Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Fort-Worth

Hangin' out here in Fort Worth, snaging the wi-fi at Trinity Bible Church. The Lord is in this trip, it would appear. After only two hours here, I had decided to extend my stay for two more days in order to meet with another church on Tuesday evening. Then I called a friend of a friend to see if we could connect while I was here - and wouldn't you know it? I was sitting at the Borders not 200 yards from his house!! He popped over and we had a good long talk, with lots of stories of God's power on display.
So far, I love this place.

The gospel in the emerging world

So went the title of the missions conference at River's Edge this past weekend. I had lots of fun showing how the culture emerging in the West looks very different from what came before. Used clips from Star Trek, Seinfeld, and a song from Pedro the Lion to stir people's thoughts about how their assumptions about the world might not match up with the assumptions that are becoming prevalent in my generation.
In one memorable moment, I had compared George Bush to Captain Kirk, intending to show why he was so disliked, but several people thought I was trying to compliment to Bush.

Sunday morning was great - I was exhausted, and yet seemed to have lots of energy for the sermon. I think the Holy Spirit showed up. Focused mostly on God's love showered upon "the wrong people".
Thanks River's Edge - I love being with you guys and look forward to being back there in a couple weeks to worship with you again.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

The Gospel in a Far Away Land

I'm preaching on Luke 15 at River's Edge on Sunday. Actually, I'm speaking at their mini-missions conference on Saturday night too. Luke 15 is where Jesus tells three stories about lost things - a shepherd with a lost sheep, a woman with a lost coin, and a father with a lost son.
I've got a couple ideas bouncing around in my head at this point on the passage. In no particular order, they are:
The passion of the shepherd/woman/father to find what was lost.
The rejoicing is over finding the lost thing, not what was never lost.
The identity of the lost/not lost things - the sheep, the coins, the brothers - they are the same except in their relation to the shepherd/woman/father.
The dissimilarity of the father as compared to the shepherd/woman - the father waits...he doesn't go into the far away land to find his son.

Any of these strike you as particularly powerful? Any aspect of these stories that I didn't mention that really catches your attention?

Reunion

Our high school reunion on Saturday was fun. Had great crabs from Crab Shanty, and saw lots of people we hadn't seen in ten years. Somer has a good picture over on Daily Offerings.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

DaVinci Code

Somer and I went to the DaVinci code with a High-School friend and his girlfriend on Sunday. We had a really good time with them. The movie was so-so. Probably my favorite part of the book was the working out of all the codes...a movie can't contain the same level of complexity and detail, so I felt like it suffered. I think if I hadn't read the book, I would have been a little bored at the movie. Like the book, the character development was extremely thin and the plot twists felt a little contrived. However, I enjoyed remembering the story from the book and filling in various details and remember plot twists before they happened.
Being a follower of Jesus and someone who trusts the traditional Christian telling of the life/death/resurrection of Jesus, I was a little surprised at how 'uncontroversial' the movie was. In comparison to the book, the movie made a fairly week argument for the assertions that Jesus had children through Mary Magdalene, and that the church violently supressed this reality through the centuries. Langdon (male lead played by Tom Hanks) was portrayed as skeptical of the claims for a Jesus-Mary Magdalene union, and kept calling them 'myths' and 'theories'.
Kelley asked under the last post what I thought of the movie, and I guess my overall impression is that it wasn't all that great.
BUT - like I said, we had a great time with our friends. After the movie, we went to DuClaw Brewing Company for dinner. It was fantastic. I got a sampler of seven of their in-house brews. It was really good to get re-acquainted with our friend and get to know his girlfriend a little bit. They are a great couple - they let us ask really personal questions and didn't hold it against us. Thanks guys - see you on Saturday at the reunion!

Oh, yeah...I haven't mentioned this here yet. Our High-School reunion is Saturday night. Have no idea what to expect. We'll keep you posted.