Tell me a story.

It's nice to be home today after a busy weekend. I spent Sunday in Cleveland speaking at Fellowship Bible Church. They are good people who accepted me in spite of my being a Bengals fan. I hope to see them again sometime. Their student ministry is coming to SOS at The Vineyard this summer, so I'll see several of the kids when they get to town. Their church is currently talking about the spiritual disciplines, so I shared the stuff with them from Nouwen on intimacy, community and ministry. I also shared that at the CCU small groups conference on Saturday...and at the VCC weekend last week.

I felt a little bit like Barack Obama giving his "change" stump speech. I can't imagine how tired he and his staffers must get of hearing him say the same things everyday to a different crowd. We generally live in a "one a done" culture these days. With the youtube and the internet and the phone cameras and all...just record everything and you don't have to say it or do it again.

I'm not a techno-hater, but I wonder if the simple, oral repetition of truth and story have a unique power in the transformation of both hearer and speaker. I've probably told the story of the woman at the well over 100 times, including five times in the last week. The same with the woman caught in adultery, the healing of the blind man on the Sabbath, etc. Those stories are in me now. I don't have to prepare to tell them - I just tell them. They evolve and morph to different settings, but they never change. They are my personal love stories. I've also told the story of how I met my wife at least 100 times. Our story contextualizes to different people and settings as well, but it never changes. It simply is. Those Jesus stories have the same real meaning and personal historicity to me as my Debbie stories or my childhood stories, or my parenting stories. They shape me - make me - and I am being made to fit into them still.

A friend (I honestly can't remember who - maybe Murph?) told me recently that I've made a living out of telling people stories that have already been written, and that most everyone has already heard. I had mixed emotions when I heard him say that. It is true, by and large. The part of me that wants to be original would rather he had said that I've made a living telling my own stories. I have told some of my "own" stories, but they pale in comparison to the stories I plagiarize. I'm a hack compared to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Especially, John - forget about it. He's a master storyteller.

The last eight days have been full of opportunities for me to tell my stories. I'm just strangely struck today at the work that storytelling does on the storyteller. I'm left wondering today what would happen if the church embraced storytelling not as a teaching style, but as a leadership ethos. What if we all saw ourselves not as story-listeners, but as story-tellers? What does that sort of community look like? What if we quit saying, "How are you today?" and started saying, "Tell me a story."

Friend Collector

I spent today at my Alma Mater (CCU) for the Small Groups Conference.

Today was kind of like my wedding day. Only not as exciting or life-changing or nerve-wracking or expensive or meaningful...

Correction: Today was nothing like my wedding day.

Except for this one thing...

There were LOTS of people that I knew there, but many of the people that I knew did not know each other. There were about 50 people there from the Vineyard. I knew (or at least recognized) most of them. But, there were also a few dozen people there whom I knew from college. Most of them I hadn't seen for 15 years...people like Shawn Spradling, Cheryl Garrett, Scot Myers, Jason Galley and others. Some friends I hadn't seen face to face for over a decade. Then there were the old professors, pastor friends, etc. The topper was Mitch Harrison, a friend from Canyon Ridge in Las Vegas. Mitch and I are the speakers tomorrow at the conference. We think that's funny. Two Canyon Ridge boys speaking at a conference...if only they could have seen us back when were making it all up as we went along...oh yeah, we still are.

The fact that it all happened at CCU only added to the surrealism of the day. It was a good day. Not as good as a wedding day, but much better than a regular day. I'm looking forward to more of the same tomorrow...then I fly to Cleveland to speak at a church where I don't know anyone at all...yet.

This week I heard someone say, "I don't collect anything in the world except friends." I like that. I think it was Roger from The Biggest Loser who said it. Seems like you shouldn't go around quoting Biggest Loser contestants, but, alas, I just did.

Henri Nouwen

I mentioned Nouwen as one of my mentors this weekend at VCC. It's really not fair to call him a mentor since he had no choice in the matter. I never met him. Regardless, he's been a huge influence on me through his books.

This weekend I talked about Nouwen's idea that ideally we move from intimacy (with God) toward community with others. From community we can move toward ministry and acts of service. Many of us try to do this backwards and end up lonely and frustrated. If ministry is first, community becomes simply a method to accomplish a task. Intimacy with God is sacrificed in the name of service and we end up alone and isolated. There is a thin line between intimacy with God and isolation from God.

I found an article that Nouwen wrote in 1995 about these issues. If you'd like to read him yourself, just click here.

Busy eight days...

I have several teaching engagements coming up over the next eight days. Should be fun, in an exhausting kind of way. Feel free to come by if you are close to where I'll be.

4-11/12 - VCC Weekend Celebrations, "Road Trip: Honesty"
4-13 - Alpha at VCC, "Who is Jesus?"
4-18 - Small Groups Conference, Cincinnati Christian University (the alma mater)
4-19 - Guest speaking at Fellowship Bible Church in Cleveland.

35

Today I am halfway to 70. I spent my 35th birthday in an all-day staff meeting at The Vineyard, then teaching at midweek. I'm exhausted. We had our meeting in the new Student Union building. I played basketball with the very tall Micah Odor. It was half court and low impact, which is why I would never admit that I am a little sore right now. It's not like I'm in my mid-thirties or anything. Crap. I'm getting old.

Greatest Female Talent Ever on SNL

Spam-a-lot

A few years back it was all the rage for spammers to post comments on blogs so that people would go to some website. Looks like I've been targetted again, so if you see someone selling cigarrettes or porn sites in my comment section I would advise not to click. I'm erasing those I find.

That said, click here to get a great deal on ring tones!!!!

Opening Day - Maybe

Aidan is very excited because today is the first day of baseball practice this year. I have a hunch it will be rained out though...he might be bummed about that. Griffin Murphy will be on his team this year, but Sean will have to work Saturday mornings and miss practices. I just hope Griff doesn't start calling me Dad - that would be awkward.

The Disciplined Life

It has been difficult to get into some proper patterns in my life. It's hard to believe that it has been seven months since we moved to Ohio. That means it's been about seven months since I was able to really stick to a diet or exercise plan. When my life gets nutty, those are often the first few areas to go sideways.

I've driven a stake in the ground this month. April is the month that I regain control. I went to the gym for the first time since January yesterday and I'm going back today. I'm eating better - trying to just watch portions and calories more than anything else this go around. (I've bounced from diet to diet for almost twenty years - another post for another day.) Everything is connected with me. Just 36 hours of thinking healthy makes me want to pray, read and write more. It's hard to break the cycles we fall into.

I'm not going to try to motivate anyone else here. I've had enough alcoholic friends with two days sobriety who love to lecture drunk people to know what that is like. This is more just a coming out party - an acknowledgement that I've been stuck in a prison and I'm clawing my way out.

Script Writers Unite

I've toyed around with three different ideas for my next screenplay over the last few months. My friend Chuck Schierbeck invited me into this website where people try to write a 100-page script in the month of April. I'm gonna go for it.

If you want to join us, check out www.scriptfrenzy.org. Only a few days left to sign up!

My user name is joeboyd77 on the site.

Worth 20 minutes...

Got time to kill? Here's a great clip from Ken Robinson from the Ted Conference on creativity and education...

Easter 08

It was a good weekend at VCC. Easter is a strange time for me. It's exciting because so many people come together. There's lots of energy and happiness - more smiles and handshakes than a normal Sunday. There are fond memories from childhood and Easters past - like Christmas but with less build-up and credit card purchases. That's the good stuff.

On the weird side, it makes me wonder why we as disciples put so much focus and energy into one weekend over another. It makes the faith feel a little event-centered and that freaks me out if I think about it too long. The older I get, the more I force myself to embrace that life is almost always more of a "both/and" than an "either/or." Life is organic, natural, free-flowing, and relational. But life is also organizational, ritualistic, traditional and, at times, predictable. I don't necessarily drift toward the latter as easily as I do the former.

But leave it to me to rain on an Easter parade. It was a great weekend and I love being part of this new community. Thousands of people celebrated the resurrection. Hundreds of people formally crossed a line of faith and began their journey with Jesus. It was great. If you want to watch it on the web, click here.

Tooting my own Blog-horn

Yesterday I was watching election coverage on MSNBC and one of the guest analysists was the writer of a political blog. Under his name it said, "Innovator of the blogosphere. Blogging since 2002."

I had to check my old blog to make sure, but I've been at it since August of 2002. I was in my twenties when I started...I'm turning 35 in a few weeks.

Therefore, I hereby humbly accept the title of "Innovator of the Blogosphere."

This concludes blog post #589.

You're welcome, world. :)

Road to Emmaus, PA

When I was in high school I went on a week-long "mission trip" to Tijuana with Amor Ministries. We built a house for a family there who was living in a gutted out school bus. It was an eye-opening spiritual event for me as a 15 year old white suburban American kid. I'm sure that what my youth group did there changed the lives of the Mexican family we went to serve, but I remember feeling even then that the experience was somehow more for us than them. We went to serve and were served. We went show God's love but came home more aware of our need to receive it.

Since then I've probably gone on a half dozen short term mission trips with the same feelings everytime.

I was suprised that this recent road trip left me feeling much the same way. We went expecting to find some stories that we could share with our church to help them grow. Maybe that will happen, but ultimately we found our own story on the road to Emmaus. We transitioned from reporters to receivers. We went looking for the story and became the story. We went as filmmakers and came home as pilgrims. God showed up in the most mysterious and practical of ways. He literally directed our steps each day - not in a "Christain speak" way, but he flat told us what to do and we did it. One of the most beautfully terrifying weeks of my life.

I am torn as to how much to tell you. I don't want to spoil the videos that will start coming your way next week. Let's just say that my faith is at an all time high and I can't wait to share our story in the months to come.

One more thing...Happy Birthday to the best life-long traveling companion I could ever ask for. Love you, Deb.

Road Trip Wrapped

We returned this morning just before 5:00 a.m. Four full days of travel and meeting people all across Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. RIght now I don't have the energy or mental fortitude to get into the details, but I will go out on a limb and say that it was easily one of the top ten spiritual events of my life. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. God moved in a different and playful way with us.

We have around 60 hours of video footage to go through now. Bobby Frisch will be editing starting this weekend so that we can have a trailer for Easter at VCC. The task is only half finished...

More to come this week as I detox from the journey and the truth settles in my heart.

We are all travelers, all pilgrims, all wanderers...sometimes it takes going on a journey to remember the reality of the larger one.

Road Trip!

We are a few minutes away from leaving on a four-day adventure. Five of us are taking a road trip from Jerusalem, Ohio to Emmaus, Pennsylvania in an aging RV. This Easter at VCC we are launching a series called Road Trip about the journey of Christian discipleship. Dave will be kicking off the series with the story of the Road to Emmaus in Luke 24. Two of Jesus' disciples encounter him on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus after his death and resurrection. We are leaving today to see if Jesus still walks the road from Jerusalem (OH) to Emmaus (PA).

Along the way we will be picking up stories of faith, community and courage. We are banking on several "divine" appointments as we will pulling into strange towns and seeking to find the most interesting and compelling God-story wherever we happen to be. If you are the praying sort of person, we'd appreciate your prayers.

Luke 24:13-35, NIV:

"13Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16but they were kept from recognizing him.
17He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"

They stood still, their faces downcast. 18One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"

19"What things?" he asked.

"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."

25He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

28As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. 29But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.

30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

33They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34and saying, "It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon." 35Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread."

The Perfect Storm?

We are in the middle of our first official "blizzard warning" as Ohio citizens. It seems a little late in the year for the first blizzard, but there's about five inches outside my house with another five or so predicted tonight and tomorrow. The kids were let out of school early and the natives here are running in circles prediciting the end of the world tonight.

This weekend was supposed to be the VCC Elder's Retreat. We got most of today's meeting completed before knocking off a few hours early and we'll reschedule tomorrow's stuff for another day. I was somewhat looking forward to it tomorrow, but I'm also teaching this weekend, so an extra few hours of preparation won't hurt.

That's assuming anyone shows up. I'm a little concerned that the mixture of a blizzard and time change weekend could merge to create the perfect storm of nobody showing up this weekend. If you missed it (most people did) Congress passed a law moving Daylight Savings Time earlier a few weeks this year. We are springing ahead this Saturday night. Seems to have been lost in the local news here what with the white death falling from the sky and all.

The E-Word and our Metanarrative

I guess I am post-modern. I've never tried to be, but whenever I decide to google the things that I really believe in I end up on some obscure website reading about post-modernism, post-liberalism or post-Enlightenment thinking. Kinda makes you wonder what the "pre" to the "post" is. I mean, I guess this means that my entire worldview somehow rejects what was popular thinking when I entered the world making me "post-everything." A thousand years from now people like me probably won't be known as post-anything. Maybe we will be known as pre-narratives or pre-neotheocommunists or whatever. At any rate, the same thing they were saying about my generation twenty years ago is still true - all we really know for sure is that we don't know who we are yet.

Maybe I believe that story matters more than anything because I am a storyteller. Or maybe I became a storyteller because I believe that story matters more than anything. Either way, it probably doesn't matter. The problems I see associated with faith in America boil down to the fact that people refuse to believe that their faith-story is actually their metanarrative (I'd define this word as "the biggest story I live inside.")

For many people the biggest story that they live inside is their own story. We call these people all sorts of things from sociopaths to egomaniacs to shallow thinkers to go-getters to a-holes. But they all have one thing in common - they are the main character of their main story. This thinking is not only incompatible with the metanarrative of Jesus, but it is antithetical to it. It's more or less the opposite.

Then there are all the -isms of the world. There are those people who have broken out of thinking that their own life is their own big story, but have latched onto some popular (or reactionary) communal metanarrative. This can be as simple as believing that your biggest story is that of your home state or town, your family, your nation, your political views, your religious denomination, your sports team, your career, your race or class, etc.

We all live in overlapping stories. I am an American, for instance. Regardless of how I feel or think about America, I cannot really change the fact that I live within the reality of the story called America. My story is also that of an Ohioan and a transplanted Nevadan. I cannot divorce the story of Las Vegas from my story because the ten most formative years of my adult life were entwined within that story. I also have family and religious heritage - I'm an Appalachian Campbellite if you must know. (At times this has evoked pride, at times shame and at times indifference, but it has never not been one of my big stories.) When I was finally eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild there was a temptation to make that my metanarrative as is the case for many performers. Our metanarritive produces our primary self-observed identity: "I'm an actor." "I'm a quarterback." "I'm a good person."

Here's the point - none of these things are my true metanarrative - the biggest story that I align with, or more accurately, the biggest story that has made me who I am. (See Chesterton quote below.) My big story is not that I am an American, a caucasian, a pastor or a SAG member. My big story is that there is a living God who created all that is. He made us and we rejected him in order that we could live apart from him. Apart from him, though, our lives are meaningless, painful and shallow. My story is the story of a nation called Israel because my God selected that nation to reveal himself to the world. Again, through Israel, we rejected him. So he sent a real man named Jesus who called us from the world to follow him in order to be reunited with our God. He came to start a Kingdom ruled by Love that would never end. We rejected him too and killed him, but he was resurrected three days after he died. (I never said that my metanarrative was easy to believe.) His death also paid the price for our pattern of rejection and his resurrection set in motion a conspiracy to see evil conquered in the world through the power of love and life and hope. He then asked us to tell others the good news of our big story and to invite others into our story. This is evangelism to me. Inviting others to turn in all of their stories, including their biggest story, for the story of God and Jesus. It's kind of a ridiculous thing to ask of someone - to be willing to change their prime identity. But for those who are really ready for change (now I sound like a presidential candidate), for those who are ready for a new life, it really is good news.

" ... I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me." - GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I don't know, dog. It was just a'ight for me, dude.

Couldn't resist telling the world that my friend Charlie spent this morning with Randy Jackson.

Seriously, I brush my teeth a lot

For the second time in twelve months one of my teeth fell out of my mouth. This time it was more of a cap, but still. I've had two root canals in my life. One earlier this year (when the first tooth fell out mid-hamburger) and another one about four or five years ago. The one from a while back gave way this week and plopped right out of my mouth while chewing gum. Now there is a strange toothless hole in the back of my mouth. The dentist can't get me in until next week - this happened last weekend.

Since then I have been on a two-day planning retreat to plan the 08-09 teaching calendar for VCC, taught at midweek and performed a little improv gig. All while toothless. I'm finally old enough to just start losing body parts willy nilly.

Speaking of improv, I have become a fan of the TV show 10 Items or Less on TBS. It's an improvised comedy similar to The Office.

Tomorrow will be my first day in several weeks to just hang out with the family and relax....as much as one can relax with a huge divot where his tooth used to be.

E-Word and Second City

I should be finalizing preperations right now for what I'll be saying in a few hours at VCC. We are launching a new series on Evangelism, called "The E-Word." Our hope is to reclaim the word "Evangelism" from the fear, division and creepiness so often associated with it. I still haven't landed on exactly what stories to tell tonight. Thus, the writing of this blog to put off the decision a few more minutes.

After church tonight Debbie and I are going to see The Second City traveling show. I studied and worked with the Second City in Las Vegas. It's kinda like being a part of a fraternity, so tonight may be a little homecoming. I'm hoping someone I know is on the team, but I may be far enough out now that it will be a whole new crew.

Life is improvised. That's what I believe anyway. One great improv show can change the world.

Icelandic Kids Can Fly

Several people asked for a copy of my statement that I read at VCC this weekend. I've copied it below. We showed images from a music video by Sigur-Ros during the reading, which is also linked below.

Imagine a community of people who are different. They live as strangers and foreigners in a world that is not their home, They are on a journey, always moving toward a better place. They are not agreeable with mere survival or content with so-called “contentment.”

They hold no secrets. No closeted skeletons. No unspoken agenda. They readily admit what they once were. “Once we were nobodies,” they say with a knowing smile. “Once we had nothing.” They grin. “Once we were the worst of the worst, the poorest of the poor. Once we were vile, and ugly and conceited and desperate and dirty and foolish.” They stubbornly smile as they admit, “Once we were on the brink of death, but now…

You see, that’s their power. They can say “but now.” The fuel of their rebellion is not in their past so much as in the present reality of their future. “But now,” they say, “we live.” “But now,” they say, “we love.” But now we laugh. But now we give and sacrifice and serve and stand united. Once were not a people, but now we are God’s people. Once we were nobodies, but now we are a heavenly nation. Once we were stalled in the muck of the mess of our lives, but now we are a movement. We are a growing grassroots heart-burning movement of sold-out, unwavering, completely reborn and re-envisioned followers of a living God who prefers that we call him our Father. Under his love and power, we advance our revolutionary, world-wide conspiracy of kindness.

And our agenda is as simple to understand it is seemingly ridiculous to see fulfilled. Our agenda is love. Love reigning everywhere like benevolent dictator. Love in the back rooms and love in the boardrooms, love in the alleyways, by-ways and highways. Love in the city. Love in the country. Love in the suburbs. Love in the ghetto. Love in the barrio. Love where the black folks live, where the white folks live and where the brown folks live. Love that breaks through language and color and race and prejudice and ignorance. Love for the doctor and the drug dealer. Love for the prostitute and the police officer. Love for the jailor and the junkie, the pusher and the plumber, the under-appreciated, the over-worked and the under-paid. Love for all and all for love.

We are ragtag rebels. Rebelling against hate, war, prejudice. Rebelling against loneliness, boredom and meaninglessness. Jesus didn’t die so we could just come to church once a week sing a few songs and pretend to learn something. Jesus died to launch a revolution. He suffered and bled and died to see evil destroyed once and for all…and three days later he quit being dead to seal the deal and give us our marching orders.

Go, he said. Love as I have loved you. Love them all – every creature, every nation, every soul. We all can do our part, because we all can love. And when we love…we live.

To gig or not to gig...

Regarding my previous post, I've written 2 of 5 pages this week. I thought I'd knock it out on my day off Monday, but it didn't work out so well. I still have a few days to find the time to finish. I'm speaking at VCC for the next two weekends. Add in midweek and a few other teaching gigs this week and my brain is getting a little tired.

My agent here landed me a nice little gig as the spokesperson for Time Warner. It would mean regional tv spots, etc. I'm not sure that I'm going to do it though. It's straight to camera stuff and I wonder if some folks wouldn't be able to see me as acting vs. somehow endorsing a company. This is stuff I didn't have to worry about as much in LA, but several thousand people in Cincinnati are starting to recognize me as "The Vineyard guy" and I wonder if seeing me sell cable service would be confusing. I think this is going to be a lifelong struggle. If I was an accountant who became a pastor I could do people's taxes in my spare time and nobody would care or notice. Acting is such a very strange career, and it would seem especially strange as a second career for a church leader. Dropping out of the scene completely would feel like losing touch with the one thing that connects me to the local culture and economy. There are lots of things less visible that I'll get to do though, so I'm thinking I'll pass on this one. The worst part is telling your agent who works hard for you that you don't want to do a gig - that's how they pay the bills, so it sucks to say no to them.

It's been a long time since I've written about this stuff here...funny how a blog shows clearly the things a person is into at different stages of life.

Writing

The WGA strike is about to end. It's made me think more about writing. I'm a writer. I think I might even be a good writer. I've never been a professional writer though. I've had a few things published and a few screenplays in various stages of production, but those things feel like strange spurts of creativity vs. a lifestyle of writing.

I used to hang out some at different coffee shops in Hollywood. They are all full of writers. The same guys and gals were there everyday. Laptops open and typing away. Most of them are probably more "aspiring" than working, but they all have something that I lack as a writer: they write. Everyday. For hours.

I was calculating last night that if I had written five pages per week since moving to Ohio I would have completed one screenplay by now. It might not have been the best thing ever, but it would be done. I've always lacked that sort of discipline as a writer. This post is some mixture of confession and invitiation. I'm going to commit to write five pages per week for the rest of the year. For me, this is probably only a 1-2 hour/week commitment. It seems so easy, but historically it has been difficult for me. I'm not going to try to write the great american novel or screenplay or memoir. I'm just going to write. I may start all of those things and jump back and forth between them. I just want to start a new habit and see what emerges.

If you want to join me, let me know in the comment section. Maybe we can set up a facebook group to hold each other accountable. If some locals join in, maybe we could meet once a month to encourage each other. Just some thoughts...let me know if it strikes you as interesting. Hah. "Strikes" you. That sort of bookends this post, so I'll stop writing now so I can start writing elsewhere...

Prof. Banjo Boyd

I was invited to guest teach for two different Public Speaking classes today at the Art Institute of Cincinnati. It was fun to teach in that environment about storytelling, teaching, comedy, etc. They let me show a ten minute clip from one of my messages at The Vineyard. Both classes ended with some students doing some Improv with me. They all did very well considering they had never tried it before.

It was good on many levels - good to be in the real world and with aspiring artists in an academic setting. I also found it a worthy challenge to talk about preaching in a non-Christian environment. Also, there's nothing like showing a sermon to a room full of college students outside of the church setting to see what works with non-church people and what doesn't. The day was fascinating.

On a side note, everyone at work has taken to calling me Banjo. I'm not sure why really, but it is an organized and deliberate attempt to nickname me. It feels a little less than organic, but I will answer to it for the first week to see where it goes from there.

Out of Africa

The team is back from Nigeria! Here's the recap video we showed at VCC this weekend. Pretty cool stuff.

WGA News

Looks like the writer's strike may be over soon. This whole thing would have affected me a lot more if we were still in LA, but many of my friends have struggled to find work for the last three months.

It could mean new episodes of The Office in 4 or 5 weeks...SNL could be up quicker than that.

If you care, here's the LA Times story:

WGA News

Facebook meets Midweek

I've started a discussion group page on Facebook for the Vineyard Midweek class I'm leading. We can discuss the Dallas Willard article linked below there and post things for others to see. If you are a facebooker you can join the discussion by clicking here:

Facebook Group

How Smart was Jesus?

Here's the thing: those who follow Jesus are invited into a discipling relationship with him. Fundamentally, this is a student-teacher relationship. It's an apprenticeship. Jesus pushed the discipling relationship of his day to it's extreme. He said it was a slave-master relationship. To this day, anyone who follows Jesus enters a student-teacher, slave-master covenant.

Therefore, if I am a Christian (disciple) of Jesus, then he is my teacher and I am his student. As my teacher I trust that he is smart. That's part of what it means that he is worthy. I can't think of a reason why I should be Jesus' disciple if I don't think he is smarter than me or smarter than anyone else I could follow.

Maybe when Jesus walked the earth he didn't know as much about physics as Einstein. Maybe he limited his actual knowledge to cultural norms. I'm fine with that. But I find it hard to believe that he wasn't the smartest person who ever lived. I think it is hard for modern people to see anyone from antiquity as intelligent. They didn't have the internet or PBS or MIT. Maybe they had less access to data and accumulated knowledge than we do, but does that make us more intelligent?

I think it is hard to follow Jesus and still believe that someone else is smarter than him. I'm teaching a class at Vineyard midweek on discipleship for a few hundred folks. In a pre-survey, 31% of the attendees checked that they do not believe that Jesus was the smartest person who ever lived. 98% of them labeled themselves as followers of Jesus. I don't mean to come down on anyone, but I wonder if this isn't key to our discontent as disciples. (Over 61% also said that they felt something was missing in their faith.)

Looking back on it, I might have phrased the question a bit differently, but it has given me a lot to think about. I wasn't trying to trick anyone. I'm assuming most people get hung up on the fact that Jesus, while he was on earth, may not have known the atomic weight of Barium, but our high school physics teacher did. So, how could we Jesus is smarter than him? Yet, I'm pretty sure Jesus is smarter than Mr. Wilke when I compare the two in my head.

I'm not sure I have all this thought out yet, but I think there is something to it.

If you want to think more about this, read this short essay by Dallas Willard:

Who is Your Teacher?

Forever

Sandy Maudlin is a new friend of mine who is also part of The Vineyard. She's an artist - a very good one in my opinion. We found each other here on the blogosphere before meeting in person.

I rather shamelessly "offered" to host one of her paintings in my office until it sells. She was kind enough to loan me this one:



It is called "Forever." I'm kind of like a foster family until it finds a real home. If you're in the market for a piece of art, check out her blog at www.sandymaudlin.blogspot.com. If you want to buy Forever, just let me have for a few weeks before taking it away :)

Subjectively Honest

Some powerful things happened all weekend at the Vineyard. God seemed to "show up" in a different way. It seemed like lots of people were open to God. There was a good heaviness in the room at each Celebration.

So much of what I do at VCC is totally subjective. I probably get asked over 100 times each weekend, "How'd you do?" It's a more difficult and loaded question to answer that you might think. I really never know how to answer. I always do my best, but who knows what that means? For every ten people that say something nice, someone will e-mail something very negative. (In my first two months here I was called an anti-Christ with an agenda to destroy the church and a demonized egomaniac, but others have thrown around similarly ridiculous comments on the positive side.) Like I said, it's all way too subjective. It's forced me into apathy in terms of any performance language surrounding my teachings. I can't care too much if other people (or I) think I did a "good job." As a teacher my hope is that people learn, and in learning that they are moved to action. That's the only way to know if I'm doing a "good job." My experience has shown that it takes a few years to see if a teacher is really impacting a community.

So if you ask, "How'd it go?" and I seem disconnected or apathetic, that's why. It's a hard question to answer and it makes me uncomfortable on about twelve different levels.

Jesus dealt with this stuff. He was called a demon and a prophet - a trouble maker and the promised King. I'm not saying I'm like Jesus, but I do follow him. Maybe when your master is a polarizing figure, you end up that way yourself. Left to my own I'm very content to not make any waves, but Jesus followers always stir things up...maybe it's part of our cross to bear.

These are the things about my work here that make me uncomfortable. I hesitate to even write about it here, but it is a constant theme in my life and hard to ignore. One of the things I loved in my time away for full-time vocational ministry was not having to deal with these issues on a daily basis.

That was a lot of me talking about me to try to say it's not about me.

This brings us back to Gideon, whom we studied this weekend. I told 2/3 of his story, but omitted the ending found in Judges 8. It was a struggle to leave out the end of his story, but there simply wasn't time. His story is a much happier one without his final chapter. Gideon leads the people of Israel back to God. The people follow him for many decades and receive God's blessing. At the end, the people come to Gideon and ask him to be King. He gives them the perfect answer when he declines their offer and tells them that God alone is their King. Then he makes a huge mistake.

Gideon, in lieu of kingship, asks the people to give him their gold earrings to make a memorial for his battles and leadership. The people quickly comply and they make an ephod out of gold. (As I understand it, an ephod is some mixture of armor, underwear and a girdle - sounds very uncomfortable.) The people decide to worship Gideon's Ephod and it becomes a snare (trap) for the nation. It leads them back into idol worship and away from Yahweh. The second that Gideon dies, the people prostitute themselves to the Baals, the fake gods. It seems to be clear that their journey away from God started when they worshipped the ephod. Gideon made the best and worst decision of his life in one moment. He let God be King, but gave the people something shiny that they could worship apart from God.

Maybe my previous personal ramblings connect here. It is easy for people to see another person's gift (contribution to the body) as just another shiny thing to worship. Most church leaders are not so bold as to try to take God's role as King, though some are. Most leaders are content with just a little of God's glory, not all of it. "Just a few earrings melted into a golden girdle to remember me by." Forging just a small token of my accomplishment, my "good job," can't hurt anybody, right?

Yes, it can. This is the problem. Perhaps the greatest and most counter-intuitive task of a leader within the Kingdom of God is to reject the earrings. To turn down the mini-monuments. Truth is, if the gift is really God's anyway, who am I to worry if you dislike the gift or the person entrusted with it? Who am I to accept the glory if you like the gift?

It's all about being faithful. Let's pray for one another and build each other up as God builds his church using us as Living Stones to build his eternal temple with our lives.

What it Really Means to Follow Jesus

Let's just call it out.

Christianity is more than a religion. More than a nice option. More than a belief system. More than a series of events and meetings. More than some spirtiual legal transaction between me and God.

Following Jesus used to be hardcore. Kinda' all or nothin. No half-hearted fans allowed. Jesus spent most of his life attracting crowds and then running them away. Relatively few actually followed him. He called very few who really knew him as their Master. He had the twelve, but even one of them turned out to be just a crowd member - a turncoat ready to flip flop for thirty coins.

Even after his resurrection and appearances only 120 actually believed...and that counts his mom and brothers. It aint easy to follow Jesus. It's hard. It's the kind of thing that leads to a gnarly death upside down on a cross or a lifelong banishment to some critter-filled island. It should be no surprise to us. This is the guy who said, "If you want to follow me, pick up a cross." Today he might have told us to strap into an electric chair. Joining the Jesus Club is a death wish. A true follower ends up dying to everything he once loved and valued. And death isn't easy. It hurts. A lot.

But then there's the trade-offs. Though we die, we live. We are revolutionary zombies on a secret mission from God. The undead who have died but cannot be exterminated. Our death reeks of life to the dying. We are Neo. We flip the Matrix upside down and tell the world that they are dead. We wear grace and life like a letterman jacket through the high school cafeteria. They won't admit it readily, but they want what we got.

I don't believe in just being a good person. I don't believe in just going to church. I don't believe that simple religion and mindless morality are the hope the world. I believe in Jesus. And I follow HIm...even when it sucks....even when it means picking up a cross and extending my left hand for the first nail to pierce my wrist. I don't lead, I follow. I give up. I need help. I do what he says because I'm out of ideas and out of options. Like Peter I say, "I'm with you because I got nowhere else to go."

Just thought I'd rant for a minute.

I'm teaching about this over the next four Wedneday nights in the main auditorium at The Vineyard. If you're ready to die and quit playing the cultural christianity game, come check it out.

7 pm. Four Weeks. Starting Jan 30.

What It Really Means to Follow Jesus.

Grace Leftovers

Legalism creates a mentality of scarcity. Grace creates leftovers.

This weekend at VCC I taught from two Biblical narratives that seem connected to me - John 6 and the book of Ruth. In John, Jesus feeds the 5,000 (something they didn't necessarily deserve). The result of this act of grace is that everyone eats and lots of food is left over. In Ruth 2, Boaz calls Ruth over to have what could have been her first real meal in months. He has no legal, or even ethical, responsibility to do this. He's fulfilled the law by allowing her to glean in his field. He goes way beyond the law and gives her more food that she can eat. Once again, grace begets leftovers. Back to John 6.

The crowds find Jesus the next morning and ask to eat again. He responds with anger and a controversial teaching ("Eat my flesh. Drink my Blood.") He offers the Bread of Life that comes only by feasting on him. The crowds leave confused and only the twelve are left. He says that leftover food spoils, but evidently, left over Jesus does not spoil. Somewhere in all of this lies the depth of the eucharistic lifestyle. We feast on Jesus, whom Spurgeon once called Our Glorious Boaz. We gorge ourselves on God only to find that there's way more of Him to go around than we ever imagined. Experiencing grace creates a leftover ethos. What we commonly call evangelism may rightly flow from this too. The beggar who finds bread that never ends would logically share the excess with his beggar friends. Especially once the beggar learns, by feasting with constant leftovers, that scarcity is a myth in his new reality. We have no reason to horde God's love because it never ceases to be re-created and re-birthed in every moment. All we can really do is feast and invite others to share in the excess.

Ruth got much more than bread. She got Boaz. Then she had his babies. We get much more than fish and chips. We get Jesus, our Glorious Boaz, and with him we are invited to birth love and grace into the world.

John 6:10-13

Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. Jesus then took the (five) loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the (two) fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

Ruth 2:14

At mealtime Boaz said to Ruth, "Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar." When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over.

John 6:26-27

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

Off to Africa

Several of my friends from The Vineyard left a few hours ago for Nigeria. We've purchased a drilling rig to help provide jobs and clean drinking water there. You can follow thier progress at www.missionsvcc.blogspot.com.

The Road Not Taken

Sometimes when so much goes on in my life it becomes harder to know what to write about here. I'm prepping to talk about fearlessness and Ruth this weekend. I have been strangely drawn back to the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken. I suppose it is rather famous, and maybe you all know it already. I'm intrigued by poetry. I really like people who really like poetry. I don't know if I really like poetry or not.

Few poems actaully inspire me to think deeply, but this one does. I feel like this poem is the story of my life.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I'm Busy - And I have a question

This week was a whirlwind. Lots of meetings about lots of things on the horizon. I have 9 teaching times scheduled over the next 6 weeks. Vineyard Midweek starts Jan. 30 and I'll be teaching a four week class in the auditorium about discipleship and following Jesus. It's a little more prep heavy than normal, so I've been thinking about that. I'm also up the next two weeks for the Fearless series talking about Ruth and Gideon. Tomorrow I lead a session for the Growth and Healing leadership team retreat and I'm looking forward to getting to know them a little better.

I've been sucked into the election coverage in my spare time. I have never been very political, at least not as "being political" is traditionally defined, but I find election years interesting in a reality-show kind of way. I told someone earlier this week that presidential elections are kind of like American Idol, except that people generally don't vote for presidents the way they do for Idol. I wasn't trying to make any statement, but it felt like I was in the moment. I find the whole process interesting and still rather confusing. If anyone can explain what a delegate really is and how in the world entire states (Michigan, Florida) can be stripped of their delegates for moving their primaries a month earlier, I'd love to hear that. While you are explaining it let me know why the states that lost their delegates are still the states that the most highly contested now - thanks.

I'm going to go read Ruth now and wait for someone smarter than me to read this and explain the election process. I know you're out there.

New Year Maniac

I generally have a huge manic burst of energy at the beginning of a new year. Sometimes I even write down personal goals or construct some brilliant essay that will change the world. This year has been a little different. I've felt spurts of excitement and mania, but nothing like I'd have over the last five years. I think it might be because I have a real job. Five years of freelancing and piecing together a living does things to a person. When I was in LA, and my last year or two in Vegas, the new year meant that people might be looking for somebody like me to hire for their project. January was a time to get new headshots, to send out hundreds of e-mails reminding every producer, casting agent and director you know that you still exist, showing up at your agent's office to be visible, enrolling in the next session of acting classes to network and improve, working out to lose the extra five pounds, and all the new year auditions for commercials and tv.

Maybe it was the burden of marketing a product that raised my energy... it's an even stranger burden when you are your own product. There were parts I loved and parts I hated. Last year I sent out 300 e-mails - 20 people e-mailed back to let me know that I was bothering them and to never email again. One emailed back with an audition. One emailed back with a job. The thing I loved about that life was the thing I hated about that life - every single day was an adventure - unknown - anything good or bad could happen at any moment. Every phone call could change my life. It was hard on me as a husband and father - hard to not really know if I could sustain a living for my family. But it was intoxicating as an adventurer. I miss it a lot. And I don't miss it at all.

There is plenty of adventure here after all. It's just largely pre-planned adventure. More or less I can tell you what adventurous things I'll be doing next week, next month or next year. Sure, there will always be the unexpected, but the unexpected isn't an hourly reality. There's something to having a budget and a paycheck that is peaceful. Something to having meetings on my calendar for three months from now that makes my life feel safe adn grounded. I love it. And I don't love it.

The grass is always greener is a true and false statement. The grass is greener here - and there. Some people are wired to immediately desire what they don't have. That's probably a sin. Envy maybe. I've come to believe that envy is my root sin. (This from a study of the enneagram - I'm a "4" if you know what that means.) I'm so bad that I can even envy myself. Chew on that one.

I trust that a redeemed envious person becomes a peaceful content person. I've seen it slowly happen through my life. I used to envy my trash man because he knew everyday if he did his job well or not. I also envied the president for his influence, the barkeep for her community, the farmer for his simplicty, the martyr for his story. It never ends. Now I don't do that as much as I used to. Maybe this year will be the year when envy fully gives way to a life simultaneoulsy full of adventure and contentment. Maybe those two things aren't opposites as I have always believed, but two sides of the gospel coin.

I'd better go and pre-plan some adventure now...I'm teaching on Ruth and Gideon in a few weeks and maybe they'll teach me all of this stuff if I just listen to their stories....and all of sudden I feel like I might want to write that essay to change the world...

30 Days Until Lost Returns

Looks like they squeezed in about 8 new episodes of Lost before the WGA strike. I just saw the ads for the new season while watching football. In the future Jack has a beard. Because once you leave a primitive deserted island it only makes sense to grow a beard upon returning to civilization. I mean, that's the way Tom Hanks did it in Castaway...and if Survivor has taught us anything, it's that you do not grow a beard in the wilderness...you wait until you come back for the live finale.

Since my first blog of the year is nonsensical at best I will leave you with this thought. Future Jack looks like Kevin Rains, therefore Future Jack must become an urban monk/body shop owner.
Future Kate does not have a beard and looks exactly like actress Evangeline Lily. Therefore, using logic, the future will belong to beautiful actresses protraying bearded mechanic monks. Duh.

Comics.

Lots of people call me a comic. I'm not sure if I am. I'm certainly not a stand-up comedian...I can count on one hand the straight stand-up gigs I've had. I might have been good at stand-up if I had given it a serious run, but stand-ups have a strange neurosis that I've never been entirely ready to embrace. They are generally the most depressing people in the world. I might have fit in too well and gone over the deep end. I drifted toward improv vs. stand-up. Improvisers are usually a little more happy - at least they work well with others and laugh at each other more.

Most people don't care to know the difference in an improviser and a stand-up comedian. People under fifty years old often say that I remind them of Ray Romano. I think I might look like him a bit, but it's probably more of my delivery that reminds them of him. I take it as a compliment.



Older people often say that I remind them of Bob Newhart. We don't look alike. So I take that as a huge compliment. I've decided that he is my favorite comic of all time. People ask who my favorite comic is all the time, so I had to pick someone. He's a minimalist. He says the least amount possible to get the most laughs. His classic phone bits are my favorite, because generally he makes himself the straight man to the funny person on the other end of the line. He lets your imagination deliver the silent punchline. He trusts his audience to think funny...risky and revolutionary.

I'm going to work on the minimalist thing more as a storyteller. We'll see what happens. Here's one of Newhart's earliest bits where he considers what Abe Lincoln's press agent would be like. I think it was ahead of its time...

Merry Christmas

I'm waiting on my kids to fall asleep so I can bring their presents into the living room. It's a very "hands on" Christmas this year. Eli is getting a real workbench for the basement complete with real tools and a few things that could permanently injure him, like a hand saw and a starter drill. His Uncle Phaff constructed the bench and shipped it up from Indiana last week. Aidan is getting a working art easel and some heelies...so he will likely injure himself as well.

We did our first Donut outreach at The Vineyard tonight. For eight years the church has taken dozens of Krispy Kremes to people who have to work on Christmas Eve. We went to the McDonald's and Blockbuster by our house. They were both much more excited than I expected. The girl at Blockbuster gave Eli and Aidan big hugs and seemed genuinely thankful. Then we came home and I spilled coffee on our new couch. That brings us all up to date with me sitting here waiting for my kids to fall asleep.

For all the readers near and fear - from Vegas to So-Cal to the Midwest....and all you others everywhere you've ended up, have a happy and healthy Christmas. Be just sentimental enough to look forward to the day when this Christmas will be a distant, hopefuly happy, memory. And for you fellow rebel pilgrims, don't forget that this day is our D-Day, our Normandy - when the beachhead of the divine conspiracy was intially established in the DNA of an infant human being. That day commenced the battle of battles to emancipate the captives and destroy all evil at work in the world. Here's to another year of the Kingdom of Love forcefully advancing.

Gig.

I booked my first professional acting gig here in Cincinnati. I did a voice over today for a new video game. I'm not sure of the name yet, but it's an Iraqi war game. I played two different roles - a younger southern solder and an older major. I haven't done a lot of v.o. work and I had a blast doing it. The production company for the game is based in NYC and they normally book talent there, but this time they decided to lay down the audio here in Cincy. Pretty cool.

Bruce is going well. It's hard to believe that we close tomorrow night. A three-day run is about as short as they come.

The kids have 16 days off school starting tomorrow! I'm taking about five off myself after this weekend. It should be a welcome break.

And oh, yeah...Broomball Rocks!

Opening Night

A Cat Named Bruce opens tonight. It feels like a legit opening night...when you are so tired from rehearsing that you can't imagine going on in a few hours. I'm feeling especially blessed this week to be able to have a job that allows me to do most all of the things that I enjoy. Brad Wise and I conceived this play hoping to simply bring some joy and laughter to people., embedded in a very simple message. I think it accomplishes that. Any major collaborative creative effort evokes strong emotion in me. I can remember trying to explain to some of my castmates back in Las Vegas that our somewhat campy, casino-based improv show was actually a spiritual exercise because it demanded honest community and continual creativity. Those things mirror the Trinitarian Creator so closely that you can't help but sense the presense of God in a situation that is tapping into creativity and honest community simultaneously. I felt the same reality with Bruce at dress rehearsal last night. Hopefuly those who come will also be brought into the dance and sense what GK Chesterton claims is God's greatest and most fundamental attribute - his mirth.

Afterall, plays are called "plays" for a reason. If adults played more - authentically pretended - fought more dragons, saved more damsels, visited strange worlds and invented new creatures...if we all honestly embraced the awkward and beautiful creator child inside, maybe we would start to understand a Creator Father who invents aardvarks, zebras and human beings...a God who reproduces sunsets, ocean tides and baby ants....a God who likes colorful fish in the darkest ocean and monochloral planets flying around a magically suspended fireball in perfect eliptical orbit.

Or, as Chesterton puts it:

"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." -Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton

The Week of Bruce

Some teaser videos below. For you locals, showtimes are this Thu, Fri and Sat at The Vineyard. More info at www.acatnamedbruce.com.

Christmas Picture

Look at our cute kids here so I don't have to send you a Christmas Card that would look exactly the same, only made out of paper instead of your computer screen.

Alma matters

I visited the old alma mater on Price HIll today for the first time in a decade or so. I saw more familiar faces than I expected and had a very enjoyable lunch with Dr. Weatherly at the new Skyline. (The old Skyline in Price Hill was torn down...very sad. It was the first one ever.) I ran into my old friend Robb Faust in the bookstore...where he's been for the last 13 years now. Another professor (Dr. Shannon) was also at Skyline. It was a sentimental and rather therapeutic afternoon.

Talking with Weatherly made me wish that I could have known the right questions to ask him 15 years ago when I was studying under him. I left struggling with the irony that, for most any profession, we really need the education more after we start working in our field than before we start. I'm wired to learn things much better once I see that I need to learn them. It took me a few years of trial and error after college to be broken enough to want to learn the things that people were probably trying to teach me in college. I wonder if most everyone goes through that.

After the lunch I drove the 1.2 miles to the Garfield Park area of downtown Cincinnati for a voiceover audition. Then back to finish some loose ends at church. Somehow the last five hours have been a miniaturized version of my life story...without the good weather.

Yikes.

Got busy...what with Bruce coming and all. Tis the season to work 14 hours a day, I guess. It's all good though. The rehearsals have been a blast and I'm enjoying getting to know all my castmates better. I actually have a few commercial auditions tomorrow as well. I'm feeling my thespian oats.

There are some promo videos for A Cat Named Bruce at the website - click below to check them out.

Just another magi monday...

I spent the last few weeks reading in the neighborhood of 500 pages on the Magi from different scholars and commentators. I found Michael Molnar's book The Star of Bethlehem: The Legend of the Magi very interesting. I'd have to say that "interesting" is the best word to describe what I learned about the Matthew Magi event. Interesting stuff for someone like me - a closeted science geek and an outed history and theology geek. The problem is that sometimes the interesting things of life do not always translate to practical help for the masses.

My problem this week as I prepared to teach was to allow these interesting facts and theories about stars, astrology, Hebrew midrashic tradition, Roman politics and ancient customs to eventually evaporate away in light of the story itself. Matthew didn't set about to write a science book, and though I believe Matthew to be a competent historian, he wasn't trying to give a detailed history of the Magi event, per se. He actuallly seems to take the opposite approach, seeing value in clothing them in mystery and intrigue. He states plainly his plan in the first verse of his book- to tell the story of Jesus, as the son of Abraham and the son of David. (And, as he shows us in time, the son of God.)

There are, no doubt, shadows of the Moses and Balaam stories in the Old Testament woven into the account of the Magi. I believe that to the first century Hebrew mind these references would have been easier for them to see, and therefore, easier for them to interpret. I avoided them altogether in my weekend message for fear that opening the subject in such a constrained time limit might only confuse people. The Moses parallels are the most obvious, primarily centering on the parallels between Herod and Pharaoh. Matthew connects Herod's infanticide (a Moses parallel) with the holy family's flight to Egypt and their return. It all seems to point to God's redeeming his people again as he did with Moses. We will learn as the story progresses in Matthew that this redemption is actually one of eschatological significance - the beginning of the final redemption for all who would follow Jesus. So, if you want, he's not just the new Abraham and David, but the new Moses as well.

Interesting for me, I guess. But I still think the main idea surrounds the fact that strange Gentile astrologers find the Messiah and worship him before God's people do. There's something big to that. It's also a highly political story that sets up the central political conflict between Messiah Jesus and his Kingdom and Herod (and all he represents) and his kingdom. They tried to kill him from day one, until he finally allowed them to have their wish. Then he died. Then he won.

On a completely different note, I just heard that the Cat Named Bruce website is now live at www.acatnamedbruce.com. Click the icon below to be magically transported there.

More snow pics

Snow!

As you can see in this picture, it snowed here today. School was canceled. (They never canceled school for two inches back in my day.) The kids were trying to build a snowman and sled in our flat backyard when I left for work this morning. The snow is novel and interesting, but it is starting to feel extra cold now. I'm that annoying guy who moves to a new place and can't stop talking about the weather. I tell myself every morning that I'm not going to mention how cold it is and then it's the first thing I say when I see someone. I'd be annoyed if I was my friend.

Mount Vernon and back again.

I had a great time going up to Mount Vernon, Ohio this weekend to speak at The Vineyard Knox County. My old friend Paul Chandler is a member there and suggested to the leadership that I come up to speak. There was such a great vibe at the church and it was great be with them. I left very energized and excited to be a part of what's going on with the Vineyard movement in Ohio.

I was able to drive through my hometown of Worthington on the way there. It's the first time that I have been to Columbus since we moved here. It was strange to realize how close we actually live, probably about 90 miles to the old neighborhood from my house.

I also happened to be in Columbus when Ohio State backed into the national championship game via the WVU and Missouri losses. God is good.

From Elephants to Cats

The Elephant Revolution will continue as I get ready for A Cat Named Bruce, our Chirstmas Comedy at VCC. It will be fun (and probably very needed) to be on stage as an actor vs. a teacher. The two can seem very similar, but are really worlds apart. The best part of acting is that you don't have to be yourself. The best part of teaching is that you have to be yourself. Being able to live in both worlds for my whole life has been a fun ebb and flow.

We are developing a website this week for Bruce and I'll post it here when it is up and running. Show dates are Dec. 20, 21, 22 at VCC.

Beware of Nutcrackers.

Good Times

We had a nice Thanksgiving with Deb's family and came home Friday just in time to do absolutely nothing. Generally, doing nothing is my favorite part of any holiday. Yesterday we hit the Home Depot and secured a Christmas Tree. It's a good looking humble six footer, though it has a bit of a lean forward and to the left. I'd say that there is a 22% chance we wake up to find it fallen in the middle of the living room before Christmas comes around.

I spoke at Eastside Christian Church this weekend and enjoyed my time there. We saw Bob and Joan Eisenbraun, some friends from Vegas who have settled here and go to the church there. Wendy and Susan Lewis, old friends of mine since I was a kid, also came over to hear me this morning. There has been a constant theme of reuniting with old friends since we moved here. It's fun in a surreal, out of body kind of way. Hard to explain.

My two week speaking "tour" continues next weekend. I'll be speaking up at The Vineyard Knox County in Mount Vernon, Ohio. I'm back up at VCC the following week teaching on the account of the Magi in Matthew. Throw in prep for the original Christmas comedy, A Cat Named Bruce, and I'll be a busy guy over the next three weeks.

Tis the Season, I guess.

Sneak Peak

I wrote an article for the current Issue of Vine News. Here's a sneak peak for you loyal RP readers:

There had to be that moment. There’s always that moment.

When my first son was born the moment happened about twelve hours later. My wife slept in the hospital bed and I held him. That was the moment.

When a child comes into your world – invades your world – the child brings chaos. There’s nothing overly sentimental about childbirth itself: the contractions, the race to the hospital, the paperwork, the screaming (from the paperwork), the nurses, the doctors, the needles, the screaming (of the mother), the pushing, the yelling and, finally, the screaming (of a baby).

Then comes the crying, the testing, the cleaning, the relatives! It’s not a quiet day. It’s a loud day. A painful day. A wonderfully, chaotic, my-life-is-never-going-to-be-the-same kind of day.

But there is always that moment. The moment when dad takes a survey of the room and concludes that the chaos is over. (Well, new dads believe it’s over. Us veterans have learned that the chaos is just taking a nap.) That first simple moment when mom and baby are both resting gives dad a window to attempt to embrace all that just happened. That moment when the relatives and friends have come and gone, leaving in their wake a sea of flowers and teddy bears and Baby’s R Us gift cards.

That simple, quiet moment. The moment you realize that this baby changes everything, and that everything deserves to be changed for the sake of this baby. Simple. Profound. Real.

My second son was born two days before the attacks of 9-11. I woke up that morning thinking about my new baby. I turned on the TV and everything changed again. That day was horrible for a nation. Horrible for all of us in some terribly communal way. My moment came that night. For a few seconds that evening I was blessed to forget about the death, the carnage, the violence. I held in my arms a two-day old fresh start. A clean slate. A cosmic do-over called a baby. On the most hopeless of nights for my homeland, I held hope in my arms and watched him sleep. On a day of death, I held the hope of life.

Sometimes hope is simple. We all want hope. An election year is emerging, which means that by this time next year we will have had more than our fill of the constant promises of professional hope peddlers. People, mostly good intentioned people, promising us that their ideas, their experiences, their leadership can give our nation a new birth into a living hope.

Then there’s the loud and constant professional hope peddlers who come around every four minutes vs. every four years. They live in your radio, your TV, and your computer. They litter the highway with billboards and plaster the Sunday newspaper. They are everywhere. Nothing says hope like a Big Mac, or a plasma TV, or a LEGO Adventure Set that can build a working, to scale, Space Shuttle. The peddlers want us to know that we can buy hope. They also want us to know that if we simply can’t afford hope this year, we can apply for the HopeCard Plus and pay off our hope with a 21% APR. We can purchase a new birth into a living hope…can’t we?

No. We can’t. That’s why there is education. So we can learn to be hopeful. Another class. Another book. Another degree. That ought to do it, right?

Strike three. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. The more you learn the more you see that nothing we know can give us new birth or living hope.

Alas, nothing we do can give us real hope.

That’s why we need a baby.

When terrorists ram into the foundations of our life, we need a baby.
When politicians can’t fix things, we need a baby.
When we have bought and mortgaged ourselves into hopelessness, we need a baby.
When we learn that there is no earthy hope, we need a baby.

Not just any baby. We need a heavenly baby. We need a baby from Heaven to save our earthly problems. We need Christmas. Not the “Christmas” that these hope peddlers push down our throats. That Christmas isn’t real. We need the Christmas that admits we are hopeless. The Christmas that admits we need a new birth because we’ve destroyed the lives that emerged from our first birth. We need a Christmas that gives us living hope. Living hope only comes from life – the life of a baby – a heavenly baby. The God Baby.

This year at The Vineyard we are determined to find that baby. We will be seeking him like ancient Magi. We will be running to him like stunned shepherds. But mostly, we will be admiring him. Treasuring him like his mother did. Holding him like Joseph did.

We will seek the baby until we find Him, or perhaps, we will seek Him until He finds us. When we find Him, we will not rest until we find that moment. That moment when the chaos dies and peace slips in the back door. That moment when the world falls asleep long enough to still our hearts. And as we reach for the baby, in that moment, we will see that it is not we who hold the baby, but the baby who holds us. It is not the baby who is weak. It is not the baby who needs. It’s me.

I am the one who needs to be born (again) – I need a new birth into a living hope.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope…” I Peter 1:3 (NIV)

This Christmas we will find a baby who gives birth to hope. Join us every weekend in December as we learn to worship this baby for saving our lives. Also, join us on the evenings of December 20, 21, 22 for the VCC original Christmas production, “A Cat Named Bruce” as we all journey from the chaos of Christmas to the simplicity of love’s advent.

This Christmas holds that moment. Don’t miss it.

My "babies" today (above).

Eastside, yo.

My friend Jonathan Wolfgang lives here in CIncinnati. We were in Las Vegas together, but he moved here a few years back to be the pastor of a church called Eastside Christian Church. We would often teach for each other in Vegas, and it appears to be a continuing trend. I'll be teaching this weekend over there if any of you eastsiders want to come hang out.

Before that there is turkey to be eaten and football to be watched. We'll be heading to Indiana to have Thanksgiving with Deb's family for the first time ever. That's happy news, but it will also be our first T-giving apart from our Las Vegas family in 13 years. That was quite a run.

Teach. Learn.

I spent the day reading and writing. That's what Fridays are supposed to be in my world. When your job is largely teaching, learning becomes an even more crucial activity. I've taken rather seriously the Pauline mandate to Timothy:

"In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry."

I would like to think that I have always been faithful to these words. I really have no right on my own to assume they apply directly to me, but I have felt as though they probably do since I was a kid. There have been seasons of my life that these words were easier or harder to contextualize. "Preaching the Word" (proclaiming Jesus?) is easier to figure out in a church (house church, mega church, recovery church, whatever) than it is, for instance, working in a Las Vegas comedy show, auditioning for a Mentos commmercial or interacting with Hollywood producers. I should confess that there were times when I probably did not "preach the word" in the latter examples. Sometimes because of fear, but normally because I had no real idea as to how to do it. I'd like to think that I was always "prepared" to teach though.

I think most teachers, educators, preachers, etc. spend too much time preparing their next teaching and not enough time preparing the teacher. In a spiritual context, this preparation could mainfest as prayer or meditation. It also must manifest as learning. The best teachers are compulsive teachers who were first compulsive learners. The best teachers are able to prepare for an assigment, but are also able to teach at the drop of a hat. Jesus seems to be that sort of Rabbi. So does Paul. I could be way off, but I see Paul coming into a room and just being ready to improvise, to interact, to discern the room, to preach the word. I love that Paul can teach at a synagouge and quote the Torah and within the hour be teaching in the streets of Athens quoting "their own poets." That's a teacher. Same message. Different words.

In the spirit of learning, I spent this afternoon at Caribou Coffee with GK Chesterton, Stanley Hauerwas and my new ESV Bible. The four of us had a good time, but Chesterton (below) stole the show. I'm reading his book The Everlasting Man (1925). HIs masterpiece, Orthodoxy, sincerely changed my life. I have to fight through 80 years of history and cross the Atlantic ocean to get to him, so I know that I can't always fully undersand him. I'll give him this, though. He's smart - and funny. Those are two things that I have (not so) secretly aspired to be my whole life. (Yes, this could be in itself a major problem for me, but we all have to admit these things from time to time.) I feel like the amateur thinker and hack comic that I am when I read him. I'm hoping a small measure of his GKishness rubs off as I finish the text.

This seems like a good time to announce that I have officially applied for grauduate work at the University of Dayton. I'll hear if I have been accepted in the coming weeks. The plan is to take the long road - a class or two each semester. Several professors there have studied under some of my influencers and I'm looking forward to wandering back into academia after a dozen years away. Part of why I haven't pursued more formal education is that I never felt ready to settle on a major. It seems like looking back I was running from a theology degree the whole time, so I'm just going to go for it.

So, here's to learning and to the sober reality that we can never think our way out of our problem. Here's to the grace to be allowed to know in part until we know fully and are fully known.

What is that?

It happened today as I was driving to work. Something fell from the sky. A white particle.

Snow. It's been a decade and a half or so since I have had to deal with snow.

Also, it gets cold here. I was really cold today. People form here say that it wasn't cold today, but they have been brainwashed by the cold agenda. Winter's coming.

Good thing my wife makes good soup.