Many Types Of Intelligence!

"One problem with the way the educational system is set up is that it only recognizes a certain type of intelligence, and it's incredibly restrictive - very, very restrictive.
There's so many types of intelligence,
and people who would be at their best
outside of that structure get lost."
(Bruce Springsteen)

You Don't Have To Bully Me.

"I don't need to be commanded, coerced, coached, cajoled or corralled to worship. I am in love, can't help it, can't consign it to Sunday."

(Karl Ingersoll. 24/7 network, Fredericton NB)

Kids Outside Of Church Are More Important Than Church carpet.

"We know of a senior pastor of a church in our area who, after refurbishing the facilities with fresh paint and new carpet, stood before the congregation with a cup of coffee. To the shock and sighs of the congregation, he then intentionally poured its contents directly onto the new carpet, creating a dark puddle and a permanent stain, He said to the church that the carpet can go to hell but he didn't want the kids in the neighborhood to have to. The people outside the walls are far more
important than the carpet inside of them.
They left the stain as a permanent reminder that the mission is not in the building, but outside in the streets." (Church Transfusion: Neil Cole)

Halfhearted Bride And Full Wedding Partner

"The church has never persecuted me or limited me in any way—quite the contrary, which is really quite amazing. Maybe that is the only reason I can talk this way, I hope without rancor or agenda. She has held me, and yet also held me at arm's length, which is more than enough holding. The formal church has always been a halfhearted bride for me, while the Franciscans have been considerably better. The Gospel itself is my full wedding partner."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

Water At A Well Communication

“South African....Fourie Vanderberg tells a leading a .....trip to the north of Namibia. The first thing his team noticed in the local Kraal (Village) in which they were staying was that the women had to walk every day to a well with a huge heavy bucket on their heads to fetch water.
 
“We immediately decided to do something about it.”
 
Within two weeks flashy new water pipes were delivering water to every little hut in the kraal.
 
Within a week after the installation of the plumbing, the villagers removed all the pipes and piled them politely on the outskirts of the Kraal.
 
When Fourie asked why they had plundered the plumbing and undone and all their hard work, the Namibians explained that it is customary for women to walk to the well with other women sharing their experiences about life.
 
Carrying heavy buckets on the head while chatting with friends:
“It’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing.”
When the walk to the well was taken away and life was made “never so good,” life was really made ever so difficult."

Broken Back Subsistence Farmers!

“One Saturday morning I hiked with Christine, Claudie, Markie, and Mawuli three kilometers up a steep rise of the plateau. Christine kept her field separate from Benjamin’s because, she said, hers would produce more since she tended it better. She gave the children and me a handful of seeds each. We all bent over and shuffled along the slope, scooping out small holes a few feet apart with one hand and tossing in a couple of seeds with the other. Christine worked with Aku on her back. It seemed easy enough at first, but after two hours my back and legs ached from crouching and my hands were filthy with mud. Standing up to stretch, I noticed that Christine had covered twice as much soil as I; even eight-year-old Markie had done more. The next day my entire body was sore from having done this fraction of the work they did week after week.
I would watch the farmers wandering back at night, ..., singing in their pleasantly gravelly voices, and wonder how many millions or billions of people were doing the same work all over the world, and had been doing it, in ways that couldn’t have been much different from this, throughout human history. It has been the lot for all but a tiny portion of humanity until very recently, and still is for the majority. Yet to that privileged minority, the work and the workers are invisible, don’t exist. I would have never given them a real thought if I hadn’t been living in their midst.”

(The Village of Waiting. George Packer, Farra, Straus and Giroux Pub, New York, 2001, pg 164)

I'm Unresolved Like Africa!

I'm soon to be back in the western world, and this just is so where I am at. Most international workers understand it.

"I lived in Africa almost half a lifetime ago. I was very young when I went, not just in years, and I return home feeling prematurely aged. For months after coming back, like the ancient mariner with his gray beard and glittering eyes, I cornered anyone half willing to listen and try to describe what I had seen and done and been over there. I would tell the story......and the sympathetic nods would last about 5 min. before my quarry's eyes shifted toward the exit......the experience proved as incommunicable as the need to explain was urgent.
Family and friends waited for me to resume normal life, but I seemed unable to complete the trip back. Part of me remains stuck in Africa,..... I missed the intensity, the surprise, the sense that life was real and hard and lovely. Nothing in America made me feel as alive as I felt in Africa..... And yet I can't shake the sense of having left behind Africa and obligations I can neither fulfill nor escape...... The book was supposed to provide a resolution, but in some fundamental way my time in Africa remains unresolved. And, of course, African itself is unresolved,....."

( The Village Of Waiting. George Packer. Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 2001, pg 317-318)

It's Ok To Disagree

"I’m fine when people disagree with me, whether it’s because they don’t get it yet, or because I don’t, because speaking honestly in love is how we grow and eventually discover what truth is." (Wayne Jacobsen)

Fit the Shell

“There is a tendency [in the modern world] to fit a tight and awkward carapace of definition over humankind, and to try and trim the living creature to fit the dead shell.” Marilynne Robinson

Old Men Must Plant Trees

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." (Greek proverb)

Christians Don't Trust Freedom!

"Christians don't trust freedom. We actually prefer the security of rules and self-imposed boundaries, which we then tend to inflict on other Christians."
(Steve brown)

 This is so true. Every church I have been part of, as wonderful as they all have been, have one thing in common. Most people in them are absolutely certain that if anyone lives free in Christ, apart from the laws/ rules and regulations, we will all just run out and "Do as we wish" in some kind of "free-for-all".

That my friends shows how little we are tapped into the Holy Spirit living in us.  Jesus and walking with others in his name, is not enough for them. They have to oblige you to more; attend this, be apart of that, be certain you do this or that, for if you don't, you can never make it without it.

This is why we add so many burdens on people in the local church, we truly feel they can't possibly be a healthy Jesus follower without taking all their stuff too. And this is where it gets nasty. When people feel they don't need all this "stuff" we heap on them, they get slaughtered, criticized, marginalized.

But the truth is, we have to silence the voices who says we may not need all that the local church is burdening us with. If that message got out, church according to the organization, structure, and practice we have now, would fall. We have to be able to control the message, information, vision, and direction of the people, or this structure dies. If they don't have to come to us to get it, we are doomed. Obligation to the church (exactly as practiced today) is it's main message.
They see church in no other possible way.... a few people gathered in his name....... smacks of not enough.
We say it, but we don't believe it. Where two or three gather in his name...... but the moment we do it it's rejected. Certainly we can't have the enough truth, connection, right vision, proper oversight by "LEADERSHIP" without "Church as we all know it" today. See you have to be part of this "KIND" of church to be valid. Anything else is not "real church".
So we heap our boundaries on others, infect and inflict another generation, with our own baggage.

It's become more than Jesus, his mission, in community.
Yes we are afraid of freedom.

Yes, My Sentiment Exactly!

"Instead of being needed, I want to be forgotten. I consider myself a success when I can fade from the picture and allow others to be empowered and to rise to the job before us." (Neil Cole, Church Transfusion. Kindle. 2214)

Is Leaving Institutional Church The Lazy Path?

People think people like me are running away from service. Have been hurt, or are bitter. Nope! Less about running from something: Better characterized as running to a new place in life, faith and service.

If you think this is the easy road, the comfortable road, you are very mistaken.
 
"Organic churching is not a soft option. It takes more relational energy and commitment than showing up for a weekly service of lecture and music. It also involves lonely sections along the path, when it is just you and the tug of the Vertical on your heart strings."

"Organic church is not a structure but a frame of mind about how the life of Christ works in and through us in the Body of Christ.....The quest for organic church has led many devoted followers of Christ beyond congregational structures. This does not take away from how the congregational experience benefits many. But it is a sign that God is up to something."
(Have no idea the source, read in Pathfinders Fellowships (canada) FB page)

Best Description Of African Markets

Tidwell nailed describing an African market. Those who have been there, with this experience as a major part of their overseas life, are left nodding their heads in understanding.

"To the uninitiated, an African market can be a startling thing. You don't visit such a place. It's poured all over you. You
walk in, move about, absorb a billion bits of sensory data, and
then walk away with your body limp and your faculties tingling. An African market is a sunburst of colors: brightly patterned pagnes, orange and pink and gold bars of soap, deep-crimson palm oil, multi-colored species, yellow bananas, amber papayas, red tomatoes. It's a landscape of odors: fresh bread, spoiled fish, tangy oranges, pungent peppers, woodsmoke, human sweat, human urine. It's a carnival of noises: talking, shouting, singing, chopping, pounding, bleating, barking, crowing, and always, always laughing. People laugh in African markets. Despite their
clamor and confusion, the markets maintain a cheerful air.
(Mike Tidwell. The Ponds of Kalambayi. Pg 224)

Criticized Anyway!

Just made me snicker.... Your heart can lead you down a dangerous path too. But the criticism part is true.

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Polio Vacination Contains AIDS & Sterilizes Muslims?

This past week in northern Nigeria, ten polio vaccinators going house to house administering free polio drops in the worlds last polio hotbed, were gunned down because of lies perpetrated and perpetuated by fear mongering religious tactics of religious clerics perpetuating lies, that deceive people.

Muslim clerics in this region have been long teaching that the polio vaccination drops contain AIDS, and sterilizes baby Muslim girls, to reduce African, and more specifically, African Muslim population growth.

The day after first health worker killings, three Korean doctors were also brutally murdered in the region.

"KANO, 15 February 2013 (IRIN) - Unknown gunmen on mopeds shot dead 10 polio vaccinators last week in separate attacks on two polio clinics in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, capital of a polio-endemic region where concerted global efforts are being made to stamp out the virus by the end of 2013. .....
In the past, clerics have claimed polio vaccines contained the AIDS virus, ........ Kano State government suspended polio immunization between August 2003 and September 2004 due to allegations by Muslim clerics that the vaccine could render girls infertile as part of a US-led plot to depopulate Africa."

( http://m.irinnews.org/Report/97486/Vaccinator-killings-set-back-Nigerian-polio-eradication-drive)

Mega Church Can't Afford To Reach A Community

Can We afford to Leave the Work to the Mega Church? Neil Cole

"I have seen a report of research to determine what it would take financially to reach the US. The report is broken down by cities listing the financial costs to reach particular cities for Christ using the traditional attractional model of church. The results are alarming. Just to reach one city alone would be astronomical and cost more than all Christian non-profit ministries receive in a single year combined.

For instance, The study shows that to reach Atlanta would cost over $63 billion. To reach New York City alone would cost more $418 Billion. Where would we expect such money to come from?

Giving USA, a non-profit foundation that studies philanthropy in the United States, in its 2008 report found $103.32 billion went to houses of worship and denominational organizations in 2007. That entire amount could only reach the greater Washington DC area and would leave the rest of our country without any ministry at all. But of course, all our current churches and ministries would have to go out of business. This says nothing of missions to the rest of the world.

While a mega church can be missional it may not be the most wise use of resources to pursue the mission. If you want to compare the attractional mega church model against the micro model of church I think the cost alone makes it clear which is a more reasonable approach. I know that this type of content does not make my message very popular. I have tried to be fair and balanced but also share the unpopular truth. Unfortunately the ministries that end up costing the most often end up producing the least.

This is just not a good way to reach a city for Christ, let alone the world. There are better ways. We could reach the cities faster and for a fraction of the cost with a simpler approach to church. One of the sayings in our movement is: "It doesn't cost a dime to make a disciple, it only costs your life."

http://cole-slaw.blogspot.ca/2012/08/can-we-afford-to-leave-work-to-mega.html

Wasted Time Wasting Time

"The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started."
(Dawson Trotman)

Organic Church Not Soft Option

If you think living faith out side the institution is for lazy believers....it takes much more energy to build real redemptive relationships than to plunk your ass in church each week.

"Organic churching is not a soft option. It takes more relational energy and commitment than showing up for a weekly service of lecture and music. It also involves lonely sections along the path, when it is just you and the tug of the Vertical on your heart strings." (Unknown)

Why Wait?

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank

Don't Care Anymore?

I must be near the end of the pit .....

"One of the best signs that you are nearing the end of a pit experience (recall Joseph) is when it doesn't matter anymore. That means you have died." (O.S. Hillman)

Time And Failure Uneasy Bedmates

Got followed by this guy on Twitter today. Thus was in his artistic/musician bio...... It's so true, it's magic.

"Time is a killer to most afraid of failure." (Maurice Streeter, musician artist)

Blind Guides Of Nigera's Education System

1,300 Kaduna Teachers Fail Primary School Test. 1300 score less than 25%

This kind of education is not preparing anyone's future. Education is good, but it seems we need to question what kind, to what degree

" About 1300 teachers in Kaduna have failed in tests generally set for primary four pupils, Commissioner for Education Alhaji Usman Mohammed has revealed. He made the shocking disclosure at an education summit tagged "Education for all is responsibility of all", held at the Hassan Usman Katsina House yesterday.

"A total of 1,599 teachers selected from across the state were given primary four tests in Mathematics and Basic literacy. Only one of them scored 75 percent, 250 scored between 50 to 75 percent and 1,300 scored below 25 percent," he said.

According to him, the same examination was conducted for 1,800 primary school pupils but that larger percent of them failed woefully.

"We are not surprised about the performance of the pupils because how can they know it, when their teachers don't know it," he added."

(http://m.allafrica.com/stories/201302150556.html/ Feb 15, 2013. . accessed Feb 15, 2013)

Perfumed Ladies Got It All.... Or So It Seems!

"Certain combinations of floral and spice scents cause men to see women as 4.1 pounds lighter than they actually are. (If you liked the scent, you saw the woman as twelve pounds lighter.) The scent of grapefruit causes men to see women an average of six years younger than they actually are....... (Nudge. L. Sweet. Pg 253 from...... smellandtaste.org)

Smelling The North.....

"We use to think that birds navigated their way along earth's magnetic fields. We now know that they use odor maps and sniff navigation. Birds don't so much read a map as inhale a map. In fact, European Starlings released far from home get hopelessly lost if they can't smell anything." (Leonard Sweet. Nudge. pg 252)

"They have....noses,but cannot smell." Psalm 115:6

Higher Stages Include Lower, Or It's Not A Higher Stage

This is really an insightful paragraph. Gives me amazing depth of insight as I look at how some old people treat the young, and the young he old.....especially in institutions.

"Juniors" on the first part of the journey invariably think that true elders are naive, simplistic, "out of it," or just superfluous. They cannot understand what they have not yet experienced. They are totally involved in their first task, and cannot see beyond it. Conversely, if a person has transcended and included the previous stages, he or she will always have a patient understanding of the juniors, and can be patient and helpful to them somewhat naturally (although not without trial and effort). That is precisely what makes such people elders!   Higher stages always empathetically include the lower, or they are not higher stages!"

(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

Criticism....

Anyone who is making an impact is going to draw fire. It’s written in the bloodstream of the universe. An oft-repeated platitude is, “If you’re flying over the target, you’re going to catch flack. Or as Elbert Hubbart stated, “To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
(Frank Viola)

Blue Eyed Jesus Seed?

This girl cracks me up. But she gets to the point, and it's a good one.

"I “asked Jesus into my heart” when I was 10 years old. Then I left him there for about 15 years.
 
There were no outward signs of “fruit” in my life. Because my Jesus was dormant. He was there, the seed was planted, but it was unactivated. Without root. Alive, but sleeping.
 
And then one day the damned thing woke up. My little Jesus seed stretched his atrophied arms, wiped the sleep blindness from his pretty blue eyes, and then he stood up and looked around at all the other sleeping seeds. And he was pissed." (Jessica Bowman. The Seed In The Box, Feb 10, 2013. ) http://bohemianbowmans.com/the-seed-in-the-box/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BohemianBowmans+%28Bohemian+Bowmans%29

Idiot Experience

"Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience."

Learning From The Nameless.

The important teach us... The humble help us discover.

"You want to really look into the mirror? Look at the unseen. We discover our true identities only with the least discovered. We learn who we really are in community with the unlearned and nameless." (Leonard sweet. Nudge. Page 215

100 Revisions... Before Breakfast

Thus so strangely sounds like my life. Especially so in Africa, but in Canada too.

"Time for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. (T.S. Eliot 'The Live Song of J Alfred Prufrock)

Simply Look......

"The basic command of religion is not 'do this!' or 'do not do that!' but simply 'look!'" (Gain Eaton)

"Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?" Jesus

Salmon Or Dog Meat? Try something new!

Nudge people to try something new.... A lesson from the search for the Northwest Passage...... Ya, right....we are SO open to new ideas.

"One of the images I shall never forget is the story of the Lewis and Clark expeditions  was the way 10,000 pounds of the best salmon ever tasted by humans laying hanging on the racks drying out. The explorers and their crew refused to eat it and asked for dog meat."

(Nudge. Leonard Sweet. Pg 200)

Grow a Vegetable Garden

I'm not far off. Even city folks can do a simple vegetable container garden on the step. Or plant onions in their flowerbeds.

"It is forbidden to live in a town in which there is no vegetable garden. (Babylonian Talmud)

Lousy Ways To Learn Life

"I got to thinking: there are a lot of lousy ways to learn about life out there." (Mohan Karulkar)

I'm beginning to see the truth in this statement. Many of the programs and institutions I've grown up in are lead by people just like me. Broken.
But we, (or was it them?) set them, or their institution, up as a guide for our life. But no one ever cautioned, this too could have some thing's broken.

That is why I no longer wish to be a "leader", because even at my best, I'm broken too.  Once i thought it was just me. But once I started listened to people i realized we all are.

That is why I only point people to Jesus, and then leave them there with him. This is why I only listen to leaders who point to Him more than their program or vision. I'm not worth following, and neither are they, but Jesus is. So listen to the person pointing you to him, and avoid the one hyping up how you should fit his plan for you life, in his mapped out program/vision.

Dig A Grave For My.........

"I dug a new grave for my sarcasm and wicked anger, my self-defense and my own weak reputation, my “rights” and my pride, my comebacks and retaliations, then my need to be liked and understood and appreciated and approved. I prayed through every wound, every slight, every cruelty, every name-calling, every judgment, every hurt, and I released over and over again, they know not what they do.

And I chose to make peace all over again. I chose ferocious gentleness. I chose kindness. I chose Love. " (Sarah Bessy)

When Faith Got Linked to Progress

"...twentieth century... the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, ... courageously told his European world that they had distorted the meaning of faith by aligning it with the Western philosophy of  "progress"..."

( Richard Rohr. falling Upward)

Let's Talk About Outward Journeys

"Western people are a ritually starved people, and in this are different than most of human history. Even the church's sacraments are overwhelmingly dedicated to keeping us loyally inside the flock and tied to the clergy, loyal soldiers of the church. There is little talk of journeys outward or onward, the kind of journeys Jesus called people to go on. The state also wants loyal patriots and citizens, not thinkers, critics, or citizens of a larger world."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

Admired For Who I Am Not!

"Somewhere in my late forties, I realized that many people loved and admired me for who I was not, and many people also resented or rejected me for who I was not. Conversely, many loved me for who I really was, warts and all, and this was the only love that ever redeemed me. Many others rightly criticized me for who I really was, and revealed to me my shadow, which was always painful but often very helpful. But in all cases, it became apparent that their responses said much more about them and the good or bad quality of their own mirroring than about me at all!"
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

10 Reasons Kids Leave Church

"In our effort to be “like them” we’ve become less of who we actually are........... Let’s just be honest, most of our churches are sending youth into the world embarrassingly ignorant of our faith.  How could we not? We’ve jettisoned catechesis, sold them on “deeds not creeds” and encouraged them to start the quest to find “God’s plan for their life”.  Yes, I know your church has a “What we believe” page, but is that actually being taught and reinforced from the pulpit? I’ve met evangelical church leaders (“Pastors”) who didn’t know the difference between justification and sanctification.  I’ve met megachurch board members who didn’t understand the atonement.  When we chose leaders based upon their ability to draw and lead rather than to accurately teach the faith? Well, we don’t teach the faith. Surprised?"

(Mark Solas. Top 10 Reasons Our Kids Leave Church)

http://marc5solas.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/top-10-reasons-our-kids-leave-church/

House Church.....

Its true, meeting in a home changes nothing. There are skunk churches, and skunk house churches.

"But here is the challenge: To allow the new without threatening the old. To preserve the old without hindering the new. Those without wisdom choose one but not both. And the result is skunks and turtles.

I visited a House Church in the early 90's. It was run by skunks. A group of disgruntles whose happiness came from the fact they met on Thursday and not Sunday. In a living room and not a sanctuary. On a sofa and not a pew. They were like kids staying away from school, hiding out, proud of their boldness to leave. And yet in all their freedom they managed only to move the church service from a building to a house. Not much else had changed. These were another group. Not skunks or turtles. Another. Butterflies, perhaps. No rebellion. No scars. No issues with ecclesiastical entities. Just people who liked to live with each other in each others context. Environments with wallpaper and photos and TV magazines. Lives located somewhere. Homes where people live and children pick their noses and dogs annoy. Real people who want to see deeply into each other's lives. To delight in the beauty. To heal what is broken. To be healed. Touched. Appreciated but not used. Perhaps these people are the third wave. People who church together without contrasting. Part of a church without an address. A movement without a label . For they do not always call what they do "house church". Sometimes there is no house. Even "home church" does not contain their experience of God and each other in this covenanted journey...... In the meantime, don't expect authentication from the mainstream. The house church movement is basically overlooked and downgraded. Denominational executives are threatened by the idea of housewives starting churches in their own homes rather than their trained professionals in the buildings that were designed for this purpose."

(My Gripes About the House Church Movement by Andrew Jones)

http://www.thirddaychurches.com/resources/guestArticles/gripes

Called to Church More Than to The World

This was a realization I had one day.

"I found myself in the pews more often than in the pulpit. It changed my perspective. Working as a writer and editor, traveling more often, and juggling a young family left very little discretionary time in my schedule. There was simply no way I could participate in everything the church was asking me to do while also fulfilling the calling God had given me to pursue outside the church.

Within a few months, I understood how most of the people in my congregation felt. And I realized how insensitive and guilt-inducing many of my past sermons had been. In sermon after sermon I had called them to give more time, more money, more energy to the work of the church. Little did I understand or affirm their callings in the world."

(Skye Jethani: Uncommon Callings,) http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2013/winter/uncommon-callings.html

Anger Is A Covering For Great Sadness

"In our work with men, we have found that in many men this inability or refusal to feel their deep sadness takes the form of aimless anger. The only way to get to the bottom of their anger is to face the ocean of sadness underneath it. Men are not free to cry, so they just transmute their tears into anger, and sometimes it pools up in their soul in the form of real depression."

(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward.)

Crab Bucket Spirituality

"One of the major blocks against the second journey is what we would now call the "collective," the crowd, our society, or our extended family. Some call it the crab bucket syndrome—you try to get out, but the other crabs just keep pulling you back in. What passes for morality or spirituality in the vast majority of people's lives is the way everybody they grew up with thinks."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

The False You

"Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the real."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

Self -Image Not Worth Protecting.

"Your persona is what most people want from you and reward you for, and what you choose to identify with, for some reason. As you do your inner work, you will begin to know that your self-image is nothing more than just that, and not worth protecting, promoting, or denying.......
Your self-image is not substantial or lasting; it is just created out of your own mind, desire, and choice—and everybody else's preferences for you!"

(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

Stop Solving Perceived Problems? You Don't Even Know What They Are.

"They have the call or the courage to leave home for an adventure of some type—not really to solve any problem, but just to go out and beyond their present comfort zone....... On this journey or adventure, they in fact find their real problem They are almost always "wounded" in some way and encounter a major dilemma, and the whole story largely pivots around the resolution of the trials that result."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)
.,........................

I thought that this described myself, to some degree in my early days. However, I think I am old enough that when I went out on my adventure to French West Africa, I truly thought I could help the world with some of it's problems. I went with a huge plan, desires, goals of what I had hoped to accomplish, how, and in what time frame. That was an expected way of approaching anything born of my generation.

I soon discovered that in seeking to help others, I too was in need of them, and their healing involvement in my life too. Problems, we all have problems.

However, I think Rohr really described this generation of world traveller very well. They have no plan, and, though it's tough for a guy of my generation to understand, I am beginning to think that, in the beginning at least, the youth of today start out best. Isn't it best to observe, listen, interact, engage, and share life with a person or a people first..... for  long long time, before making a plan?

I lived a paradigm that saw us making a plan, with little input from the people we wanted to serve, problem solve among. Oh, we gave lip service to the idea the plan came after observing  the people, but the reality is that  this plan was devised in our own head, from behind  desk, formed with outsider perceptions we have, that rarely reflect any reality.

We, no I, have something to learn from how these youth seek adventure, and healing of their wounds and pain. Though it was how I was taught to approach everythingng, problem solving is probably the very worst place to start.

Acceptance... Life Is Hard. Deny It At A Cost

"Carl Jung said that so much unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the "legitimate
suffering" that comes from being human.

In fact, he said neurotic behavior is usually the result of refusing that legitimate suffering! Ironically, this refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run. It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message in male initiation rites is "life is hard." We really are our own worst enemy when we deny this."
(Richard Rohr. Falling Upward)

Bach Annoying His Church

" If Bach continues to play in this way, the organ will be ruined in two years or most of the congregation will be deaf." (Members of the Arnstadt council, employers of J. S. Bach)

Church Competition is Church Growth

"Most of the church growth occurring in America is merely transfer growth at the expense of other churches. The current mood of Christendom is that of competition, where each church is striving to grow with little to no regard for the church that is losing its members to the growing church." (Church Transfusion: Neil Cole. Location 525 Kindle. 2012)

Glad it's True About God's Love

“You want to know how big God's love is? The answer is: It's very big. It's bigger than you're comfortable with.”

Is The Task More Important Than Relationship?

 I found this a very insightful comment. This is why you feel so alone when you step outside the box, and chose to stop wasting your life on the treadmill of programs that end up being more "busy" than fruitful.

Your relationships are exposed for what they really are.... It hurts.
Your only connecting point is the common task.... and when you no longer serve to support the task with me, I have no time for you.... I'm too busy picking up YOUR slack (hear resentment) for having stopped (A little judgment) doing your part (Guilt) in this VERY important task.
Your spiritual health is measured by how much of this "Stuff" you participate in, and manage.  Your valu to us here, is measured by the same. 

"....then we start coming into a wider space, and not everybody who we hoped would come into that wider space with us, came. And so, we did find, whether it was ministry opportunities or relationships, we found our world growing smaller. The people we thought were friends didn't turned out to be......Many of those friendships were tasked based, conformity based, relationships, and once we weren't on the the same task, the friendships drift apart. That is just part of the way we humans organize ourselves. We like to be task oriented and we've got people on a similar task, we'll find relationship.
What this truly shows, beneath the surface, the task was more important than the relationship. And I think what Jesus sturs in our life is that the relationships become more important than the tasks. Maybe even said, the relationship becomes the task."

 (Podcast Feb 3, The God Journey. Wayne Jacobson)

The Box-Has Something To Say about Living Outside The Box

"Whatever you do, don't think outside the box, because doing so is threatening to the well being of the box, and the well being of the box is far more important than the well being of the thinker." (The Box)

How true that is.... The box is always more important than you, in every way. Those who have never questioned the box have no idea how hostile the community becomes for those who will not conform to the whim of a local church or it's leadership. 
How could we really take seriously ANY stories of this Hostility from anyone in "our church"? After all, if that was true it would expose every fiber of our being for what it really is. So deny, deny, deny.... It's L'ordre dejour. The box has no other choice, in order to save and preserve itself. When the box is at stake, holiness is no longer the major theme of the group...

Religion and Booze are Universal

"There are some common
characteristics in every culture
around the world. Every culture has a
religious element within it—and
alcohol. Whether we like it or not, God
exists, and we are all accountable to
Him. That alone can drive some to
drink." (Church Transfusion. Neil Cole)

Change Requires Admission

Not met many in the establishment who are willing to admit, or discuss, the weakness. Most are to busy protecting what they have. They try to shut you up you by labelling you as "negative",  disgruntled, bitter or rebellious.
Most people talk change, and in some small way they would like things to be better. However, they are not willing to expend the energy or take the risk to see it materialize. So it's all just talk for most people.

"The very idea of change requires hat one admit that the current forms and practices are not working well." (Transfusion: Neil Cole)

Sing Your Song

"Unhappiness and depression begin the day the music stops or when we try to sing someone else's song... If you don't sing your song........ others discount you for not speaking from the soul."
(Leonard Sweet. Nudge. Pg156)

I'd have to say I was singing another persons song, having been told it is the song we all must sing, when really it was just theirs pushed upon me.

Shut Up...... Wisdom

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd rather have been talking." (Aristotle)

Sigh.... I need some work.. So sorry my friends....

A Picture Only Portrays The Past!

There are many institutional groups trying to mimic what other groups do. Looking around at what others do, they try to reproduce it for themselves. But I don't personally find that very interesting, helpful or fruitful.

The picture we think we see may help us tweak what we do in comparison. But its merely replicating where a church has been.  All that hard work to tweak and change is based on history, not the future. 

If you want to know where the church is really going.... Listen. What are people saying?  What I'm hearing is far different from what I'm seeing right now. People are not that interested in seeing church, as we know it, change. Being change, and being changed is what they are looking for. They want a genuine community sold into that and each other.

Some find that community within some local church structure. However, others are finding christian community somewhere else.  That is a hard snapshot to capture for people used to a picture.

"The most important guy in Homeland Security?  Not the one who monitors the photographs. A picture tells you what already happened. If you want to know what's going to happen, plug into the communications network and listen." (Leonard sweet. Nudge pg 146)