Tales of a Secret Rockstar

What is it about two question marks that make a question seem more incredulous? It's a weird, grammatically poor quirk of the english language. I blame MSN. Anyways, the title refers to the fact that there's an "edit html" way of blogging, and a "compose" way. I never knew that until now, and I've had this blog for almost 5 years! Unbelievable! Now, I can much more easily do this.

I was away all weekend with Resonate. It was a great weekend. I preached 3 times, and they played 4 times. I've still been (occasionally) pondering the question I posed in the last post. I was thinking about heaven a lot last week. Mostly about the concept of treasure in heaven. I was just wondering to myself, "what do I really need on earth. If I know that when I die I'll go to heaven, how much do I really need to accumulate here?" I've been praying for a more "eternal perspective" lately, and I think this is part of it. If we know where our treasure is, we're not slaves to the accumulation of false treasure. At least, that's the goal. It's easy to forget where my treasure is, even though I ultimately "know."

That song has just been getting me the last couple of days.
Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Last night I was driving home from watching an atrocious football game (from my Denver supporting perspective), and I asked myself this question: What does North American Christianity look like? I've been reading this textbook I had in College, "The Story of Christianity," by Justo Gonzalez, and I've been fascinated to track (in a broad overview) the development of Christian thought over the centuries. How Christian theology came to be more sharply defined as it contested with heresies that threatened to derail it. How Church government became hierarchal through both outside political forces and internal pressures. How great Christian thinkers and leaders came to the forefront in every generation, to confront the situations that threatened the church. I suppose all that reading led me to that question. Essentially, what are the defining characteristics of the North American church? Are we leaving the impact that we should be leaving on our world? I think the influence and power of the Western World is waning somewhat, and I wonder if that's being reflected in the waning influence of the Western Church in its own culture.

It's a tough question. And (partly in order to keep myself from getting all "emerging") it led me to this question:

What does my Christianity look like?

You know it's been a long time when the best title you can muster is a bad play off of the title of a movie you've never seen. But I have to start with something right? The week and a half or so that this blog has gone silent can be attributed to a number of factors. In fact, since I like top 5 lists so much, here's one now:

Top 5 Factors contributing to the lack of blogging over the last week and a half:
(I also love long titles)

1. Thanksgiving
2. I have a cold
3. Facebook Scrabble
4. Good, old-fashioned laziness
5. Video Games

The fact is that I'm easily distracted. And, if I have one "theme issue" in my life, it's that I have great ideas that I start but never finish. I intend to finish this idea, even if it's not going to be anything close to 1 post a day.

I also hope to carry the podcast idea through to completion, although that one is proving more difficult.

Here's one of my pet peeves in writing. There's a famous Mark Twain quote, in which he says (after hearing that it was widely rumored that he had died), "The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated." Great quote. Very witty. Here's the thing though: That quote only works in the first person! I see people use this all the time in articles. For example: "The reports of Larry Johnson's demise have been greatly exaggerated." When you're saying it about yourself, it's clever because clearly you're not dead. But when you're saying it about Larry Johnson, it doesn't apply, because you clearly could exaggerate reports about his death. Perhaps he died in his sleep, but all the papers are saying that he fought a burglar and was thrown out of a third story window. That would be an exaggerated report of his demise. So it doesn't apply. If I was Steven Colbert right now, I'd put all reporters who use this phrase (and there are many of them) on watch. I think that's what it's called. He has that board. Anyways, that's my rant for the night. I just can't handle when witty quotes get misused and subsequently ruined.

I couldn't sleep last night. But fortunately I had already planned to take the morning off. So that worked out alright.

I had some time to think and pray this morning, which was nice.

One of my goals, which I've had for quite a while, is depth. I want the things that I do and say to flow out of the depth of my relationship with God. I think that's what I feel like I've been missing lately. I haven't taken the time to cultivate that depth. Things have just been rushed all the time. So it was nice to be able to do that. I want to be spending time with God and growing all the time, not just when I know I have to speak or minister soon. That's been my pattern lately. I'm working on changing that.

I think I've been slowly getting out of touch.

Out of touch with God.
Out of touch with my own brain.
Out of touch with my need for God and others.

I sat in on the Chapel service this morning. It was great. I've been so happy to see how dynamic our chapel services have been these days. There's a hunger and urgency that I haven't seen in years. I've been praying for that, so it's good to see it happen. Anyways, the speaker mentioned, almost in passing, how many pastors only spend about 15 minutes a day in prayer and devotion. And I thought, "That's me!" Now of course my change of schedule has thrown me off, but I feel like maybe I've been using that as a bit of an excuse. I've started to be content with mediocre living, mediocre service, and mediocre relationship. I'd love to have one monumentous experience and cast it all off and be a new man. But I just don't think that's how God deals with me. I'm in for yet another process here. Obviously I prayed and confessed these things to God. But certain attitudes and habits need to take root in my life. I tend to have a sort of inside out passion - it may not always show on the surface, but it's strong and deep inside of me. I feel like I've been letting that die lately.

Fortunately God is in the resurrection business.

That may have been the cheesiest sentence I've written in a long time.