I went back and forth in deciding whether to write about the 10th anniversary of one of the worst days I’ve ever experienced. I have been wondering how to approach this situation and what to write about. Even as I write this I still don’t really know what my approach is. Oh well. Let’s see what happens…

I was 20 years old and I was a junior at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. I remember walking into the cafeteria and there were tons of people watching TV’s. We didn’t have TV’s in there normally so I was intrigued. When I got over to a screen I couldn’t believe what I had seen. They showed the first one fall and soon after the second one fell. I was shell shocked. Honestly, I can’t tell you what happened after that. I don’t know if they cancelled class. I don’t know if they had coverage in the rest of my classes. If I had to guess Dr. Wubbena didn’t change his schedule, but I don’t know. I do remember that I watched that coverage over and over again for the rest of the day. I was mesmerized. I am still mesmerized to this day. That morning has forever changed the history and landscape of our country. I, like the rest of our country, will NEVER forget what happened that Tuesday.

What is my response today? Well, other than having to leave earlier for flights because of the security I have a response to share a security that will never be broken. We serve a God who loves us and protects us with an undying love. Today, The Word At Shaw did something super special. We were a part of something called Serve 2011. We cancelled service as usual and sent people out on various mission projects. I was excited to be a part of a church where we could shut down business as usual and do something for someone else. I hope that we can do that again because it seemed to really make a difference in the neighborhood. We also saw some people for the first time that wanted to see how a church could go so far out of the box. Great times. Great times…

Next week I will bring back the Sunday Set Lists. We have some pretty cool things coming up and so I hope to share a lot more of these with you. Hopefully they help you.

I’ve done it. I’ve talked to others that do it. To some degree we have all dealt with it. We don’t give our brains enough credit. We learn tons of things and store them in our brains. We learned how to play instruments. We learned how to drive and remember people’s phone numbers. For whatever reason, worship leaders have a crazy time remembering words. Or at least we think we do. A couple weeks ago we had a computer malfunction and it caused us to not have any words on our back screen. That was bad enough. After they got it back up and running, it was the wrong song. That was worse. It becomes hard to scramble in your brain without anyone noticing it. The funny thing is that most of the time I don’t look at the screen and I know the words just fine. However, when I look up at the screen then my brain goes numb and I have to have the words or I die. How have we become so dependent on help that we have taken away our own ability to learn and remember? I know that if I was held to the fire I know a lot more words that I give myself credit for. I also know that there are some songs that I have never fully learned because I always have the words.

How do we remedy this issue? Do we get rid of all screens and music stands? I have challenged myself to learn the words to songs so if something happens to our technology I can still lead my people without sounding like a bumbling idiot (which I have done). Any of my other worship leader friends ever have this issue?

Leading people to Christ is all about one beggar telling another beggar where they got bread.

The first time I heard this quote I was a little boy in church. I always thought it was intriguing. I wasn’t sure why then, but as times have changed I think they depth of that quote has diminished. In the early days of Evangelism Explosion and The Evangelism Workshop movements we were given these systematic approaches to leading people to Christ. And they were…well…systematic.  It seemed that systematic worked in the 80′s and early 90′s. I think somewhere along the line systematic stopped working as well in culture but we held on to it in the church. So we’ve started to see some of these things not be as effective. The message is still poignant, simple, dynamic and powerful as ever. The way we get that point to the people is causing us to fall behind before the party even starts. For my technology people, it would be like bringing at 486 running Juno to a LAN party. You’re gonna be waaaaay behind before you ever boot up the machine.

When trying to connect people to God, we have to be able to go back to yesterday’s post and connect with the people. While the message of being able to lead a beggar to bread is still true, we have to go one step back. And this crucial step has been overlooked for a while now. We have to get people to understand that they are beggars. No one here believes that in today’s world. Everyone is looking for something and some believe that they have already found what they are looking for. Some people find it in money. Some in fame. Some find it in their jobs. Some find it in other points of view. Some find it in politics. God has become so many things to so many people. It makes it nearly impossible to break down all these things at once. TOTALLY impossible in a chance meeting at the grocery store or in a restaurant. People need time to talk, process, argue, discuss, and interact with the things around them. That doesn’t fit into the system. The system gave us these 4 or 5 verses that we easy to remember and we were told that if we followed the flow then it would work. We became telemarketers. I say that because when someone got off the script, we had to try to find a way to get them back to it. As timed progressed non-Christians were able to see that we only knew those 5 scriptures in our script. Even worse, the problems people were facing weren’t easily answered in those scriptures. Our bluff was called. Some of us have changed with the time. Some of us are waiting for a way to break back to the script.

When it comes to connecting people to God, we HAVE to be able to take the time to find the connection. Just like you can’t put a 3 prong plug into a 2 prong hole, you can’t make “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23)” fit every situation. Does that change the validity of that statement? Heck no! Are people willing, ready and able to admit that they fall under “all”? Not really. There is a lot more to this thing than we were taught. We have a lot more life to wade through than we did 20 years ago. Does this diminish the potency and beauty of the unchangeable gospel? Not even close. The gospel still is and always will be real. It still has to power to transform and break down walls. We as Christians have understand that we need to build relationships with people in order to have these conversations that lead to transformations.

Now that I’ve related witnessing to an extinct computer and the dinner time’s most hated people, what do you have to say? Let me hear from you.

“As he walk the streets with lepers, prostitutes and lonely beggars…”

This song (written by a friend) has been popping up in my head as I’ve been doing some work lately. This may feel like a long way to make a point, but it works. We have a ministry in our church called connectors. This ministry is designed make sure that everyone that walks in the doors of our church receive a welcome and that it’s more than just a hello and thanks for coming. I believe that the people doing this are doing a good job because every week we have tons of stories about first time people. Why? It’s because we take things a step further and try to take time to really get to know the people that walk in the doors of our church. At the point you have set foot into our building, we don’t really care why you are there. The point is that you ARE there and we want to make sure that while you are there you engulfed in Christ’s love. It is one of the things that makes me proud on Sunday mornings.

One of the things that makes me the most proud about this is that it has similarities to what Christ did. During the week our people are talking to whomever they see. So when new people come to the church and I get a chance to meet them and ask them how they found our church a lot of times they are telling me how they met someone during the week and got invited to join our family. We are spending time where people are. We’ve gone past standing at the door screaming at people as they walk past hoping that they come in.

As I write this, I realize that this has not been everyone’s experience with the church. Not everyone has received a welcoming embrace. Some of us have received judgmental words and eyes. Some have experienced gossip and controversy. Some of us have even experienced the abusive misappropriation of scripture. All of these things are in strict contrast to a love that is lived out in scripture. Or at least I think so. Should there be discipline? Definitely. Should we be trying to point people toward truth? Without a doubt. Does every meeting with someone who doesn’t know Christ have to be a deliberate attempt to save them before they unexpectedly die from that thing that’s right around the corner waiting to take them? I don’t think so. If we are truly living lives that bring glory to God, then God, who is ALWAYS at work around us, will do the work that needs to be done in the hearts of those that don’t know him. When we look at the stories in the Bible, Jesus didn’t go into the tax collector’s home and start preaching to everyone (Mark 2:13-17). He went to eat with people who most people didn’t like. When he spared the girl’s life by challenging those with no sin to throw first, he was showing grace and to someone that no one else would give a second chance to (John 8:1-11). Those were examples of us connecting people to people. Once we do that, then we can talk about connecting people to God. Come back tomorrow and we will talk about that. As for today, tell me what you think about this.

At 8:32 when one of my children is screaming at the top of their lungs and another is sick and not wanting to get out of bed, I’d like to say that I’m back. I have been away for quite some time now, but I have made my way back home. I don’t dare sit here and think that the masses have been waiting for me to get back to blogging, but it still feels good to be back. A LOT of things have happened this summer and it’s amazing to still be standing after it is all said and done, but God is good. We have gone through some major changes at the church, my son just turned 1 on Friday (check out this video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czpf6MVsIPA&feature=mh_lolz&list=HL1315315811), and I have gained some perspective on who I am and what I’m doing. Hopefully I’m able to share some of this with you in a way that is helpful.

Sunday afternoon was quite a special day in my household. As I mentioned Quint turned 1 on Friday and so we had a blessing ceremony and party for him on Sunday. He had about 30 people come out to share this time with us. There were some really cool things that were said and lots of love poured out on him and us. One of the things that stuck out most to me was when our good friend and pastor of the Quest service at First Free Church Kevin Hughes gave the blessing. He asked people to share blessings and prayers over us and the baby. It was a lovely time and again, we felt really loved. But Kevin said something like this: “I pray that Quint’s prodigal days be short, and that Harry and Eva would have the wisdom and patience to guide him through it.” This was special to me because he didn’t shy away from the fact that we all have this time when we act like the prodigal son (Luke 15:11), but he prayed that he would be able to work through it and then come out stronger on the other side. Believe it or not, that’s one of the things that propelled me back today.

I have been waiting for a chance to jump back into writing. I kept feeling like I didn’t have anything to say or that no one was listening. So I sort of let it all fade away. But I’ve come back with the feeling of this is what God has given me. If no one else reads anything I have to say then I still will write.  Is there something or someone in your life that you have run away from? Have you been wallowing in the mud trying to find your own way and finding that it just isn’t working like you thought? You can go back home. There is a God who loves you and accepts you with open arms when you decide to turn back to him. And just like the father in the story, he has a party waiting.