Gandhious?

The other day at "the park" a server asked me if I hated her. I do not know why she asked that. At times I know I can show discontentment with my fellow co-workers but we are usually pretty cool. She is one of the few good servers at "the park," she never messes up her orders and she is a generally a nice person. None the less she asked me if I hated her.

I replied by saying, "No, I do not believe in hate. Only love can change people so why bother hating people?"

She replied with, "Awe, you are little Gandhi."

Gandhi?

Gandhi!

What about Jesus?

I did not know how to take her compliment. Gandhi was a great man but all his work was done in vain. His message was good but it was not 100% correct. It lacked the creator of love, Jesus! I mean Jesus is love. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I have new goal for while I am at work, to show people the love of Christ. Not the love of Gandhi...

It's Friday...

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

Things are becoming very real for me in my life. I have one more semester at WCCC before I go off to real college and start to prepare for my life in ministry. I thought that this time of filling out applications and writing essays would be exciting but it has not been. To get into college and you have to sell yourself to the school, why should they pick you over the next guy. Personally I have trouble seeing why any school would want me. My GPA would make a mediocre batting average, my SAT scores would be an excellent credit report and the only thing I have going for me is extracurricular activities but that just shows I should spend more time studying.

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

My recent doubts are not with God, they are with me. From the very start of my decision to follow this call to ministry has been rough. My father has not supported it, I have not strived to live it and now I doubt my actual call.

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

I know God can work miracles through the small and weak. Gideon, David and Saul are all evidence of His ability to do so but I am same as them?

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

I do not know if I am same as those guys but I do know God has not changed. If he wants me to be a pastor he will open the doors for me to do so. The more I have been praying about this I realize that my doubts are driven by fear of failure. By doubting myself I doubt God because he will provide the provisions necessary for me to succeed. Without God who am I? Just dirt (read Genesis if you did not get that one).

It’s Friday but Sunday’s coming!

One of my new favourite bands...

Check out this song by one of my new favourite bands, The Glorious Unseen. Their music is just raw praise and worship. It is beautifully honest praise.

Slot machine god...

Have you ever felt like God is a slot machine or maybe that just your prayer life is like playing a slot machine? You know you need something in your life so you pray and cross your fingers for "7-7-7." Maybe sometimes you are not getting what you pray for so it is just better to walk away. On the other hand your life may be going pretty good so you keep on praying for the "Jackpot."

I know I have. At points in my life my relationship with God was as such. I would be so hurting and I would pray a quick prayer for forgiveness and pull that lever. When I did not get what I wanted I thought it was because of my sin and I would try not too. It was kinda of like putting more quarters in the machine, the payoff would be bigger if I was doing good things, right? That logic failed me and I thought it be just better to cut my loses and walk away.

Although I knew there was more to it. I knew God had to be real because of how he had effected my life. When I first excepted him in my life I felt healing and relief but what was different?

After time thinking about it I realized it was my prayer life. I was playing the slot machine god. There was no relationship involved, just me pulling the lever. The Christian prayer life is so important because it is how we connect with God, along with worship.

My life is built on a relationship not on a game...

Persuasion and Propaganda

Persuasion and Propaganda is a class that I elected to take next semester, well I guess that is a bit of stretch. My current speech professor is the professor for it and he insisted that I take it. Last week I met with a councilor to schedule and he sent me to another councilor to schedule. Lo and behold Mr. Culbya, my speech professor, standing in the room I was sent to.

"I am glad you are here because we need to get you into my Persuasion and Propaganda class."

Prior to this I did not plan on taking the class, I just was going to take another literature class. He asked me about and I pretty much just blew it off. He tracked me down. I do not know how but he made sure he was there to schedule me.

"Look, I need you in my class."

I gave speech on poverty that I thought was pretty good. The majority of class thought so as well and one girl told me it was the best persuasive speech she had ever heard. Apparently Mr. Culbya did as well because of that speech he wants me in this class.

"I can see it now, WCCC getting active against poverty."

The class takes a project and tries to persuade our school to get involved in it. Last year it was the organization "Nothing but Nets." This year he wants me to spearhead a project that will help people in poverty. I do not know what we will be doing but I do know I want to make a differnce. I want to make a difference in to those who need help and those who are doing the helping. It is an all to common belief that poverty is Asian, African, South American and Mexican problem but its not. Poverty is our problem.

That hurt...

So I got bored and typed in "trendy Christianity" into my browser. Trendy Christianity has been on my mind and I was looking for a quote by Donald Miller about trendy Christianity. In all honesty this blog I am writing was going to be about trendy Christianity and how I do not like it but that changed when I saw something.

One of the hits linked my to "uncyclopedia.com." If you are unfamiliar with this website check it out because most of the times I find it hilarious. It is run by the same people who do wikipedia and is much like it. People write articles on a topic and they are published online but with uncyclopedia you are supposed to get it wrong (opposed to wikipedia, which is usually wrong). It is supposed to be funny but this one kinda hurt.

I will admit, it had me laughing at first. The article was on Christianity in general and the first line read, "Christianity is a form of fire insurance." That is just funny and do not worry, just think about it and you will laugh. I continued on reading and there was a section on quotes and all but one were made up, ridiculous quotes. The quote that was not made up was "Preach the gospel everywhere you go, use words if necessary."

I find the quote powerful and at the heart of what Jesus wants us to do but the author of the article disagrees. After the quote he wrote, "What the hell? That's an actually quote!" Obviously he was thinking that you cannot preach without speaking but the is not what old Francis meant. St. Francis meant that our actions should do our preaching, that we do not need words to reach people.

It did not hurt that this person made fun of Christianity, like I said I found the majority of the article amusing. What hurt is somewhere along the line someone missed a chance to preach the Gospel to this person without speaking, I just hope it was not me.

Small Things

The Irresistible Revolution is quite possibly the third greatest writing that influences my own personal theology. The second and very close to the Irresistible Revolution is Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and of course, far ahead of both these great works is the Bible. What I love about Shane Claiborne’s vision community is how it is not new all. There are a lot of people who claim that Shane has revolutionary ideas about Christianity but if he would hear you say that he would simply say that he has been inspired by the church demonstrated in Acts.

In the video above, Shane is reading from his book. He starts out with quote from Mother Theresa that has just infected my soul of late. “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” It really makes me think about why we do things.

A lot of us like the feeling of giving. How giving to the poor makes us feel better about ourselves but we never really understand the problem, nor do we want to. I have noticed a trend in popular Christian churches. We like to do big mission trips in the summer. We might travel half the way across the world to China or Africa or Calcutta and when we return something amazing happens. World poverty ceases to exist or at least in our minds.

I am not minimizing the good things that happen on these big mission trips but when we just do the big things, who did we do it for? You see it is so easy to detach ourselves from the needy by going far away to help people. What are chances of you seeing those people ever again? It makes it very easy for the needy not to expect things from you. Then you will not have to worry about letting them down.

I want to suggest a new way or should I say an old way to serve. I live in a county that has 380,000 residents in it and our poverty rate is at 8.8%. We need to reach these people, you and I have to reach these people because who else will. The popular church of America likes to go to attractive places to serve people. Westmoreland County is probably not on any churches agenda to be served, so let us put on ours.

When we focus on these big mission trips as our way to serve we miss the heart of the Gospel. The good news is for all. We need to focus on small mission trips. Mission trips that occur on our way to work, in the halls of our schools and in our own community because “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”