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Gravity moving the Glacier

August 3, 2010 in books, church, Daily Life, Kingdom, Missional Living with 0 Comments

From my journal dated May 29, 2009

I have 3 insights from today.  God perhaps has given them to me.

1) People need Jesus. We are Jesus.

2) The pursuit of the American dream leads away from Jesus.

3) My family is me.  We are one.  We are a body.

Our lives can usually be characterized by unperceivable change. Like the hour hand on the clock, you don’t see it move when you look at it but only when you look back at it.  Sometimes, though, the change is so rapid, you do notice it.  When I wrote those 3 things I was at the beginning of a perceivable change in my life.  It’s what ultimately got me writing on this blog and has set me on a path I hope my family and I never depart from.  In a phrase, I would say this shift awakened me to the Kingdom of God.  It was about me (and consequently, my family) realizing our primary identity as a citizens in a Kingdom where Jesus is in charge.  It was also the realization that I have no individual identity apart from my family.  My wife and I are one.  Our kids are one with us.  There is no more me, only we.  So at risk of non-comformity, I’ve made these things known to you – in the hopes that my journey for truth will inspire others to follow hard after Jesus.

If you’re not looking for it, you probably haven’t seen it.  Well, I’ve been looking for it and I’ve noticed there are others awakening to the reality of God’s Kingdom.  I’ve had friends sharing their thoughts and recent life stories that mirrors my own.  I’m seeing books emerge that cause us to test what we call our Christian faith against the Bible.  I’m seeing churches making changes in how they do things (including our own) in order to guard against conforming to the patterns of the world.  It’s kind of like what we say about natural disasters: Are there more of them or are we just more aware of them because we have more access to media?

At any rate, I’ve been into some of these books.  I made it through Irresistable Revolution, Crazy Love, among some other lesser known titles, and now my wife and I are part way through the book, Radical: Taking your faith back from the American Dream by David Platt.  Radical is essentially a book about my above #2.  I’m reading it and hearing echoes of my own thoughts and convictions. God’s Spirit is moving among the believers within our culture.  I really hope we are at the beginning of another great awakening.  (David Platt has quickly impressed me by his boldness and life of action.  Check out what he’s leading his faith community to with the Radical Experiement)  I will predictably say, the book is really good.  There is one phrase that has begun (began?) to haunt me:  ”…Not how much can I spare, but how much will it take.”  What if we measured our giving not by how much we’ll have left, but if the need was met?

When I thought about those 3 things above, I had in mind that I wrote them only a few months ago.  When I looked them up I couldn’t believe I wrote that more than a year ago.  You don’t know how far you’ve gone until you stop and look back and see how far back your starting point is.  At the same time, I feel my family has merely inched forward a few small bits.   But it’s phrases like the one in the previous paragraph that work like the gravity moving a glacier.

Thank you, readers, for being my audience.  Journaling this adventure for others has been a critical part of the journey!


Honestly, I’d rather be somewhere else

May 19, 2010 in books, church, Daily Life, God and us, Pastoring, Worship with 0 Comments

Francis Chan in Chapter 5 of Crazy Love is exploring how we Christians often give our leftovers to God.  He asks the question, “How many of us would really leave our families, our jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings, and our homes if Jesus asked us to?  If He just showed up and said, ‘Follow me’? Now explanation.  No directions.”  He goes on to say:

You could follow Him straight up a hill to be crucified.  Maybe He would lead you to another country, and you would never see your family again.  Or perhaps you would stay put, but He would ask you to spend your time helping people who will never love you back and never show gratitude for what you gave up.

What scares me most are the people who are lukewarm and just don’t care.  I think that if I did a poll of the readers of this book, many of you would say, “Yeah, I am definitely lukewarm at times, but I’m not really at a place to give more to God.”  Many of us believe we have as much of God as we want right now, a reasonable portion of God among all the other things in our lives.  Most of our thoughts are centered on the money want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become…. But the fact that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it’s about eternity, and nothing compares with that.  God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives.

What a world we live in.  For a few hours a week (more if we are taking responsibility for our spiritual growth like we should) we put truth into our minds.  But every other message around us seems to be both yelling and whispering “You, and what YOU want, and what YOU deserve is more important than anthing else or anyone else in the world.”  It’s no wonder we come to our gatherings to worship together and have such a hard time connecting with God.  Our minds and lives are so programmed to serve our selfish desires that it is a major mental, emotional, and spiritual shift to authentically sing praises to God.  We stand there and attempt to thank God for all He’s done when we spent the whole week wrongfully proud of ourselves and our own accomplishments.

As a pastor, specifically one who stands up front and leads people in worship of God, there’s is something I desire – possibly above all else – of myself and everyone else.  I can’t say that I practice this 100% of the time.  What I wish we could all do is be honest.  I wish that we could all be honest with God about how we feel, about our lack of faith, about our “secret” desires (God knows our secrets), or about our doubts.  I fear that when people walk in to our auditorium on Sunday morning, they feel there is a certain expectation of what image they are to portray.  They are driven by acceptance or by social rules.  If there is shame from sin, we bear it and hope it doesn’t show.  If there is boredom, we hide it.  To be honest, I see so many faces that seem to say “I wish I were somewhere else right now”.  And I’m not blaming anyone for how they feel.  I’m just saying, well, then don’t come to church!

As a worship leader, I would love it for people to come to me and say:

  • I feel far from God.
  • I don’t mean any of the words in the songs we sing.
  • I don’t understand what those words mean.
  • I don’t think God loves me.
  • I feel no emotional love for God.
  • I want to let loose but don’t feel comfortable in a crowd.
  • I’m angry with God
  • I don’t believe God is interested in me at all
  • Honestly, I’d rather be somewhere else then church on Sunday morning

Where is the safe place for people to voice their doubts?  Their hurts?

Going back to what Chan said, for those who call themselves Christians, but show no evidence that Jesus is in charge of their life, I wish they would just be honest.  For those who call themselves Christian and have no intention of working on a relationship with Jesus and are content following their own directives for the rest of their lives, why not just drop the label and call yourself not-a-Christan.  I wish we could all be honest.

Stop Praying

April 15, 2010 in books, God and us, Worship with 0 Comments

Yesterday our Home Group started reading and discussing Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  Everyone I know who has read the book has raved about how good it is and how it has really challenged and grown them.  I’ve tried on about 3 occasions to read the book (in fact you can see it in my book section).  I’m confident that I will finally get through it this time (maybe because I have conviction, commitment AND connections!)

Chapter one is titled “Stop Praying” which essentially means “stop praying and take a moment to really consider who God is before you start talking to Him – or at Him”.  Francis helps us refresh our view of who God really is – creator of the universe and one who takes personal interest in us.  Of course it’s difficult for us to grasp who God is.

I shared with the group last night that there’s something I learned about myself this week.  That I need to be ok with the fact that I will never fully understand who He is.  I have so many questions about Him and love to think about Him and His great complexity and simplicity.  I like to try to figure out how to picture Him existing outside of time and the universe and being able to focus in on small things like me and molecules and atoms and protons.  But there are times where things don’t add up and I’m not sure if God is this way or that.  Chan says it is frustrating to not be able to understand God and I agree.  But I’ve come to grips with the reality that I will never understand fully who He is.  That is freeing because when I begin to try to figure it out I remember I don’t have to and I move on.

I started to realize that this is partly because of a trust issue.  Isn’t it true that sometimes we feel we need to know exactly who God is and how He works in our life?  We know God’s promises and that He works all things together for the good and all that, but sometimes we just need to know what to expect – to know what His plan is, exactly, to work things out for us.  But I guess trust is an important aspect of any relationship.  We certainly want people to trust us.  I can understand God desiring the same of us.

In the descriptions of God in the Bible (Revelation 4; Isaiah 6), as explored in Chan’s book, the writers struggle to use earthly words to describe their visions.  Jewels, fire, thunder, etc.  I wonder if they would have any better luck today discribing the throne room of God now that our imaginations contain much wider boundaries thanks to movies and other creative demonstrations.

The best take away from this chapter for me was to consider what our view of God is and how that effects our relationship and interaction with Him.  Having a true understanding of who God is, in my opinion, knocks a man over with humility and feelings of unworthiness and awe knowing how God feels about us and what God did for us.

Before you talk to God, consider if you are talking to a far away being, an abstract idea, if you are just speaking you requests out loud to the air, or if you are believing you are speaking to a person.  Before you enter into a time of worship at church (or somewhere else) before you even walk into the room pause to remind yourself of who God is and why He’s given us so many reasons to worship Him and sing to Him and sing about Him.

I’ll end this post with the last paragraphs of the chapter:

The appropriate way to end this chapter is the same way we began it – by standing in awed silence before a mighty, fearsome God, whose tremendous worth becomes even more apparent as we see our own puny selves in comparison.

New Book Section

February 6, 2010 in books with 0 Comments

I’m pleased to announce a new section on benchilcote.com.  I now have a book section to share the books that are impacting the way I think and live.  There are more to add which I’ll do when I have some more time.  Click on the BOOKS  link at the top of the page.

Stuff Christians Like – New Book

January 3, 2010 in books with 0 Comments

I came across an ad for this in Relevant Magazine and had to share it. If you are a Christian active in church, or a pastor, then you will find it funnier than others might. You can find out a lot more about the book and the blog which it came from at stuffchristianslike.net.

Here’s what the website says about the book:

Started on March 21, 2008 as a reaction to the wildly popular blog Stuff White People Like which was created by Christian Lander, Stuff Christians Like is a blog about the funny things we Christians do. And what they just might reveal about our faith.

Here’s the official write up from the publisher:

Sometimes, we fall in love on mission trips even though we know we’ll break up when we get back.

Sometimes, you have to shot block a friend’s prayer because she’s asking God to bless an obviously bad dating relationship.

Sometimes, you think, “I wish I had a t-shirt that said ‘I direct deposit my tithe’ so people wouldn’t judge me.”

Sometimes, the stuff that comes with faith is funny.

This is that stuff.

Jonathan Acuff’s Stuff Christians Like is your field guide to all things Christian. Like a satirical grenade, Acuff brings us the humor and honesty that galvanized 730,000 online readers from 209 countries in a new portable version. Welcome to the funny side of faith.

Here are a few of the “things”.

Looks pretty funny.  It appears as though he’s just poking fun at us Christians but he actually has some interesting thoughts on each one.  I may order a copy.

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