May God Bless You

At the conclusion of his message at the Willow Creek Leadership Conference last week, Craig Groeschel read the following Fransciscan Benediction. Thanks to Don Greb who was there and shared it with the rest of us during our staff devotions this week.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

May we all be so blessed.

The Peace of Wild Things

There are times when I wake at night and my mind fills with concerns about the issues of the day -- problems my children are facing, struggles weighing heavily on people in the church, or fear of things that could go wrong. It doesn't help matters when I've had a cup of coffee too late in the day.

It was nice to pull away from things around here and have my family together for a few days in Cape Cod last month. It was our first time there but hopefully it won't be our last. The natural beauty and peaceful surroundings made it a special time for all of us. I even found a new appreciation for bird watching. I confess, though, the whale watching was a little more exciting.

One evening before our meal my daughter Bethany read the following from a book of poems she had been reading:

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendel Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds,
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I hope you have a place where you can go to escape and, as Jesus said, "observe the birds of the air and the flowers of the field." I find rest from my worries when I remember that the God who cares for them cares even more for the things that bring me anxiety. Maybe that is why I slept a whole lot easier when I was on vacation.

Creeds

"Who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:16)

In order to pass the faith from culture to culture and generation to generation, the early church formulated "rules of faith." These summaries of the Apostle's teachings helped to preserve and define the faith as it was being tested by Judaism, gnosticism and other Egyptian and Persian religions before the canon of scripture was affirmed as authoritative by the Council of Carthage in A.D. 457. The Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and Chalcedon Creed arose out of the debates and discussions over competing interpretations of scripture and apostolic teachings.

In my preparation for a message on creeds I came across a modern creed formulated by Masai Christians in Africa. It is a beautiful re-writing of the creeds using the language and imagery of their culture. Several people asked for a copy of it so I put it here for all to read. Tell me what you think. Who you YOU say that Jesus is?

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

Memorial Day

Andy Rooney remembers (after a brief commercial).

Facing the Giants

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life has taken his gifts of strategic thinking and communication to the next level. When I read his first book, The Purpose Driven Church, years ago I thought to myself, "This is so simple, why hasn't anyone else written this book?" The book truly added no new information to the existing studies of church growth, but what it did do was take the information and made it simple, practical, and doable. Likewise, he is the first to admit that the information in his mega-bestselling book The Purpose Driven Life was nothing new, yet he was able to put the information in a way that it sold more copies than nearly any other book in history.

The genius of Rick Warren is his ability to take complex problems and abstract ideas and turn them into simple and measurable action plans. This is why Riverside is embracing his vision of The P.E.A.C.E. Plan to combat the five Global Giants of our world. And, yes, we do believe it is the church's responsibility to address the giants of Spiritual Emptiness, Self-Serving Leadership, Extreme Poverty, Pandemic Disease and Rampant Illiteracy. To think that it is government's job alone to deal with these ills and the church's job is only to care about "saving souls for heaven" is to forget that Jesus healed a lot of sick people, comforted the poor and afflicted, exposed injustices, and provoked the wealthy and powerful to have compassion for the weak and helpless.

Anyone who gains such visibility and is audacious enough to create such a plan is going to be the target of criticism, and Rick Warren gets more than his share of that. But I am glad that he is using his gifts to help our generation of Christians and churches face these global giants as God enables us.

Tell me, what do you think of the P.E.A.C.E. plan?

Affluenza

This has been a record breaking year for people who have been infected with influenza. But there is another virus sweeping the country that is even more dangerous than the flu. Please read the following article to find out if you are suffering from affluenza.

"It's not your typical virus, but rather a highly contagious disease of epidemic overconsumption, and the symptoms include compulsive shopping, high debt, overwork, inability to delay gratification, a sense of entitlement, obsession with externals and "having it all," wastefulness, and stress. The disease is called afflueza... (click here to read the rest of this excellent article).

Michael Dungan is a Christian financial planner who wrote the book, "Prodigal Sons and & Material Girls: How Not to Be Your Child's ATM." He helps people to "do" money in ways that honor their values. His simple philosophy of "share, save, spend" helps adults and their children find the antidote to hyper-consumption. Here is another brief article from Physicians Money Digest that does a good job of putting Dungan's ideas into practical advice for someone suffering from affluenza. Read especially the information at the end of the article.

Jesus said where our treasure is our hearts will follow. He also said we cannot serve both God and Money. Is it possible to be a sincere Christian if one is infected with "affluenza?" Do you think it could ever be labeled a true "disease"?

Tell me what you think.

Real Financial Heroes

Sometimes humor gets the message across better than the direct approach. I laughed out loud at these videos - especially the second one! Thanks, Libby.