website. I’ve included a couple of my favorites below…

  • “Putting a a God spin on popular secular ideas”- Oh the irony. One of our favorite things is taking popular secular ideas and putting a coat of God flavor on them. Case in point, that Adidas logo that has been creatively titled with “Add Jesus.” And yet, here I’ve done the same exact thing. I took the wildly popular site “stuff white people like” and tweaked it just a little to make it about people that worship God. But “creatively borrowing” ideas from the world is only one of the things we Christians like to do.
  • “Dating God instead of me”- One of the things that Christians at my college liked to say if they didn’t want to date you was, “I’m not dating anyone right now, I’m dating God.” So the guy, who really just wanted to play mini golf or have a bowl of pasta at the Olive Garden, has to find a way to get you to break up with God. That’s a tough assignment but I think it reflects something we like even more, which is bringing God into situations he might not be that concerned with. Granted, he should be infused in every part of your life, but before that guy asked you out, did the Alpha and Omega really say to you, “By all means, do not eat a bottomless salad with Mark Robinson. I have spoken.” Sometimes we like to use God to get out of stuff, like bad dates, just like I use my kids to get out of going to boring parties, e.g. “I’d love to go to your baby shower, but I couldn’t get a babysitter. It’s a shame, a dang shame.”
  • “Famous Christians”- Although the jury is still out on Stephen Baldwin, one of our favorite things is Famous Christians. I have to admit, Scientology has kind of been kicking our butt for a few years. I mean they got Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Giovanni Ribisi. They even got Beck, dear sweet sounding Beck. But we’re not that concerned, want to know why? Because we have Bono. He’s worth like 18 other normal celebrities. Seriously, he is most of the most active, productive people on the planet. I almost wouldn’t be surprised if at some point he admitted that he had been cloned in the late 90s. How else can you explain his work in Africa, his concert tours and his ability to regularly put out good albums? Thank God for Bono.

Check it out. It’s amazingly wonderful.

Haiti and the church

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I don’t have much to say about this but I feel very burdened by what has happened in Haiti recently. Not only am I in prayer and burdened for the Haitians and the destruction there, but I am burdened for the church. I know that seems out of place, but I hope and pray that the church (and I define “church” as groups of people who are following Christ) responds not only in prayer but as the hands and feet of Jesus in our world. I hope that Christians live up to their identity as people who live out of an alternate reality that gives them a glimpse into things unseen and therefore compels them to partner with anyone and everyone in bringing hope and restoration to the broken world.

"Americans are Great People…but…"

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Kanzo Uchimura, a Japanese Christian and missionary, spent time at the end of his life reflecting on Christianity in the world. Concerning America he said

“Americans are great people; there is no doubt about that. They are great in building cities and railroads…Americans have a wonderful genius for improving breeds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine…Americans too are great inventors…needless to say, they are great in money…Americans are great in all these things and much else; but not in religion…Americans must count religion in order to see or show its value…to them big churches are successful churches…To win the greatest number of converts with the least expense is their constant endeavour. Statistics is their way of showing success or failure in their religion as in their commerce and politics. Numbers, numbers, oh, how they value numbers!“

As read in The New Shape of World Christianity by Mark Noll

Who do you look like?

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There’s a church planting couple here in the NW that came from a traditional church, had worked in established ministry for years, and felt “called” to work with people in downtown Portland. I do not know these people well so I cannot speak with much insight as to how their lives and hearts have changed over years of doing this ministry. But I can tell you that their appearance has changed. She has had dreads (and has since cut them off and started them again), they have many piercings, tattoos, and they dress the part too. It might be easy for us skeptical types to look at them and make jokes about how they’re trying to look cool or something of that nature. But concerning the way they look my wife heard the woman say that the two of them did not set out to look different and change their appearance. Instead, she said, the more time you spend with a people and the more you fall in love with a people the more you want to look like them and be like them.

As I processed this I remembered me and my other tall and skinny white friend who lived in Portugal together. We stood out. We looked different. We were loud when we road the bus. We wore t-shirts and baggy jeans. But by the time we left some things had changed. Without ever trying or even thinking about it we acted differently in public settings. We dressed differently (embarrassingly enough we began to wear tighter jeans). In many ways, small ways, we began to look more like the people we were with.

I’m intrigued by this idea in two ways.

  1. Are you loving the people around you to the extent that you might start looking like them?
  2. Is your Christian community living and loving in such a way that people who hang out with you are starting to look like you?