Is our race “American”?
Mar 10, 2010 Uncategorized
Is our race “American”?
My “nationality” is (in order) Finnish, English, Irish, French, German, and Scottish (I have been told I can date relatives on one side back to the Mayflower).
My wife’s “nationality” is Korean (her parents are from South Korea).
What does that make our kids? It seems like this comes up from time to time as we fill out various sets of paperwork. For years, we were forced to pick just one race which kinda ticked me off. Now with the new census form, you can pick one or more boxes.
Hopefully this isn’t an offensive question, but does this really matter a whole lot?
A few weeks ago, I heard Dave Gibbons speak on the idea of Third Culture (you can find the message here). He made an interesting observation that older generations tend to care a lot about multi-culturalism. The younger generations don’t, at least not in the same way. They celebrate different cultures quite a bit (which may be a result of multi-culturalism) but someone’s ethnic makeup is not a big deal anymore.
I wonder why it is that we, as a country, think it’s important to track this particular thing. Hopefully this doesn’t sound trite, but I wonder when (if ever) the day will come that we can get past it.
Here’s an interesting quote from Teddy Roosevelt (via Michelle Malkin):
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all… The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic… There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.
Not trying to make some big point here, it’s just something I’ve been chewing on and I felt like writing it out.
Eric Asp
Mar 8, 2010 Uncategorized
You Rivites may remember Eric Asp, a friend of ours who spoke at our church a couple years ago. Eric pastors a church in Amsterdam that I have had the good fortune to visit several times. We’ve also had teams go over there to help out from time to time.
He just sent me a cool video that talks about what his Wednesdays are like:
If you want to find out more about how you can help Eric’s ministry, check out EricAsp.com.
3rd Grade Trip
Mar 3, 2010 Uncategorized
Last week, my son Ethan got to go on his “3rd Grade Trip.” This is a tradition started by my father who took me on a business trip with him to Washington DC when I was in 3rd grade. It was so memorable for me I wanted to do it with my kids.
Emma and I went to Daytona Beach, Jesse and I went to Orlando, and last week Ethan and I went to Atlanta.
When we got back, Jesse asked me, “which 3rd grade trip was the best?” I answered with the cliche dad answer, “I liked them all for different reasons.” And I wasn’t lying. Each of my kids has such a different personality that I enjoyed each trip differently.
Emma is my only girl (which makes her a spoiled princess). On her trip, we walked on the beach holding hands. We swam in the ocean, read the Bible and talked about Jesus.
Jesse is a jock and got a chance to play football with a Bowling Green offensive linesman on his trip. We raced go-carts, read the Bible and talked about Jesus.
Ethan is a servant type who loves to do stuff for others. We shopped for the family, rode the 4d ride at the World of Coca-Cola (buying souvenirs for other people), read the Bible and talked about Jesus.
With each of the kids, we did stuff unique for them, but we spent some time doing one common thing.
Deuteronomy 6: 5-7 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
LEAD Resources
Mar 2, 2010 Uncategorized
A little over a week ago we hosted LEAD, which was an event for anyone who leads or wants to around here. All of the resources from the time are finally online, including:
- Audio and Video from the teachings and Q&A sessions
- Recommended Books
- Recommended Articles
- Elder Process
- Church Planter Process
You can download all of this at Lead.RivChurch.com.
Our next LEAD will take place on May 22, so mark your calendars. We are going to shake up the format a bit and offer a lot of different opportunities to learn about leadership and figure out how to plug in.
If you are just looking for the teachings from the time, you can watch them here:
“Need for LEAD” - Noel Heikkinen
“Character of a Leader” - Greg Van Nada
“Leading as a Volunteer” - Mark Brett
I’m a Pharisee
Mar 1, 2010 Uncategorized
I hate it when God reminds me that I’m a Pharisee.
Recently, I found myself actually praying this prayer:
“God, don’t let me become like that guy.”
I really meant it. “That Guy” represents the kind of pastor I don’t want to be. I felt it was a righteous prayer: I was asking God to help me pastor in a Biblical way. Not an hour later, I heard someone share on this verse:
Luke 18:11 The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists, unrighteous people, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.
Ouch. I bet the Pharisee thought he was being righteous in his prayer.
Hotlanta!
Feb 22, 2010 Uncategorized
This week I am heading to the Atlanta area with my 9 year old son Ethan. We’ll be hanging out at Velocity (a church planting conference).
That means I will probably not be blogging too much, although you can keep up with us over at Twitter and Facebook.
See ya on Friday for the Friday Random Linkness!
Video
Feb 21, 2010 Uncategorized
I’ve had lots of people ask about the Beat Poet I played this weekend at Riv. Here’s the video:
Elevation Church Easter Opener from Elevation Church on Vimeo.
Aha
Feb 17, 2010 Uncategorized
Two weeks from today, Leadership Network will be hosting another online conference (you may remember The Nines last September). It’s totally free and will go from noon to 4pm.
This one is called Aha!
Looking at the lineup, I’m pretty stoked. A lot of the people on the list may be new names to many of you, but I know some of them and this is going to be great.
Post a comment if you are interested in watching it together at Riv. We did that for The Nines and it was pretty cool. If I get enough interest, we’ll set it up.
Psalms of Cursing
Feb 15, 2010 Uncategorized
This weekend at Riv, I talked about Psalms of Cursing (or “Imprecatory Psalms”). One of the things I didn’t have time to get into was why I think Psalms of Cursing help prove the Bible is God’s Word.
I’m not going to get into this too much, because you really have to be a history geek like me to care. But here’s the basic gist: it’s well known that “history is written by the winners.” Because of this, most cultures down through history have written their history books and literature in such a way that it casts them in a good light. Their enemies are seen as terrible and brutal. They, on the other hand, are seen as gracious (or some other positive trait) even when they are winning at a brutal war.
Historians will tell you that no one is ever as good as they look on paper.
The odd thing about the Bible (as evidenced in the Psalms of Cursing), is that it paints God as vengeful and the Israelites as almost bloodthirsty. This is uncommon (if not completely missing) in other ancient writings. Why does the Bible go there? Because it’s not trying to gloss anything over. It’s painting things the way they were.
Last week, I was reading French Philosopher Rene Girard (that’s another whole post) and here is an interesting observation he made about ancient writings:
In mythology, the collective violence is always represented from the standpoint of the victimizers and therefore the victims themselves are never heard. We never hear them bemoaning their sad fate and cursing their persecutors as they do in the psalms. Everything is recounted from the standpoint of the persecutors.
No wonder the Greek myths, the Greek epics and the Greek tragedies are all serene, harmonious, and undisturbed. In pagan cultures, the persecutors are in charge. We never hear the victims. We only hear the persecutors who always have the last word, and who are unaware of their own arbitrary violence.
It’s interesting to note that the pendulum has definitely swung the other way in our culture. We are now hyper in tune with the voices of victims. We need to understand that is our cultural bias and it is a relatively new one. You know where you can see this well? Christopher Columbus. When I was a kid, he was revered as a hero who discovered a new world. Now (my kids tell me), he is reviled as an arbiter of genocide. So which is it? Probably a bit of both. Both sides of that story probably carry some validity.
We have to understand that we have a huge reaction to the Psalms of Cursing because we are often looking at the victim. Most people down through history have seen the other side because most people in the world have been the victims, calling out for justice.
Suffice it to say that the Psalms sheer honesty is, for me, a proof that the Bible is true. If it was myth or legend, the story would be different.
Struggling in Church
Feb 10, 2010 Uncategorized
I love this quote from RELEVANT Magazine:
Church isn’t meant to be people who mask our brokenness with good acts. It’s meant to be the place where we can freely say, “I want to sleep with that guy,” “I have slept with that girl”, “I drank too much last night” or “I lied to my colleague about that project!” It’s meant to be a place where we don’t wear these things as a badge of honour but with a spirit of confession. Church isn’t meant to be about perfect people but about confessed people. We should be able to say these things, our secrets, our sins, our mistakes, and receive love and acceptance from Jesus (and church people) when we do.
What I love about this quote is it strikes at two main issues:
- We shouldn’t flaunt our sin, but confess it.
- We should love on those who are struggling through these issues, just like Jesus does.
How cool would it be if the church could strike that tone?
