confessions from mars hill

Institutionalized

Believe what you want. These walls 
are funny. First you hate 'em, then 
you get used to 'em. After long 
enough, you get so you depend on 
'em. That's "institutionalized." 

Red - Shawshank Redemption

Dose of Reality

We are getting old...and a little lame.  At least that is what we are thinking after this afternoon.

We invited a few of our older students over who are now in college.  We wanted to grill some brats and hang out at the pool on a nice Saturday afternoon.

But as we were there, everyone seemed pretty quiet and it was a bit awkward.  As we were talking about it later, we realized that we had become those people...you know, the ones that put together an event that is inconvenient for almost everyone.  Several people just didn't show up, and the many of the rest left after about an hour. 

So, I think our "cool points" are at an all time low.

Piper at the unveiling of his new Urban Initiative

Ok, actually this girl had convinced him to do it as a symbol of "Word of God" without knowing he was about to represent Westside.

Great Video

This makes me smile.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Hey There Delilah

I was watching the Olympic trials on USA network.  One of the girls running the Steeplechase, Delilah DiCrescenzo, was the object of affection in "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's. Here is the USA Today story on it.

Here is the video.

Patience

Piper has a great post about patience on the Desiring God blog.  My favorite line is from scripture: "the servant of the Lord must not strive."  This was a man who constantly did what he knew to do all the while waiting on the Lord to bring about the change of hearts. This is similar to the discussion we had in our small group last week.  I desire to see God really sweep through our lives and ministry with winds of change.  But as a good friend put it, we must be obedient while we wait.

Here is the entire post.  I just want to give credit where it is due to the original.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for him” (Lamentations 3:25).

Charles Simeon was in the Church of England from 1782 to 1836 at Trinity Church in Cambridge. He was appointed to his church by a bishop against the will of the people. They opposed him not because he was a bad preacher, but because he was an evangelical—he believed the Bible and called for conversion and holiness and world evangelization.

For twelve years the people refused to let him give the Sunday afternoon sermon. And during that time they boycotted the Sunday morning service and locked their pews so that no one could sit in them. He preached to people in the aisles for twelve years! The average stay of a pastor in America is about four years, under average circumstances.

Simeon began with twelve years of intense opposition—and lasted fifty-four years. How did he endure with such patience?

In this state of things I saw no remedy but faith and patience. The passage of Scripture which subdued and controlled my mind was this, “The servant of the Lord must not strive.” It was painful indeed to see the church, with the exception of the aisles, almost forsaken; but I thought that if God would only give a double blessing to the congregation that did attend, there would on the whole be as much good done as if the congregation were doubled and the blessing limited to only half the amount. This comforted me many, many times, when without such a reflection, I should have sunk under my burden. (H. C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon, [London: The InterVarsity Fellowship, 1948, orig. 1892], p. 39)

 

Positioning

In an church, why does ego, longevity and strong personality tend to override good ideas?

22 Words

John Piper's son, Abraham, has a blog in which he makes his point in 22 words or less (not counting titles).  I admire him for the ability to think through several posts per day.  I think he is on to something.  Maybe I can give some thoughtful posts with very few words.  I am hoping that it will motivate me to post a little more often.

Twitter

Looks like some of the cool pastor types that I know are sending updates of their life via Twitter.  So I am too.  Most people that I know in South Florida don't have it yet which means that I hope to be ahead of the curve.

I can't say that I really understand what the big deal is.  But I also said that when a couple of dumb things called Myspace and Facebook came out. Who knew?

Facebook Flair

I get a lot of "flair" on facebook from students.  It is funny when I get an overload of "Jesus" flair that makes me look like I put the fun back in fundamentalist.

But I got one today with this picture in the background.  Not sure who sent it, but I say thank you.  It really made me laugh.