The amaryllis grew another 1/2" in the last 24 hours. I can hardly stand the excitement! Don't you wish you had one of these marvels at your house?
Jordin Sparks, most recent winner of American Idol, daughter of a retired NFL player and Phoenix native will be singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl to be played here in February. But she'll have a hard time topping this. (click on the video frame at the top to the right) It was Disability Awareness Day at Fenway Park. Too bad people can't be like this all the time!
My doctor called me this afternoon. Not the PA, the doc! When was the last time that happened to you?! We do like this guy a lot. Pam works with him at the hospital and he has a good rep there too.
He called to say that the CT scan had some areas that they think are just bad resolution, but just in case they wanted to follow up with an MRI. He told me the areas of the brain that were in question and we agreed that speech and cognitive thinking weren't all that important, so we're going to let it go for now.
This morning I had ESPN on while I was making some Power Point slides for the curriculum and saw another FatHead commercial. If you watch ESPN (by choice or otherwise) you've seen these. They're life-size vinyl cut-outs of your favorite athletes that you put on your wall. The really funny thing was that this ad for FatHeads came on right after a segment about the Mitchell report on steroid use in baseball.
Roger Clemens is ALL upset about being named as a user in the Mitchell report. He vehemently denies he ever used performance enhancing drugs. Hey, his denial is good enough for me. But then I believed Marion Jones. And "I did NOT have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinski" convinced me, too.
And I cannot figure out the sports commentators who are sticking up for Clemens and his ilk. I'm reading the report and anybody who got named therein is dirty beyond any reasonable doubt, whether their accusers were under oath or not. The circumstances of the questioning (I won't bore you with the details) make it clear the accusations are both credible and backed up by corroborating evidence. We - yep, the public who watch these games, whether in the stadium or on TV - are paying these guy's salaries. At $35 to sit in the bleachers. We aren't their peers, not at the money they're making. But this juror votes for throwin' the bums out.
Maybe it's different where you live (I think it is in west Michigan) but here the vast majority of churches are committed to YOU. That's evident from the tag line they put on their web sites under the church name.
"(Blank) Church, a church made for YOU!"
There are variations on this theme, but the pronoun "you" is almost universal. We're here for YOU, or we want to minister to YOU, or a place where YOU belong. Ad infinitum.
I've come to the conclusion that this is the inevitable result of a culture characterized by pervasive consumerism. If you want people to come to your church you need to convince them that it's a place they'll like, a place specially designed for them. They certainly won't go to a church designed for someone else! Why should they? Nope, at Acme Bible Church we're here for YOU!
I don't blame people for buying into that. Hey, we get it 24/7 from every angle of our capitalistic society, so why shouldn't they expect that from their church?
I do, however, blame the church. They should know better. Church leaders are responsible for setting a course that leads not to me, but to HIM! And that course applies not just to my individual life but to the church as well. The local church does not exist to meet my needs, but rather to draw me toward a life of obedient sacrifice to the One who died for me. Those of us who are the children of God because of the gift of his Son are called to something bigger, higher, more important than ourselves.
If (!) the effort which begins January 6th becomes a church it will NOT be a church that's made for you. It will be a church that's made for HIM. A church designed by God, a church existing to glorify and serve God, and a church that calls it's people to a higher standard of life than the narcissism of contemporary culture.
Yeah, there's a problem here. That idea, a church that exists for Christ and not for the people who attend, that's not going to play real well from a marketing standpoint. Who wants to go to a church that's all about God when they can go to one that's all about them? "We're not about you" makes for a pretty counterproductive by-line.
But I'm cautiously optimistic. I've found that when presented with the Word of God and its call to a life focused on something - Someone - bigger, greater and of infinitely more value than ourselves, Christians tend to respond to the challenge. And once they do, well, those are the kind of people who make a real difference in the world.
So we're going to step out and see what happens.
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