Category: General (page 7 of 121)

You know Earl Creps, right? The Off-Road Disciplines guy? Seminary professor guy? And now, soon-to-be fledgling church planter guy? Yeah, him…

I wish he had just minded his own business.

I wish he had just done that seminary professor thing, and coasted on off into the sunset of his later years.

I wish he had just decided to keep blogging.

I wish he had just kept on encouraging the whippersnappers out there.

But nooooooo! You know what Earl Creps had the audacity to do? He’s taking a huge plunge. He’s planting a church. In Berkeley, California. He’s over 50. And he’s bragging about it! (Well, not really “bragging” per se, but he is throwing it out there for all the world – including other timid, almost-50, sedate, comfortable-but-unfulfilled types – to see.

And if that’s not enough, he says this about one of the reasons why…

My friend and Dean, Joe Castleberry, preached a sermon in an AGTS chapel last fall that contained an intriguing statement: the two great risk-taking phases of life are the twenties (before you have kids) and the fifties (after the nest is empty). This thought became like a virus in my mental programming, slowly beginning to take control of things.

I really, really wish he hadn’t “quit preaching and gone to meddling.”

If you are approaching “middle age,” if you find yourself wondering “what if?” or “is this all there is?” do not – I repeat – do not read Earl’s post. You may find yourself gearing up for something that will rock your world…

As a complement/update to that last post about XM Channel 75, I just realized you could switch over to Radio Paradise for some of the same kind of groove…that works, too!

Or if you really want an eclectic mix of tunes, check out student-run WREK at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

…you can bring Starbucks home!

You just get your coffee going, fire up XM Channel 75, get your books and notebook out, and there you go!

Well, almost…

OK, here’s the deal…you know when you get those pesky credit card offers in the mail and they have the fake credit card stuck to the paper with that “snot-like” adhesive? (Sorry!)

What’s that stuff called? And where would I find something like that, quickly and locally?

Thanks in advance for your vast storehouse of knowledge!

From the Starbucks in Canton, Georgia this morning…
The men’s group is out in full force, the coffee is hot, sweet, and strong, the muscles have a good afterburn, the sun is shining, the storm is gone, I slept a long, long time last night, I finished my workout strong, God is on the throne, and right now, it is well with my soul!

Oh, and did I mention that Louis Jordan’s “Let the Good Times Roll, ” Spike Jones’s “Cocktails for Two,” and the Ink Spots’ “Someone’s Rocking My Dream Boat” are providing the soundtrack for this gorgeous morning?

And Ephesians 1 and John Piper are providing the reading material…

It’s a rainy, potentially stormy Thursday in my neck of the woods. I’m sitting here thinking, reading, and praying. And some of those thoughts are leaking onto the pages of my Moleskine…

• My buddy Gary Lamb is in the war room right now. For something like only the second time in the history of the ‘Stone, they’re departing on short notice from the scheduled plan for Sunday. If you’ve got a minute in your busy schedule, lift up a word for the RidgeStone team.
• I know people die. I know death leaves a void in the lives of family and friends who are yet alive. I do have compassion for grieving people, especially when the death is particularly drawn-out or whatever. I know we have a responsibility to help meet others’ needs, especially those of the household of faith. But the mission goes on. And I need to have at least as much compassion for those who are dying spiritually, facing a Christless eternity separated from God, as I do for those whose physical death, while saddening and maddening, is a transition to an eternity in the presence of the One who makes all things new.
• Our denomination reports that 103,585 people live in a 5-mile radius of our church’s location. Median age, 35.6. Mostly “Up and Coming Families.” Mostly disconnected. Mostly unchurched. Mostly overwhelmed.

I don’t really remember exactly, but I think it was Steve McCoy who first pointed me toward Timothy Keller and the work of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

Anyway, the latest print edition of Cutting Edge, the church planting magazine from the Vineyard churches, has a great article by Keller about developing city-center churches. (The issue is not online yet, but the print edition showed up in my mailbox yesterday.)

Good stuff! And it’s got me thinking about things like…

• How do these concepts relate to my place?
• Is it time to look at places like Woodstock, Georgia as still being the ‘edge’ of Atlanta?
• Or are smaller, growing cities like Woodstock ‘cities on their own’?

And these money quotes (among many!) from the article…

You can’t just disciple people on how to be Christians in their private lives, (e.g., prayer, witnessing, Bible study). Center-city people don’t have much in the way of a “private life.” If you are in finance, or art, or acting or medicine, your vocation dominates your life and your time. Discipleship must include how to be distinctively Christian within your job, including how to handle the peculiar temptations and ethical quandaries, and how to produce work in one’s own field from a distinctly Christian world-view.

If you speak and discourse as if your whole neighborhood is present eventually more and more of your neighborhood will find their way in or be invited. Why? Most Christians, even when they are very edified in church, know intuitively that their non-Christian friends would not appreciate the service. What you want is for a Christian to come to your church and say, “Oh! I wish my non-Christian friend could see (or hear) this!” If this is forgotten, soon even a growing church will be filled with Christians who commute in from various towns and communities far and wide rather than filling up with Christians and seekers from your church’s immediate neighborhood. (p. 23)

Although I took a month off from blogging, I kept the ol’ Moleskine hot. Here’s a little smörgåsbord of thoughts from the last month or so…

Saturday, February 3, 2007 8:37 a.m….

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?
-Jay Gatsby, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, p. 157

Thursday, February 15, 2007 6:03 a.m.

…if you allow sloppy practice and don’t push your team to continually improve, sloppiness becomes a habit; then it’s tougher to get the team to focus on getting better when it most needs to.
-Ken Blanchard & Don Shula, Everyone’s a Coach, p. 21

Friday, February 16, 2007 8:34 a.m.

And more to the point, if [Tiger Woods] were trying to be some “whole person” defined by having to do it all, then he would probably not win the Masters, as he would be misusing his talents, spending time doing something he might not do well and not doing what only he can do.
-Henry Cloud, Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, p. 32

We need our gifts, but without wholeness of character – integrity as we are calling it – our gifts will become unusable or at least less fruitful. You can be the best designer in the world, but if no one will talk to you, or you can’t complete a proposal on time, you will be designing the inside of Dumpsters.
-Cloud, Integrity, p. 34

Among other things, I learned…

• People still check in on your blog, even though you said you were done. Cool!
• Blogging really is an itch that needs to be scratched! It’s not quite like Jeremiah’s fire in his bones, but it must be pretty dang close! Within 10 minutes of posting that “I’m done” post a month ago, I had three or four things I wanted to post!
• Perry Noble rocks!
• So does my buddy, Gary Lamb. (But I knew that before I took my blogging break!)
• My other buddy, Tony McCollum ain’t too shabby, either!
• There is no substitute for passion.
• There are a lot of things that keep our prayers from being answered.
• If my prayers don’t articulate God’s character, advance God’s Kingdom, and achieve God’s purpose and plan, they probably aren’t going to be answered.
• Some people “get it.” Some don’t. Some of the ones you think “get it” really don’t. And vice versa.
• Medeski, Martin, and Wood are perfect for a Tuesday night post-blogging-break Unwind.