Kitchen Renovation
The “before” shot.
About an hour into the project.
Unpainted, but up.
The finished product.
All Sons & Daughters
Props to Katie Collins and Sarah Gray for intro’ing me to this band. Thank you Marshall Griffin for wanting to do this song at ReachUNC.
0Small Group > Facebook
Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will notice that I am not currently using the social medium that has seemingly taken over the internet. I’ve had many friends who have expressed concern for why I’m not quite so “accessible” anymore, so I decided it might be good to share some thoughts I’ve had about Facebook for awhile.
First of all, this isn’t some huge stand I am taking against Facebook and I’m not fighting the status quo either. Quite frankly, my use of Facebook has been sparse for quite sometime. I would check it every now and again and discover messages that had been waiting on me for weeks. Kristi recently decided to take a Facebook hiatus, but has returned mostly for work purposes. The time away has taught me a few things.
[I want to clarify that I am not suggesting that you completely abandon Facebook. This is more or less food for thought about how we spend our time.]
There is only so much time in the day. I have a few friends who seem to always be able to make time for conversation over the phone or adjust their schedules to make time to “catch up.” I can think of one friend in particular who has nearly 2000 Facebook friends, serves as a youth pastor at a very large church, and yet, somehow, always seems to make time for me and maintains consistency in our friendship. I am always incredibly blessed by this incredible gift that God has given him. I’m not like him. I find that I have to be very careful about how I choose to invest my time because this precious commodity can be stolen so easily by the mundane demands of daily life. Facebook is a time thief. Scripture places a significant emphasis on time. In Esther 4 Mordecai challenges Esther to take advantage of the time she has in the king’s presence to fight for the sake of the Jews. He says to her, “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” In Ecclesiastes 3:9-13 we are told God gives tasks to his people to be accomplished with joy and contentment with God and that the timing of God’s efforts are in his hands, but we should take joy in our labor. One of my favorite verses comes out of Hosea in a passage where the prophet is challenging the people of God not to waste their time. He says in Hosea 10:12 “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.” We are commanded in Ephesians 5 to “make the most our time.” Time is precious.
There are psychological effects from Facebook. Check out this segment from an article published on Psychology Today:
While the intention behinds these sites may be to help sustain meaningful relationships, the actual effect has been to help online relationships supplant real life ones. Irene Levine, a professor of psychiatry at New York University and PT Blogger, agrees. She explains that while computer technology and social media have enhanced people’s ability to communicate across the globe, they aren’t a “substitute for face time!” In fact, according to a recent Oxygen Media study, more than half of young women (57 percent) say they communicate with people online more than face-to-face. Moreover, Internet addiction is now recognized as a serious disorder and may be included in the upcoming revision of the DSM-V, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Facebook Addiction Disorder (yes, it’s real!) may be the leading cause of Internet addiction, with some junkies spending up to 20 hours on the social networking site. But nothing, certainly not Facebook, takes the place of “sitting side-by-side with friends, seeing their facial expressions and body language, and perhaps just saying nothing,” Levine insists.Even beyond Facebook people spend more time looking at computer screens than they do looking at other people or involved in face-to-face conversation. I’m thinking about how true this is in my own life as I type this blog post. LOL! There certainly are social and psychological differences from my parents generation and the generation that is growing up with smart phones in their hands.
Giving your time to the people God has placed in your life is better. No, I’m not saying to turn your back on your old friends. I think it’s important to keep up with people, but I don’t think we need to keep up with everybody. I believe that God, who knows the future is drawing us forward toward the plans that he has laid for us. Part of this is the people that come into our life. For this reason, it is incredibly important for us to pay attention and invest our time and lives into people with purpose. Random friendships and inconsistent acquaintances just don’t fit the bill. I’m talking about committing yourself to loving the people in your life the way God has commanded. The New Testament is full passages known as the “One Another” verses. Below you will find a list of said verses. As you can see, Scripture places HUGE significance on how believer’s are to interact with one another! These kinds of commands aren’t fulfilled in isolation while sitting on our computers surfing Facebook. They happen in real life. They happen when we take time to live life intentionally with other people. The people God has placed in our lives. For this reason I have chosen to trade my Facebook time in for my small group. The time I used to spend on Facebook I now spend meeting members of my small group at coffee shops, enjoying sporting events together (Go Heels!), praying for them, and just living life together. God has been using these men and women to draw me and Kristi closer to himself. Our lives have been impacted immensely by this wonderful group of people. If you are not in a small group, please get in one. At the Summit Church there are many wonderful groups available to join. Click here to find out more information and get connected to a Summit Small Group. God knows where you belong. Trust him. If you don’t attend the Summit Church, then move to Durham, NC and join our church. Just kidding. But, seriously, you need to be in a church that takes this seriously. If your church does not make life-on-life community a priority, then you need to pray for a change in your church or move. It’s that important! I pray that you will take seriously God’s commands for us to love, serve, and care for one another and that you will lay down anything that hinders true, life-on-life, organic, Gospel-centered, biblical discipleship.
Oh… And… I’m going to ask Kristi to post this on her Facebook page since I’m not on it anymore.
One Another Verses:
- John 13:34 – “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
- John 13:35 – “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
- Romans 12:16 – “Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation.”
- Romans 14:19 – “So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.”
- Romans 15:7 – “Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.”
- Galatians 5:13 – “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
- Galatians 6:2 – “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”
- Ephesians 4:25 – Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.
- Ephesians 4:32 – “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”
- Ephesians 5:21 – “and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”
- 1 Thessalonians 4:18 – “Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
- 1 Thessalonians 5:15 – “See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people.”
- Hebrews 3:13 – “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
- Hebrews 10:24 – “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,”
- James 5:16 – “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”
- 1 Peter 4:9 – “Be hospitable to one another without complaint.”
- 1 John 3:23 – “This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.”
- 1 John 4:12 – “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
We Always Marry the Wrong Person
The opposite is also true… We always marry the right person. These are helpful truths from the attached video that offers nearly 116 years worth of marriage advice. This short video is full of helpful phrases. I appreciate statements like: “we lie about Christ and we lie about what the church is obliged to do when we leave her.” A special thanks to my good friend Matt King for sharing this video with me. Links and more detailed information about the sources referenced in the video can be found here.
Piper, Carson, and Keller on Sustaining the Covenant of Marital Love from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.
There are a lot of books out there about marriage. Some better than others. Keller’s book is a must read.
We are the Bumble Bee
This weekend my church, The Summit Church, celebrated it’s 10th anniversary of it’s relaunch from Homestead Heights Baptist Church 2002. The 10 year anniversary also happens to coincide with 50 year mark that the church has been in existence. Homestead Heights Baptist Church was founded in 1962. This weekend we are celebrating some amazing milestones, none greater than the fact that God is moving and drawing people from all over the world to himself through the ministry of our church.
My church is unique. I could spend several days writing about the things that my church has done that has been turning heads for the past decade. Through our celebration this weekend of what God has been accomplishing, my pastor, J.D. Greear, reminisced about the difficult decisions we have faced and how many of the things we have decided to do were often counter to the ways that many thought was best to build a healthy church. For starters, J.D. didn’t church-plant. He could have, but chose to stay at this church God had led him to and challenge the people (about 300 at the time) to believe that God could indeed do “immeasurably more than they could have asked or imagined.” I am so grateful to say that those people believed and obeyed the voice of the Lord. God has led our church to sell the property it owned, be “homeless” for a couple of years, move into a “ghetto” warehouse and launch multisite campuses throughout Raleigh-Durham. That’s the short version. On just about every decision we have gone through the “experts” have said that what we are doing will never work. This weekend J.D. compared our church to a bumble bee. With it’s large frame and tiny wings a bumble bee shouldn’t be able to get off the ground, but that’s exactly what it does. I have been at the Summit Church for eight years and I have watched God work time and time again through the belief our people have that God’s hand is not too short to save. I know that each member has experienced the power of God and witnessed Him work.
Here’s a quick review of my own: I had a religious upbringing as a child, but resented the faith of my parents. In college grew to hate Christianity and the church. Unfortunately, this is a very common story in our society. God began dealing with me, my anger, hypocrisy, and sin during my senior year of college. In June of 2003 I prayed to accept Christ and moved to Wake Forest later that year. I began attending the Summit Church in January of 2004 and was baptized later that year. I was a seminary student, but boy was I jacked up (you’d be surprised how many like me there are at seminary). I had so many questions and still so many fears and frustrations with the church. Yet, at this church I felt welcome. I felt like the people wanted me there. I felt like God wanted me there. I started playing guitar in the band. For about a year I was the only guitar player at the Summit Church. Eventually we had 3 services on Sunday morning and the band and setup team would show up around 6:30 am and leave around 2:00 pm. During this time I would spend the night with our worship pastor, Chris Gaynor, on Saturday to be closer to the church. I observed a man who genuinely loved God and loved people. He put Christ on display during a very formative season of my life.
In 2005 we began to look for property we could use to expand. We purchased a small building on Cole Mill Road with the anticipation of purchasing the adjacent property. This did not work out. However, during this time we took a step toward the next stage of our growth. I began leading worship at this campus. We would begin about an hour after it had started at our other location. J.D. would finish his sermon and arrive at our service about the time I was finishing up… ideally. I’ll never forget the day he got stuck and we had to do an extended prayer time. It was so amazing to be part of this season of change in our church and I wanted to continue, but I felt called to respond to the victims of the Tsunami that struck Southeast Asia and the people of Indonesia. J.D. announced that there was an opportunity for those who would like to go volunteer. I put my life on hold, packed up my stuff in a storage unit, and travelled to Indonesia with another guy that had put way more on hold than I had. He had a wife, two kids, and an excellent job. Like me, he knew that God had called him to be part of this effort. I learned so much from Curtis Alan (now our Missions Pastor) on this trip. The greatest thing I learned from him was that joining with God in His mission is greater than anything we could wish or accomplish for ourselves. My worldview was changing. After 3 months in Indonesia I returned to finish seminary. The Summit Church had already grown significantly from when I had left. There were new musicians in the band! There was also a new administrative assistant at the church.
In the fall of 2005 I was volunteering with the student ministry and met my wife, the aforementioned admin assistant. David Thompson, now one of our executive pastors, was instrumental in the early phases of our relationship and he and his wife, Jen, have been a continued model for me and Kristi for how to raise a family that loves and serves God. Kristi and I were married in August of 2006. One of my groomsmen was doing research for Ed Stetzer and was listening to me go on and on about my church. Ed would later release his book, Comeback Churches, of which Summit was a focus. Also one of Kristi’s bosses and a good friend of mine, Brad O’Brien, met his wife at our wedding. Brad is now the West Club Campus Pastor. Kristi and I committed to go overseas for two years to live among and share the Gospel with muslims in Central Asia. During that time, the Summit Church grew more than it had in the previous 6 years. We returned to one church with several locations.
It has been amazing to see the life of this church be so deeply integrated and foundational for my life. Through the years I have experience both joy and sorrow at the Summit Church. I have sinned against people and had people sin against me. God has brought me from being a young man that hated Christianity and the church to wearing a t-shirt that said “I love my church” a few months ago. I have learned (slowly) that a church where God is moving, a church we all want to be a part of, is a church full of people that recognize it’s not about them. It is all about the Gospel of Jesus Christ – for believers and unbelievers alike.
When I look back at the last few years of my life and see what God has done through the Summit Church I am blown away. I am excited to be a part of what God is going to do through our church in the next 10 years. My good friend, Jonathan Welch, reminded me last year of Psalm 84 where the Psalmist proclaims, “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” I would be a doorkeeper at the Summit Church just to be where God is at work.
I love my church.
1
How to Read a Book
The idea of reading a book that teaches a person how to read a book seems redundant at best. Honestly, it actually seems illogical to me, but that’s exactly what I needed. Having earned a Master’s Degree five years ago, almost scoring perfection on the literature portion of my SAT’s in high school, devouring hundreds of books since college, and even being a bit of an amateur author myself, one would think that I would have no need for a lesson on how to read a book. However, I really did need to read this book. I wish I had picked up this little gem years ago!
It’s safe to say that the former chairman of the board for Encyclopedia Britannica could teach most of us a great deal about scholarship and learning. Dr. Mortimer J. Adler published the first edition of his book in 1940 and worked with one of his former students, Charles Van Doren, to release a revised version of this helpful tool years later.
Here are just a few things that prove helpful from this book:
Amateur readers at some level struggle with fixations and regressions. The eye is blind as long as it is moving for many readers and, thus, they are only able to read when their eye stops. The attempted answer to this problem for many people has been learning to “speed read,” but this does little for comprehension. Adler says, “Every book should be read no more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than you can read it with satisfaction and comprehension.” The question then becomes, how do we know for sure that we are comprehending? He offers a couple of stages for this level of reading. Systematic Skimming and Inspectional Reading (superficial reading). Systematic skimming has one basic intention: anticipate the comprehension of the structure of the book. Pretty simple. The trouble is most people either skim or they read analytically and risk falling back into the traps of fixation or regression (re-reading sentences or paragraphs). We miss this transitional phase of reading called Inspectional Reading. During this phase Adler challenges the reader to engage with the author in a quick discussion during which they seek to have several questions answered:
- What is the book about as a whole?
- What is being said in detail, and how?
- Is the book true, in whole or part?
- What of it (old school for “So what?”)?
During this phase you are taking quick notes that are simply structural. As you move into the latter phase of analytical reading your notes will move beyond structural concern to conceptual and will focus on how your thoughts interact with those of the author. And for those readers who are studying multiple books on the same subject he introduces a note-taking practice called dialectical note-taking, wherein the reader, in practice, invites the multiple authors into a discussion regarding the subject matter.
So, if you desire to get better at reading or are planning on furthering your education I would consider this book a “must-read.” More importantly, however, this practice of bettering ourselves with regard to reading serves to keep our minds alive and growing, which is also the final emphasis of the book.
Happy reading!
1Good or Bad Apple?
For the second time in a row I have a MacBook Pro completely tank. My wife says I have a gift of destroying computers and I’m beginning to think she’s right. In 2010 my MBP that I had for almost 3 years began to do strange things like not showing the language and battery icons in the toolbar. When programs started freezing regularly my trips to the Apple Store increased. After changing out my RAM, hard drive, and logic board the final decision was that this computer was defective. The most amazing thing happened, though. I was still under Apple Care so they replaced my computer, not just with the same 2007 model, but with the 2010 equivalent. This computer was newer, faster, and nicer… And they let me buy Apple Care. So, I purchased a computer in 2007 and now it is 2012 and I have a computer that is still under warranty until August of 2013.
My most recent experience, though has me questioning some things. My current MacBook Pro is sitting at my local Apple Store. The logic board and the hard drive both failed the tests run to see if they were defective. Now, I know that all technology fails and that people who believe Macs never have any problems clearly don’t know that that is simply impossible. Every piece of digital equipment, especially those things that are more complex, carries the possibility of being broken or defective. I still believe, for the most part, that if you look at the number of Macs with issues and the number of PC’s that crash out and fail, you will see that Apple technology isn’t just shiny and nice looking, but exactly the same underneath. Apple technology is altogether better.
However, I am beginning to think that there is something going on with this 15″ MacBook Pro line. The number of friends of mine who own this same machine and have had disappointments, the number of these I saw take trips to the Genius Bar while working for the company, and my own experiences has me scratching my head. My wife had white MacBook that is still working perfectly today. It has never taken a single trip to the Genius Bar. It is the best computer we’ve ever owned. She now has 13″ MacBook Pro that has been working perfectly (knock on wood) and has had ZERO issues. I don’t know if it is the level that the hardware is pushed in the 15″ lines isn’t capable of standing up over time or what it is. I know a decent amount about computers, but I’m not the guy who LOVES taking computers apart and putting them back together. I’m just informed enough to know when things show tendencies and I am beginning to think this the case with the 15″ MBP’s.
One thing I’ve learned, though: BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER!!!
0ReachUNC
I have the privilege to work at one of the premier public universities with the most amazing students! ReachUNC is a student organization that is committed to sharing the good news about Jesus with it’s university. Here is our most recent promo video:
Videography: Ben Cleveland Editing/Music: Lance Michels 0
Should Religion and Politics Be Kept Separate?
“religion should have ZERO place in politics. period.”
This is a quote a friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday.
Before I address this it should be known that I am not a fan of delivering political opinion. You will find little content on my blog about politics. I did, however, marry a wonderfully intelligent woman who has a degree in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. We have great conversations about politics and within the walls of our home it is something that we both feel is extremely important. I have strong political opinions and listen intently to the plans and strategies of our government, which I will continue to do. I rarely, however, bring those things up over dinner with friends, post comments about them on Facebook, or walk around advocating my party’s candidate for the world to hear. I find that discussions about politics are usually divisive and, in many scenarios, secondary with regard to topics at hand. Does this mean that I pragmatically agree with the statement of my friend that religion should have ZERO place in politics? No. Here’s why:
First of all, if you are going to exclude the existence of one element from that of another, then you had better make sure that they are not interdependent. For example, anyone who does photography or graphic design knows that there are three primary colors needed to create the range of colors you see on your computer screen or television (RGB, or Red, Green, Black). If you remove the color red, then you lose the color orange as well, since, as we know from childhood, red and yellow make orange. This brings up my second point.
Religion and politics are slightly more complicated than the color red, so it would seem probable that a proper definition of these terms would help in determining rather or not they should be interdependent or separate. Below are the definitions given by the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Politics: the art or science of government Religion: a personal set or institutionalized system of beliefsThe first thing I want to point out from these definitions is that politics fall under the categories of art and science, neither of which has ever testified to finality or absoluteness with regard to government. This means that to say that “religion or sociology or economics or anything else has no place in politics” is inconsistent with with the defined term: the science of government. The second point worth mentioning is that religion, by definition is a system of beliefs. It seems unlikely that a “religious” person would make the statement that my friend did, so my guess is that he would define himself as either an atheist or agnostic (we haven’t discussed it). The reason for this is that these two groups generally define themselves as non-religious or separate from religion. The only problem is that they are completely mistaken. If we maintain consistency with the above definition, then the belief that there is no God and that Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. are wrong is itself a belief statement and, therefore, by definition… a religion. In fact, the religiosity of atheists have been intensifying in recent years under the evangelism of men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins, the most popular of these modern atheists, has acquired quite a following, largely due to his zealous efforts and winsome personality. In his book The Root of all Evil, Dawkins said, “Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.” The reality is that this is precisely what he has created. An unshakeable religion (at least in the minds of it’s adherents) that has everyone who follows it submitted to the authority of it’s leader, him. The truth is that many secular theorists, evolutionary scientists, and fellow atheists disagree with a vast amount of opinion that Dawkins presents to his followers as “truth.” These are men and women who you would think land on the same side of the fence as him, yet disagree. Not only are many young atheists extremely devoted and passionate, they are equally ignorant. You know those country churches out in the “sticks” where the preacher says all kinds of crazy stuff that gets attributed to the whole of Christianity? That is exactly what is happening with atheists. They are being carried along by untested beliefs that result in statements like, “religion has ZERO place in politics.”
Now, for my Christian perspective. Unlike the Qur’an, the Bible doesn’t prescribe a structure for government. The Bible does, however, give many instructions for how to live your life in a way that honors God and reflects His nature to the world. The basic point of the Bible is that we couldn’t do this, so Jesus came and did it for us. We don’t obey God because we HAVE to. We obey Him because we WANT to and recognize that a life submitted to the authority of the Bible and to Jesus is better. [Just a side note here: From someone who has tested the Bible and continues to do so, I also follow it because it has never been proven to be inconsistent with science or government or social justice, etc. In other words, it has never been inconsistent with anything that has been "proven" to be true.] The Bible tells us to submit to “every authority instituted among men” (1 Pe 2:13). In doing so we have a responsibility to pray and seek that those authorities do not prescribe or mandate something that would cause us to be disobedient to what the Bible teaches. When someone decides that the process of aborting a baby is the “right” of the mother and that the ruling government should protect the mother’s “right,” they are enacting their belief system, or religion, on the government. But, by who’s authority? How do we know that this position is the correct position and that any opposing argument is wrong? This is where we must come to realize that religion and politics are inseparable. Even if you rid yourselves of all major world religions (e.g. Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity), you would still have no separation between religion and politics. There would still be one religion involved: yours.
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