How can you pass up something so good for so free?

John Piper’s “Desiring God” was and is a very formative book for me.  Click here for your free download (I think it’s available for a limited time).

I came across this prayer (thanks, Missional Church Network)

Lord, I sometimes wander away from you. But this is not because I am deliberately turning my back on you. It is because of the inconstancy of my mind. I weaken in my intention to give my whole soul to you. I fall back into thinking of myself as my own master. But when I wander from you, my life becomes a burden, and within me I find nothing but darkness and wretchedness, fear and anxiety. So I come back to you, and confess that I have sinned against you. And I know you will forgive me.

- Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167)

I’ve done the Alpha course a couple of times and found it to be a great experience.  After seeing this video with that cool English survival guy, Bear Grylls, I wonder if it’s time to do it again…

As snow hit Calgary this week, I blared Downhere’s Christmas tunes from my car stereo as I navigated through frozen snow ruts and slid through icy intersections.  I can think of no better soundtrack for my winter adventures than this new album.  It’s a mix of re-created favorites and some excellent new stuff.  I always love the upbeat stuff like their new song Christmas in Our Hearts, it’s so well written and produced.  Having followed Downhere for years, I have come to really delight in their growth as artists.  Marc even sings in french, it adds such a beautiful flavor to the album.  But as I think about the crazy hustle of Christmas, I find my greatest comfort in songs like What Child is this? and Gift Carol.  Songs like these remind me that Christmas isn’t about insane spending on plastic gift cards and trinkets, but that we as disciples of Jesus set aside time in our year to thank God for the incarnation of Jesus.  The CD is an invitation to remember that Jesus is King and reigns on His throne forevermore.

On a side note, there is a ten second track that belts out, “FIVE GOLDEN RINGS.”  My wife was sleeping in the car as we gently drove through the mountains last week and this track burst through our speakers on high.  She woke up in a fright that was not exactly in the spirit of the Christmas season.  I chuckled for hours…

Merry Christmas!

Who holds the power in the church?  It seems that whoever has the largest pockets can sway the Bishops this way and that.  The Arcus Foundation is a very large fund aimed at influencing denominations to change policies concerning homosexuality.  They have given $200,000 to Lutherans Concerned to “to organize and support a grassroots collaborative effort to change existing denominational policy at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America toward the full inclusion of LGBT people of faith.”  It worked because the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA made drastic policy changes in that direction.

What is the role of big lobby groups with varying agendas in the Church today?  With the Lutheran church in financial troubles, will the lobby money seems more attractive?  How will the Bishops and Councils of the ELCIC make clear decisions in the face of a theological potpourri.

See the original article here.

I was really pleased to recieve a publication from the Mennonite Mission Network called, “Beyond Ourselves.”  What a great name for a publication about outreach!  Some denominations are doing a great job at thinking about our call to be missional disciples of Jesus, and it’s my impression that the Mennonites are charting a course in that direction.

This Advent we’re planning on turing our focus in a new direction.  We’re taking part in the Advent Conspiracy.  It’s a call to Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, and Love All.  It fits so well with the direction that Our Saviour has been heading.  I encourage you to check it out!

When your church community gets bored of reaching out with the love of Christ and doesn’t like to meet together anymore, don’t cry over it!  Build a bookstore and coffee shop out of your unwanted worship space.  The chancel is great for a cappuccino…

And the worship space would house a nice collection of bargain-priced books, and kitten calendars:

So next time you despair that the church has lost its way, relax and sooth your aching conscience with a steaming latte – you can even sit at the crucifix table and plug into the WiFi.  There are so many uses for old churches, why bother with renewal in the Church at all?

See more pictures here.

I’ve had a couple songs stuck in my head the past week or so.  They are a couple from Jason Gray’s new album, “Everything Sad is Coming Untrue.”  His songs are simple declarations of the Kingdom of God and the more I listen to it, the more I like it.  Some Christian musicians have gotten slack for creating simplistic music, dumbed down pop choruses that don’t really contribute to anything more than an emotive feel-good moment.  What I like about Jason Gray’s album is that it is simple without falling into this trap.  For Kelly and I, we have come to love a very simple song called “Help Me, Thank You.”  It says, “The two best prayers I know…are help me, help me, thank you, thank you.”  At first we didn’t know what to make of the song.  But it holds such a simple truth about prayer and has, thought the week, inspired me to pray in fresh ways.  It’s true, I often don’t know what to say in prayer, but offering these small “breath prayers” (as some spiritual theologians might call it) has brought me back to the fundamentals of my prayer life.  This is a good album and I hope more musicians can capture the simple Kingdom message without dumbing it down.  Jason Gray has done a great job of walking that line.