Angry Conversations with God

That's the name of a book that I've been recently reading.  It's by an author named Susan Isaac's and I recommend that you check out her story.  Here is a link to her blog as well.  I won't give away too much of her story but I will say that unfortunately too much of Susan's story is found in the world today.  We construct our concept of God based on our fathers and the people who are found in churches.  I was luckily blessed with a good father who never cheapened my concept of God, but I have come across too many people that have messed up views about who God is because their fathers were not very godly.  As Susan points out at one time, it wasn't her fault, and it's not; but it's the church's fault.  Now I don't want to trash the church too much here, but I think too many times we get in the rut of saying things that we have either heard or we just hope might be true in some sense.  All of this to say that I was caught up in Susan's story of taking God to marriage counseling and recounting her life and how God was working through these various experiences.  Thank you Susan for being transparent about your "marriage" with God, may others be encouraged by your journey.

I couldn't be more proud.....

..of the students in our youth group. This Saturday night they are putting on a coffeehouse to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur. This came out of a series that Doug and I did right before school started where we looked at Micah 6:8 and what God requires of us. I think many of our students were challenged by the ideas of doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly before God. One of our students has dared to ask the question, 'why can't we do more?' And so we are having a coffeehouse. Our students are the ones who have put this whole thing together. They are promoting it at their schools and seem to be getting positive feedback about the event. One of our teen bands, The Steadfast, will be performing along with an art auction and coffee from a local coffee shop, The Morning Mug. All of the money raised will go to helpdarfurnow.org and once again I could not be any more proud of our students. Way to go FVCN students!

Google Reader

About 2 weeks ago I started using Google Reader and let me tell you, I love it!!!!!  I used to check the few blogs that I read consistently a couple times a day to see if they had any new posts for me to read.  It was actually a little frustrating because I did a lot of useless clicking to get to each one.  But as I started using my gmail address more and more I decided to try google reader.  Here's what it does.  You can subcribe to blogs, news feeds, etc so that when something new comes across it is automatically uploaded into your reader.  So no more do I have to go to each blog to see if they have something new, I can just go into my reader.  This has allowed me to expand how many blogs, news and sports feeds that I read.  If you read any blogs or news feed online I recommend this way of doing things.  Thanks google for once again making life a little easier.

Beginning of a journey

So after many months of internal wrestling, I have decided to start this blog.  Please know that this is more for me than it is for you.  My journey is characterized by the title that I have chosen.  I find myself as a resident Nazarene alien.  I took this title from a book written by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon called, "Resident Aliens."  The book is essentially about how Christians always find themselves as resident aliens in the world.  Their call is not to fight this reality, but to accept it and faithfully live by God's calling.



Here is where I find myself.  I love my tribe of Nazarenes.  I love the heritage that I have in being a 5th generation Nazarene.  I love the heart of what we stand for in the Kingdom of God.  But I'm finding that I'm a little out of place.  I'm finding that instead of keeping our spirits tuned to the movement of God, my tribe is more tuned into doing it the way we've always done.  I have not given up hope for the future, but I'm afraid of my identity within my tribe if our course does not change.

I hope this blog will be a place where I can wrestle with my friends and some welcomed strangers on what God is calling His church to in this day and time.  I pray that as we journey together God will open us all up to new ways of seeing His Kingdom, instead of our kingdom.

You should also know that I love sports and music as well.  So don't be surprised if they make an appearance on here as well.