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The Religious Life
Posted by: | CommentsA few days ago I noticed a story about a guy named A.J. Jacobs and his quest to live for a full year while following every rule in the Bible. Obviously it caught my attention and got me thinking.
Turns out this guy spent the year doing his best to follow the Bible and felt no closer to God from it.
Then today I was reading Bruxy Cavey’s new book, The End of Religion, and I noticed this:
Religious people miss the message and turn to the rituals and regulations, ethics and activities prescribed to them as the way to achieve what God has already offered them as a gift. In so doing, they miss the life of God and fail to satisfy their spiritual thirst.
Picture a thirsty person holding a cup of water. Now picture that person licking the outside of the cup in an attempt to quench his thirst. That is the picture of religion. Religious people tend to focus on the cup and forget about the contents.
A.J. Jacobs never figured out how refreshing the water was and wasted a whole year worrying about a cup.
In reality it’s not just Jacob’s problem, we all spend way to much time worrying about the cup.
Jeremiah 2:13 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
[NIV at IBS] [International Bible Society] [NIV at Zondervan] [Zondervan]13 “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Need some air?
Posted by: | Comments[UPDATE] -Royal lost and rioting ensued, apparantly some Frenchies actually wanted a socialist that wanted to live up to her last name 
It seems as if Segolene Royal, the woman currently in a run-off for president of France against Nicholas Sarkozy, has to constantly have her arms in the air. I wonder why.
[UPDATE - NEW PIC]
More on Evangelism Today
Posted by: | CommentsCame across a livejournal post today, here is an exerpt:
I’m excited to start my college life and then my career.
I know I’m going to be happy in film once I get started.
And I lost 5 lbs. And I bought new clothes. And I’m tan.Life is good. The one bad thing that happened is someone
tried to convert me to be born again Christian and it was
really awkward. But besides that, it’s good.
Man! What went wrong here? I can almost feel what must have been an adversarial conversation with the “Christian” coming up with arguments as to why, and the writer of this either just shutting down or arguing back that her life is great just like it is.
How sad is this? Being in a relationship with someone who is sharing who they are and sharing their faith should be one of the most rewarding experiences of life, even if one chooses not to believe! Why do so many Christians assume an adversarial stance instead of a conversational stance when it comes to evangelism? Evangelism should be more like a dance than a wrestling match! A dance the other person has invited us into.
Neighbor
Posted by: | CommentsIf there were ever a time for my church to be a great neighbor it is now! This house, directly across the street from our building had a fire that seemed to have started around 7pm today. We need to be praying for the folks that live there and serve them extravagantly!
(this is the view from the front steps of our building)
ON TV
Posted by: | CommentsSaw the Today Show this morning on NBC and they had a story about some billboards going up around Canton, OH. The billboards are part of the Pathetic Sex Life campaign (patheticsexlife.com) that River Tree Christian Church is running.
The whole thing rings familiar… In fact all of the materials (photo on billboard, flash movie on web site) are from Granger Community Church. Of course Granger puts this stuff out to help others pull together a creative, relevant, professionally produced message series material but you would have thought that in gaining national attention River Tree Christian Church would not try to claim this as their own creativity, what an opportunity they missed to build up another church with some press. RTCC missed an opportunity to multiply the impact of the press that they got.
EPIC
Posted by: | CommentsLooks like some more evidence has come out supporting learning in what Leonard Sweet calls an EPIC style.
Experiential
Participatory
Image-driven
Communal
I love this model of teaching! Nothing in there about talking at people and flashing slides full of text in their faces!
Swiss Invasion!
Posted by: | CommentsThe Swiss have invaded Liechtenstein! (Accidentally, that is.) During a routine training exercise, a group of 170 Swiss infantry soldiers got lost and wandered into the neighboring principality. Liechtenstein, a country of only 34,000 with no military, is just the latest target of “accidental” Swiss global imperialism …
credit to relevantmagazine.com
