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.