One of the most fascinating quotes in the book Comic Genius; Portraits of Funny People is this one by Chevy Chase…
The best comedy I ever did was when people didn’t know who I was.
“Fame is a very unnatural human condition. When you stop to realize that… Read More
In the final service of the day (on Sunday, May 18th) Paul Scanlon concluded his message with a challenge and a prayer for us…
Challenge:
That little 1% that makes you different from everyone else is what society and education is not good at helping you find – because there is comfort in safety and sameness.
But you’re not on the planet for your sameness, you’re on the planet for your difference.
It’s your difference, it’s this church’s difference, that is why… Read More
Last night concluded our Together Nights at NWLife. Paul Scanlon spoke a message entitled “The Crisis of Human Flourishing.”
After reading the parable, Let The Rabbits Run, from Soar With Your Strengths, he talked about the importance of growing people…
Growing the church and growing people are two different things. Should we use people to grow an organization? No. We should grow people. Grow big people – people who are confident, who have a hunger to learn, who will take risks. If you grow big people, you’ll probably end up with a big church.
Good leaders do not have a one-size-fits-all approach… Read More
I saw and read a lot of stuff online this week – but these are my favs and I wanted to share ‘em with you…
This post, Jesus and a Woman’s “Place” by… Read More
A contrast of kingdoms…
as seen in works (or ways) or mercy and works (or ways) of war:
… Read More
We’ve been invited to participate in the Kingdom of God—right here, right now. This isn’t one of those “mark your calendar” invitations for a future date.
There is a default kingdom we have been experiencing and functioning in for our entire lives… the kingdom of the world. It has its perspectives, its attitudes, its practices, its methods – it’s ways. Because we have spent our lives deep inside the kingdom of the world, its ways come naturally to us.
Richard Rohr, in his book Breathing Underwater, said, “Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often have been given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of “Christian” countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else—and often more so, I’m afraid.”
The drift towards default – the kingdom of the world and its ways – is more widespread in American Christianity than we realize. There is much that falls under the label “Christian” that doesn’t look like the Kingdom of God at all—but instead looks exactly like the kingdom of the world.
There is, however, another way. A different and better way. The Kingdom of God way.
The Kingdom of God doesn’t have the same… Read More
The following is a post by Rob Grayson about the Kingdom of God from his blog Faith Meets World. He’s definitely worth following on twitter and his blog is among my favorites. Enjoy!
Yesterday I read the following quote:
The kingdom of God comes like a long walk home.
(For those who want to know, it’s actually a slightly edited version of a quote by… Read More
We just started a new series at NWLife called “Kingdom Invitation.” The big idea of this teaching is that we’ve been invited to participate in the Kingdom of God RIGHT NOW. Each week we will be attempting to answer the question, “What is the Kingdom of God like?”
Here’s a cool whiteboard session on… Read More
Here’s what I read and loved and wanted to share with you from around the internet this past week…
This post, Getting Famous Is Not How You Will Change The World, by Donald Miller. I especially loved this line: “Here’s what I know: Being known by strangers isn’t going to make anybody fulfilled. In fact, it can make life much more confusing and… Read More
I don’t know what the vision statement of the church I grew up in was, but if I were to guess based on the rapture movies they used to show, it’d be something like:
We exist to scare the hell out of everyone.
Yes, I had nightmares about missing the rapture, heads being chopped off, accidentally getting the mark of the beast, and a variety of other apocalyptic terrors.
And there were a number of times when, coming home from school and finding no evidence of family members, I’d panic and assume the worst: I had missed the rapture. For the next few minutes (until my mom came back from visiting with a friend), I’d frantically devise my ridiculous escape and survival plan… Read More
