Scott's N-Cites

Thankful

Life has been such a whirlwind lately that I didn't realize how long it's been since I blogged. A lot of good things are happening, and I have a lot to be thankful for. Eucharist means "thanksgiving" and I readily admit that God is the Source of everything good in my life. Here is a random list of things for which I'm grateful:

Great stories of what God is doing in peoples' lives
The PowerHouse family
The opportunity to pass baseball with Seth today
Taking a nap
Hearing my wife pray
Small successes in my new job
The ability and desire to run
A friend to run with
Hearing Shani sing
Dave sharing his recipe for BBQ ribs
Neil Cole and others who are blazing a trail in organic church ministry
Cub Scouts
BG Pee-Wee Baseball
BGSU Falcon Football and godly young men on the team like KB, John, Willie, etc.
Email conversations with my brother this week
Mission trips
Laughter

We worshiped at a larger, conventional church this morning and it was good to see my friend, who is the pastor. He is doing a great job there but the experience caused me to wonder why big churches work so hard to feel small and small churches work so hard to feel big. Kind of ironic, don't you think?

We had an outstanding Greenhouse conference this weekend, facilitated by Mike Lyon adn Jan Ostendorf. I pray that many new churches will be born as a long-term result of their ministry here. They said a lot of great things but the one that spoke most loudly to me was that the goal of organic/simple church is to lower the bar of how we "do" church (ie no professional musicians, actors, technicians, etc. to entertain you) and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple. The more professional churches have become with how they "do" Sunday mornings, the lower the quality of disciples (consumers) that are being produced. Good food for thought.

The other thing that spoke most loudly to me was the need to shift my focus from planting churches to making disciples. In other words, get back to the cellular level of life. As all of us are actively engaged in making disciples, new churches will develop naturally. I've tended to get the cart before the horse before so this was a very good word.

posted by Scott @ 10:54 PM