An interesting article on how Established churches should act more like “new churches”

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The author hits the nail on the head, all five of these points any church would do well to consider.  I have included the fourth in his list simply because it is so true, when everyone is working the building is alive with God’s love, every family in God’s service… Check out the whole article it is a fairly short read.

4. Church plants use a wider portion of the congregation in service.

An experienced friend once commented that planting a church is like trying to build a boat from scratch . . . when you’re already in the water. It’s not just all hands on deck—you don’t even have the deck yet to lay hands on. The context of urgency and camaraderie that comes from working so closely together at those early stages often creates a more pervasive culture of service in a church plant.

Established churches tend to embody the classic 80-20 rule: 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. When the focus and clarity of the mission dissipate and urgency wanes, it’s a lot easier to participate in church as a spectator rather than as a partner in gospel ministry. As established churches work on recapturing focus in mission, that focus should translate into congregation-wide service.

via 5 Ways Established Churches Should Think Like Plants – The Gospel Coalition Blog.

What was that squirrel doing in there?

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A couple of weeks back as I was sitting in my office a co-worker asked if I knew who that was getting out of my car.  At the time the car was new to me, rising to my feet to look out the window at what he was looking at I was surprised to see some squirrely behavior.  I caught a shot of the suspect breaking out of my car, what was he doing in there?

Kindle read aloud ability + Foundations of grace = great experience.

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I have a decent drive each day and for quite some time have use audible books to make productive use of the time.  It has turned out to be a blessing from the viewpoint of getting to read (hear) quite a few books.  I had been going through at least 2 books a month, but missed the ability to actually read the books as well when not driving.

I have had a kindle for some time and never thought listening to a book with the voices that are available I was reading was really possible.  Insert mental thought of computerized robot voice reading with horrible pauses and mispronunciations of most if not all multi-syllabic words.  My experience does not resemble the prior description, surprisingly other than abbreviations it does a fabulous job with albeit a computerized voice. I have become quite used to it’s tone, it now seems very usable, and I get to read the book between trips.

So I am 2/3rds of the way through the book “Foundations of grace“, I will do a more complete review when I am done, but have a quote from the book below that I really found spot on.  If you ever wondered where they get the “Doctrines of Grace” from the bible this is a wonderful book.  The first of five books by Steven Lawson, the book starts in Genesis with Abraham and reviews the doctrines via scripture throughout the entire bible by reviewing men through the apostle John in Revelation.  (For a good review from the discerningreader.com click here)

“It would be virtually impossible to read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and come to any other conclusion. As shocking as it may sound, Jesus Christ was a Calvinist. While the teaching ministry of our Lord Jesus preceded that of John Calvin by fifteen hundred years, Christ clearly taught the same doctrines of grace as did the Genevan Reformer. In this sense, Christ did teach Calvinism, but not because our Lord received these magnificent truths from Calvin. To the contrary, Calvin received them from the One who came from the Father—Jesus Christ. The truths of sovereign grace originated in the inscrutable mind and will of God, not man. They were conceived in glory, not Geneva. They were birthed in eternity past, not sixteenth century Europe.”

Lawson, Steven J. (2011). Foundations of Grace (Long Line of Godly Men) (p. 241). Reformation Trust Publishing. Kindle Edition.

These are not “new testament” or “old testament” opinions from a theologian trying to convince you one way or the other, scripture is referenced throughout and you can and should check the author on each entry.  Sure I realize the book is friendly to the tenets that are traditionally referred to as calvinism today, but if you have no idea what I am referring to this is a good book to find out.  I come from a Church of Christ background and can say it has taken me over a year to work through what I believed, but I praise our sovereign Lord he blessed me by changing my understanding.  I am still working out my own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12) and this book has been very good about showing the quantity and breadth of these biblical truths in the scripture throughout the entire bible.

If you think you would enjoy listening to books while you drive, but don’t want to give up the ability to annotate and actually read, the $114 Kindle is a great way to read books you with great flexibility.  Sure it isn’t dramatically read, but it really does seem to get more “normal” each day, and the quote from above shows the added ability to refer back later as you would in any book.  In this case this quote was copied from the Kindle app on my mac, even though I ”highlighted” the excerpt on my Kindle itself when arriving at work from the listening session.

Low light shot of a gecko with E-PL2 & 42-150mm lens

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HugeGeckoInfo_wjLetting the dogs outside tonight and noticed this little guy lurking in a corner near the back door on the tile.  Despite the shot the floor is pretty clean, the size of the little black ant gives some scale to the < 1.5″ nose to end of tail gecko. To see the unaltered (except for watermark) full size image click this link, it is a large file so just letting you know for low bandwidth links.  Full size jpeg.