Michael’s Mind

I hardly know where to begin, it’s been so long since I last posted.  I can tell you how I got derailed and let this blog slip away from me.  May ended and June came and with it, Jeremy’s and Erin’s wedding.  Followed immediately by the Renovaré Conference in San Antonio.  That was followed by a trip to Austin.

I have had to go back to work full time, which is a bummer.  I love the job and all that, it’s just that I miss the opportunity to be more engaged in pastoring.  In fact, at times lately, I’ve begun to feel as though no one’s at the helm of this ship!

Avenue L took off in the summer, with back to back concerts, and and amazing amount of work completed.  And with the school year, though we’ve cut back a bit, we have held some of the most succeefull events we’ve seen since the beginning.

I also started to rewrite Coward’s Crossing online.  It’s a novel I’ve all but finished and which I have been unable to rid myself of.  It constantly comes back to haunt me and I won’t be at peace until I finish it.

Maybe now I’ll get back to work on this site?  Who knows?

My wife and I went to the Vineyard USA National Leadership Conference in Galveston two weeks ago, which was the first week of May.  I have not been myself since.  To say it was impactful is premature.  To have impact, to me at least, it must bear fruit and that remains to be seen.  But what it has been is challenging, maybe even clobbering.  It has brought me into a time of reevaluation.  I guess I’ve been thrown into what Rose Swetman, co-pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Seattle, calls deconstructing church.  I’m suddenly questioning everything.  It’s not a matter of tearing down everything, but looking at everything we have done and everything we are doing and asking, where is the heart?  Are we doing this with the right heart?  Are we focused on the kingdom?  Do we weep over our city, crying out to God to give us Huntsville?

This is not an easy place to be.  In some ways, it feels like I’m reeling, but not really.  I have not questioned the call of God on my life.  I am not questioning his Lordship, but my response to him, my response to his call.  Our response to his call and his Lordship.

Our elders will be meeting in a couple of weeks for a Review and Revise Retreat.  Everything is on the table.  We will begin the process of evaluating what we are doing and how we’re doing it.  This will be followed by a wider group of church leadership doing the same thing together.  This is sort of like heart surgery.  The passages to our heart tend to get clogged up, the flow of life becomes restricted.  We are undergoing an arterial unclogging to unstop our hearts and to free up our ability to respond in love to the needs about us.

Be praying for us as we go under the knife.  Pray, not so much that we survive, but that we die and are resurrected, empowered to be salt and light, walking in eternal life, his life now.

Here’s what’s been on my mind lately:

The kingdom of God is like the smallest seed.  You plant it and walk away.  Before you know it, totally unobserved, it grows up into a shady shrub offering shelter to birds.

What does that mean?

It means that the kingdom doesn’t come by careful observation.  It cannot be found here, nor there, despite what folks say to the contrary.  Even as much as I’d like to say, come here, come to HCC, come to the Vineyard, the kingdom is here, it just isn’t the truth.  The kingdom of God is within.  It is subterranean, below the surface, beyond observation.  That’s not to say that it has no manifestations, but those are manifestations of the kingdom, not the kingdom itself.  It would be akin to hearing a sonic boom and it was a jet.  It’s not a jet, but the passage of the jet.  It’s like the wind.  It blows and we cannot see it.  We can only see its effects.

Why is this significant? Continue Reading »

2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.?—Philippians 1:3-11

As we explore the letter to the Philippian Church, we want to be careful to notice this bit of opening material. Let’s not be too quick to write this off as a bit of 1st century courtesy. Here Paul says, “I’ve been praying for you.” Given our own record these days, I can see how we might assume a nicety here, kind of like being asked, “How are you?” and answering, “Fine,” when in fact, you’re anything but fine. The last thing most folks want to hear when they ask you how you’re doing is to find out how you actually are doing. In fact, if you made it your habit to answer folks forthrightly when they greet you with a “How’d you do?”, you would soon find folks avoiding you on the street. They just don’t have time to hear the latest news from your life, they were just being courteous. Continue Reading »

“The poor we will always have with us.” –Jesus

Now there’s a quote for you, one that has been the excuse for many Christians turning their back on the plight of the poor and needy.  I mean, Jesus said we’ll always have poor, so what am I supposed to do about it?  He must have meant that there’s nothing to be done, no solution.  Right?”

You keep telling yourself that, if it helps you sleep at night.  But will it serve you in the end? Continue Reading »

Real estate.  Again, that is what most people think of when they think of a church.  I’ve been thinking lately just how the church (the real church, the spiritual church) has been lured into wasting millions of dollars and untold hours acquiring and maintaining structures.  Talk about laying up treasures!  It suddenly reminds me of the church of Laodicea in the Book of Revelations, who thought of themselves as rich, but were in all actuality wretched, poor, blind and naked.  They had laid up their treasures in the wrong bank.  Continue Reading »

Talk about confusion of language.  The word church is a word that has come to mean something I don’t think it was intended to mean when first it was coined.  What it means today to most people is a place some folks go to on Sunday mornings.  In other words, church is a place, a building, an edifice.  But I don’t think that it meant that initially.  We should never go to church.  Continue Reading »

Psalm 11

For the director of music. Of David.

1 In the LORD I take refuge.
How then can you say to me:
“Flee like a bird to your mountain.

2 For look, the wicked bend their bows;
they set their arrows against the strings
to shoot from the shadows
at the upright in heart.

3 When the foundations are being destroyed,
what can the righteous do ^[a] ?”

4 The LORD is in his holy temple;
the LORD is on his heavenly throne.
He observes the sons of men;
his eyes examine them.

5 The LORD examines the righteous,
but the wicked ^[b] and those who love violence
his soul hates.

6 On the wicked he will rain
fiery coals and burning sulfur;
a scorching wind will be their lot.

7 For the LORD is righteous,
he loves justice;
upright men will see his face.

I often find it difficult to reconcile the love of God in Jesus with this picture of God in opposition to the wicked.  “For God so loved the world, he sent his one and only Son” to die on a cross “so that none would perish, but have everlasting life.”  It seems strange then that this same God would be pictured here in almost militaristic terms as opposed to the wicked.  But the key, I believe, is to be seen in the last verse.  “For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice…“. Continue Reading »

Oh how I love your law. I meditate on it all day long!—Psalm 119:97

The psalmist is referring to the Mosaic law and names it as a source for meditation the day long. Think of that. The Law! This is the same law that we often find uncomfortable in its demands and its judgments. From not mixing assorted fibers in cloth to not mixing milk and meet, from killing witches to killing rebellious youths—how hard a thing to meditate on!   What purpose would it have, but to either depress us, or fill us with intolerance? Continue Reading »

Here’s an update on what’s going on for me right now. In just under five months from now I’ll turn 50. I can’t help but feel this is a milestone for me. So, starting on December 1, I have begun the very daunting task of losing 50 pounds by my 50th birthday. With two weeks gone, I’ve lost 7 pounds, which puts me on track for the 10 pounds I must lose each month in order to meet my goal.

I’ve been told (by online computer programs) that I can’t lose that much wait in the allotted time. But I am going to go for it anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing lost, if you know what I mean. If I get anywhere close, I’ll be doing much better than I would if didn’t try at all.

**ON SOAPBOX**
Part of the process has been a growing disgust with obesity in America, and that includes me, of course. It’s not just a problem, it’s a catastrophe, a public health crisis. America doesn’t need to go on a diet, Americans needs to change its diet. Continue Reading »