Not Here for Now
Hey everyone! Poor ole’ Shechem has kinda fallen to the wayside for the time being, but that is ok. I have started a new project that is actually going quite well. Basically it is just a chronicle of my collegiate schoolwork, but some of my personal musings and such also make their way on to the new site. You can check it out here:
I have an idea for a community style blog that I think will become the future of this site, but everything is kind of up in the air at the moment. Thanks for sticking with me and I hope that you enjoy the stuff over at the new site!
All for His glory.
Consumerism
I am a member of a wonderful little congregation in Missouri called Harmony Baptist Church. A few months ago, we had a tragic parting of ways where a significant portion of our congregation decided they did not like the direction that the church was heading and that they would be better off pursuing their idea of what a church should be elsewhere. Unfortunately, it seems that the decision of whether or not to hire me as the worship pastor was the final straw for this group. Honestly, this was a kick in the teeth to me. I have done nothing but give my heart and soul to this congregation for ten years, yet I was not good enough to pursue my call at Harmony in their opinion.
I’m not bitter. Really.
Everything seems to be working out in a positive Godly direction, though. I am still leading worship as the interim worship director and the congregation enjoys the music and my teaching, so all’s well that ends well, right? Well, I don’t know about that, but the church is moving forward. We are truly and earnestly seeking to be the hands and feet of Christ, but we are really still in our infancy. The church has been around for twenty-plus years, but this “new church” (which is really what we are considering ourselves) has only been attempting to get off the ground for about three months now. There are definitely exciting things on the horizon, but, honestly, I am having some issues with letting go of what happened and I believe that when we truly understand our mistakes, we have a much better chance of making the correct choice when a similar problem decides to rear its ugly head.
So what is the problem?
In my humble estimation, the issue that ripped Harmony apart (ironic, eh?) boils down to consumerism. Consumerism is the attitude that conveys the thought process of “what can I get out of this?” or “what is this church doing for me?” The consumer is the person who attends church and says, “I didn’t really get anything out of the sermon,” or “I really got a lot out of the music today.” While one of these statements is positive, they are both steeped in consumerism. I saw first hand how people who are in church for the sole purpose of seeing themselves exalted or to be put in a position of power can literally stop a congregation that is working for God dead in its track. This has really been a heartbreaking experience for me. I couldn’t get over their selfish attitude. Or at least, that is what I thought.
Interesting isn’t it…when you look out at other people’s issues how God turns it all back into an introspective journey where you end up seeing just how much you fail. That is the point that I came to several weeks ago. I realized that I was just a younger version of the people who decided to leave. I realized that the consumeristic attitudes that drove them away fall into the same consumeristic ideals that I hold dear and propagate.
The older group that left was staunchly against contemporary Christian music in the church. As I would lead worship, they would stand in the back (back row Baptists! Woo!) with theirs arms crossed and glare for the entire worship service. Honestly, this was extremely wearing on me as a worship leader. I used to think, “Man, how in the world can they sit there and stifle the Holy Spirit like that,” but as I said, God has a way of turning me back to the plank in my own eye.
As I began to really dig into what their problem was, God opened my eyes to my own problem and revealed that I am exactly the same way. I am not a huge proponent of traditional church music. That is not to say that I hate hymns. That isn’t true at all. I find that many hymns are relevant and amazing, but the style that traditionally accompanies hymns (read: Piano and an organ accompaniment) is not relevant to society as a whole any longer. So, there I was, pointing fingers and scowling under my breath and God looked me dead in the face and called me out for the hypocrite that I was. The truth is, I am just as unbending as the traditionalists that left the church. Try to take away my Tomlin, Hillsongs, and Crowder and I would be just as upset.
Would I split a church? Probably not. But would I look for a different congregation that suited my preferences better? You bet I would and that is the root of consumerism. To spin an old JFK quote we should:
“Ask not what the kingdom of God can do for us, but what we can do for the kingdom of God.”
If we worship under the banner of preference and consumerism, then we really miss out on the amazing things that God has planned for us as a Church. Beloved Church, the time has come to let personal preference fall to the wayside and return to the root of why we worship. That is the amazing love of Jesus Christ.
All for His glory.
This app rocks…
Holy crap…blog updates from my iPhone. This rocks. Yay for the iPhone!
Well, I feel like crap today. I took the day off work to spend it with my oldest daughter, because it is her birthday. All I ended up doing was sleeping. What a waste.
On a similiar note, Gracie is five! I can’t believe it. I am seriously getting old.
Update!
Well…I really never got this blog off the ground properly. I think I am going to give it another shot, but no promises. Life has been crazy. Between the hospital, the fam, and the church, I haven’t really had much time to breathe in the last few months. I am still leading worship at the church, but I have decided against pursuing a permanent position at my home church for the time being.
I adapted a scene from The Shack into an Easter drama for the church. It went really well thanks to the work of some really great friends. We had a ton of people there for Easter Sunday morning and the drama went over nicely. It seems to have had the same effect on the people who attended as the scene in the book had on me the first time I read it. I am just happy that God was able to use me in such a dynamic way to reach the people in my community.
Since Easter, life has been pretty hectic. My brother and I started a band called Redemption Story. We are basically a rock worship band with some original worship songs thrown into the mix. We are playing at a local music festival called Summer Jam on May 30th. We are all pretty excited about it. We are currently working on recording something simple just to put up on teh interwebs so that we can get our sound out there and hopefully start booking some gigs soon.
Things in the church have been interesting, to say the least, but that is another post for another time. Anyway, just thought that I would drop a quick update mainly to get me back into posting again. The plan is to be a bit more diligent this time in actually posting content. So I will be dumping my ideas and random ramblings here, yet again. Thanks for sticking around!
All for His glory.
Fun away from home
Fun away from home…
That is what my Dad dubbed work one evening last year. We were sitting around the table playing pass the pigs talking about our jobs and how much we would just rather stay home, when my Dad decided that the main problem with having a job, was calling it work. So he, in an amazing stroke of fatherly “genius,” decided that work would no longer be discussed in his household. When we had to talk about work, we were to call it fun away from home. And so we have. I love my Dad, but sometimes the man out dorks me, which is pretty tough, but, as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Man, who likes to work fun away from home? I certainly don’t. I would rather be hanging at home with my wife and little ones, but you have to pay the bills somehow. Again, my professional life is an area where I can see God working and blessing my socks off.
Two and a half years ago, God put an idea into my head about how to support my family. At the time, I was working sixty hours a week, minimum, for $6.50 an hour at a youth psychiatric facility. The work was stressful, physically and mentally, and the pay was meager at best. My wife was also working full time as a receptionist at our local clinic making less than I did, believe it or not. Gracie was already here and Maddie was on the way. This was a scary time in our financial life. I remember paying all the bills and having $40 left over to buy food and diapers. The only way we made it through that time was solid faith in God to provide. And He did. We always had plenty to eat (even if it was Ramen), we never went dry on diapers, and there was always gas in our vehicles.
Well, needless to say, I got tired of working so much for so meager a paycheck, so I decided that it was time to go back to school. I had been pursuing my teaching degree, but that was still two years away. I needed something fairly quick with a good pay out. So, I looked into our local LPN program. For those of you that aren’t acronym savvy, that is the licensed practical nurse program. (Yes…I admit it. I am a murse…male nurse of DOOM!).
So school was tough, but my family got through it, and now I make enough money that my wife can be a stay at home mom, which is something she has wanted to do since Gracie was born. So life is good. I work in a clinic dealing with the good, the bad, and the ugly of patient care. I get holidays and weekends off. Yes, my job is great, but it is not something that I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to do something that changes the world.
God has placed a call on my family. He has called us to full-time ministry. For a long time, I have known that God wants to use me in a leadership position of some ministry. I love to teach, I love youth, and I love to speak. So naturally, I thought I was supposed to pursue a position in youth ministry. The youth pastors that I had made an awesome impression on me. Their teaching and guidance are the reason that I am who I am today. I wanted to make the same impact on others that was made on me, but God has a different plan in mind.
The passion that ignites my life is music. I love to worship in all things, but my favorite times are lifting up my voice in song, trying to get as close to God’s throne as I possibly can. God is so good! I have always loved music, but I never thought that I was a good enough singer, guitarist, or worship leader to ever be able to lead a congregation of believers to the throne of God. Truth be told, I am probably not, but God has seen fit to allow me to be the interim worship leader at my home church for the last seven months and it has been amazing. I can’t imagine doing anything else. My church is kicking around the idea of hiring me on in a permanent fashion, which would be great. Going to have to see how that all pans out. All I desire is that God’s will be done, and I am confident that it will.
So, I find myself in a place of transition. I like my current gig working in the clinic, but God has bigger plans for my family. God has given me an amazing vision for a ministry called Shechem, but that is a post for another time. God is using this time to build me up in my ability to lead people and lead worship, so for now, I am content to sit back and follow God’s ever present leadership. I would, however, appreciate your prayers for my family and for the direction that God wants to take us. Thanks again for reading.
In His service.
Love and marriage
I thought it might be prudent to let you know a bit about who I am and where I come from. I intend on making a new page with my actual testimony on it, but I want this blog to relay who I am in a real and personal way.
If you have seen my about page, you already know that I am a 25 year old man intent on serving God and His people in any way that He deems fit. I desire this with all my heart, and work every day toward that goal. Let me say, though, I live a blessed life. I have been charged with becoming the spiritual leader in a household of five, currently.
My beautiful wife, Jessica, and I just celebrated our five year anniversary. She is a beacon in my life. She loves and supports me unconditionally. Through our relationship, I have truly experienced the purest unconditional love that one mortal can provide to another. I know that I drive her crazy sometimes, and there are times that I know God is disappointed in both of our attitudes and actions toward one another, but she loves me in spite of myself. What a model of the love of Christ? Of course, Jesus’ love abounds much greater than any mortal love, but through my wife and my relationship, I have seen a glimpse of the glory that is yet to come.
Another vital aspect to my life that my marriage brings is accountability. I will be the first to admit that, through the amazing power of God, I have overcome addiction in my life. I was a slave to smoking. I will never tell you that smoking is a sin, but addiction and idolatry are. The physical and psychological addiction that accompanied smoking became an idol in my life. It filled much of my conscious thought and I would plan my day around my next smoke break. God was an afterthought. In 6 days, I will be able to celebrate my first anniversary without Nicotine. Of course, I point first and foremost to God’s deliverance, but the accountability that my wife provided was also paramount in leaving this shackle behind.
My wife and I have been blessed with three beautiful children as well. My oldest is Gracie. She is four years old and full of life. I really like her deeply curious nature. She doesn’t just take things at face value and I can totally see myself in that part of her nature. She wants to know more than just X event happened at Y time. She wants to know why, which can lead to some extremely challenging questions to Jess and I. Her energy and spirit are a true joy to me.
Maddie is my three-year-old of doom. She is the sweetest child in the world…as long as things are going her way. Again, God has blessed us richly, and none of my kids could be defined as disgustingly bratty, but Maddie comes close. Sometimes she can be so frustrating, but then she does something that makes my heart melt. Something Maddie and I share is a love for music. Maddie eats music up. I wish that I could memorize words and melodies as fast as she can. She always seems to have a song in her step. Often, you will find her playing quietly with her baby dolls singing quietly to herself, seemingly lost in her own world. How I envy her ability to tune the world out around her! Most of the time, when you do hear her singing away, she sings songs of worship (that is the majority of her musical exposure). It warms my heart to know that she can freely express herself in a way that is so near and dear to my heart.
Then we come to number three. My butterball. Twenty-five pound, eight-month-old Jazzie. It is so easy to forget the miracles of creation that we are when we get lost in the shuffle of the day to day business of life, but Jazz brings it to the forefront of my thought daily. She grows and changes so fast! She always has a smile on her face (especially when Mommy is around). Jess and I have been so blessed by our children
Now, I say blessed, and most of the we do feel blessed deep down. But anyone of you who has children will be able to relate with me. Sometimes that feeling of blessing is DEEP down. Children are a challenge. And again, in God’s infinite wisdom and sense of humor, I think that God allows us to experience a bit of what He does daily with us through our children. Who can disappoint you or turn your day around faster than your children?
I know that when I tell one of my little ones to do something and they look me in the face and disobey me, I want to scream and rip my hair out. Often, I do lose my cool and respond way outside of the realm of tender mercy, if you know what I mean. How infinitely amazing is God then? We do the same thing daily except we have one privilege that Earthly children don’t have. We have a set of standards that are unbending and laid out for us to study and model our life by. What are these standards? Scripture! God has already set the framework for your life down. You just have to seek them in His word. God still loves us and desires a relationship with us even though many of us blatently disregard God in the actions and attitudes of our daily life. Thankfully, God loves to lavish his grace and mercy on His children. There are always consequences for disobedience, but He will always forgive and welcome His children back regardless of our disobedience. He is the picture of unconditional love and the perfect Father.
This post seems to have gotten a bit out of hand in length. 😀 I will leave it at that for now. Thanks for taking the time to read.
In His service.
Humility
What is Humility? Some would say humility is an attitude, but I would venture to say that God desires much more than an attitude of humility from His people. God desires a lifestyle of humility for His people.
In Matthew 23, Jesus is talking with his disciples and the crowds that were following him. In the previous chapter, he had been challenged by the Pharisees and Sadducees. In each instance, Jesus had taken the challenge issued by the men of the law and refuted it so that each group of challengers had nothing left to say. Jesus put them in their place so decisively, verse 22:46 states that, “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.” With his spiritual enemies firmly silenced, Jesus was able to address the crowds freely.
For the next few verses, Jesus rips into the Pharisees and teachers of the law regarding their outward shows of spiritualism and their love of human recognition. He tells the crowds, “Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at the banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them Rabbi.” (Matt 23:5-7)
Are we not there today? We love ourselves to a fault and we love to be exalted before men. This is not what God desires. God would have us to live humble lives as servants. Jesus himself said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt 20:28 ) Today, we live in a society that preaches the need to take care of number one. To exalt yourself to stand out. We have a corporate world that would have you lie, cheat, and steal to advance up the next step in the ladder. But Jesus himself stated that he came to serve, even to the point of death on a cross in obedience to the Father as a sacrifice for us. So where does that leave us today? If the Son of Man came as a servant unto this world, how crazy is it for us to be so self-serving! This attitude is even prevalent within the walls of churches today! This has to break God’s heart. We, the body of Christ, are to be His living message to the world today, but it seems like we have forgotten what that message is.
The attitudes that we express are clearly outside of what Jesus lays out in verse 11 and 12. “The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.” See how our self-importance and Christ do not mix? If you want to be exalted before God, you have to humble yourself before men. As Christians, our rewards in heaven clearly outweigh any reward that we could receive here. Earthly reward is fleeting, while heavenly rewards are eternal. I don’t know about you, but I would rather invest in my eternal home rather than the temporal home I have here on Earth.
God lays it out for us. If we want to be within His will here on Earth, we have to find humility. Let go of your pride. It only serves to hold you back from where God wants you to be. The gains of surrender greatly surpass the penalty of retaining your self serving nature. The call on our lives is to love the people of the world as Christ did. And how did Jesus love? Through service. How are we then called to love the world? As humble servants putting others above ourselves. Remember, he who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
In His service.
Purpose…
Purpose. Simply defined, purpose is what drives you. Purpose is the thing that overshadows all other aspects of your life. Personally, the purpose of my life is simply to glorify God and encourage others. Sometimes, I fail and I am less encouraging than I should be, but thankfully I serve a God full of grace and mercy.
The purpose of this blog is rooted in encouragement. I want to share with you, what God is sharing with me. Hopefully we can embark on a journey together that brings us both closer to the God of heaven and closer to our brothers and sisters here on Earth. God has given me a vision for Shechem. I will be sharing more about this soon.
I guess this is just a quick, “Hey, how are you?” kind of deal, so I will leave it at that. If you are looking for a place of encouragement where we can grow together for one purpose as the body of Christ, then you have found at least one outlet where that can be explored. I look forward to growing together.
In His service.
Shechem 