What Would You Write?

It's so late...school work is eating me up!

Anyways, I was just listening to a message by Rob Bell. He mentioned that there was a recent study – mass survey – where the question "What do you think of when you hear the word Christian?" was posed on a blank sheet of paper. Unfortunately, the majority of people wrote, "Hates Gays.”

Why didn't they write love, compassion, humility, creativity, innovation, etc? When we process all of the political events that have surrounded the last year, it's not hard to understand why someone would use the word "hate" to describe a Christian before anything else. Petitions, arguments and legislation have all been passed during the last year as Christians become more politically vocal. The question is, how are we coming across? I believe we should be politically active as Christians. However, I agree with Rob Bell when he went on to say "I’m sick and tired of people speaking for Jesus who I think have missed the point."

Update: I have updated the website of the week. This is an odd little site, and I can't be held responsible for its content. However, I am oddly drawn to the questions many of its writers are posting.

The Unveiling...

In my post Planting Time I promised that once my garden grew, I would give an update with before and after pics. Well, my friends, the time has come. I am so excited. The left photo is of the area that I planted in. This area actually looked rougher than what you see here. This was after putting in a drain and creating a wall with lawn timbers. I then filled that area with dirt. While maintaining the garden is harder than I ever expected, it is rewarding to see flowers and tomatoes grow right before my eyes. Karen and I used to look every morning to see what plants grew during the night. Here is what it looks like now:

Nature amazes me. Let me know what you think of the garden when you have a chance, and feel free to come over and weed when you have some spare time.

Weather

We have had some pretty bad weather in the Ham during the last 2 weeks. I was deep sea fishing on July 5th and found out that Dennis was coming up right behind us (Hurricane Dennis). I have been on the coast the day before a hurricane twice now...it is unsettling. While on our two hour boat ride to our first fishing hole in the Gulf, I had a revelation. These fishing trips would be SO much more exciting if the boat Captain let us ski off the back or at least parasail. Man, they could make a killing off the extra incentives they could offer on their deep sea fishing trips.

Yesterday we had another torrential down pour. I had to pull into a parking lot for at least 30 minutes. I have to admit, I was pretty freaked out. We got a total of 4 inches of rain in less than 45 minutes, and many areas around our house were flooded. I saw a dumpster picked up and moved and a parking lot erode away. That is pretty cool.

Random Thoughts About Spirituality (Part 4)

Here is an interesting statistic. Eighty percent of tithes given to U.S. churches today are through the Builder Generation. That astounds me and leads me to the question, what happens when they are gone? Why is the local church in a state of plateau or declining in every county in the U.S., while it is growing rapidly in countries like India, China, and Indonesia? How about this…maybe they have a model we need to adopt. Maybe they understand that a house church is valuable because it gives groups of people the ability to truly “do life” with each other. It promotes a healthy church, which in turn creates a growing church. Forget about focusing on church growth...let's focus on church health.

I had church on Saturday night. It was a little different than normal though. I was outside, sitting on the back porch of my cousin's house, watching a thunderstorm role by. The crowd wasn't huge...actually just four people (myself, my cous, my close friend, and Jesus). I was able to walk away feeling encouraged, strengthened, and provoked. I have spent a lot of time processing the whole idea of unconditional respect, which is a lot of what or conversational theme revolved around. I do a pretty crappy job of it. However, it has spurred some great conversations since Saturday. Anyways, I can’t wait to go back to that church!

Would the idea of house groups make too many Christians in the U.S. get out of their comfort zones? Would it make them have to become real? The real fear in being a Christian is not the title, it is the idea that God will single us out to be different. My greatest fear in being a Christian is that He won't single me out to do anything significant.