Sunday is Reformation Sunday and I am preparing a sermon to make sure my students have a grounded understanding about what it means.

My challenge though is that the church has this idea that it’s reformed but the reformists specifically used the word “reforming” when the idea of reformation came up.  I read the book “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell and the very beginning of the book talks about our need as today’s church to continually reform the church and “bind” and “loose” concepts that are culturally relevant.

This idea is really exotic to me and makes me wonder why the church has this “settled” feeling about it.  Why things are as “they should be” when there are so many people broken, hurt, marginalized, oppressed, physically rich but spiritually dead.  It’s not a new thing yet the church doesn’t seem to change it’s approaches and expects people to walk through the doors rather than meeting people where they are, in the streets, at the mall, airport, vet, grocery line or where ever it may be.  Simple acts of love go a long way.

Rants of the day….Goulet!

Oftentimes I have a hard time taking time to pray.  The more I think about it I rarely pray and I work in a church.  This upcoming Sunday I’m doing a sermon on Acts 2:1-11 so the bulk of my sermon is about Pentecost.  As I researched I realized that Ezekiel 36 & 37 the prophesy about Pentecost mentioned that it wouldn’t happen unless God was enquired of.

So, as I read it, God wanted the disciples to ask Him for the Holy Spirit.  In the 1st chapter of Acts the apostles are gathered together in prayer, then just before the Spirit descended upon the apostles they were gathered together and it really seems that they didn’t leave the room from the way it reads.

They were possibly up in the room for a few weeks, sitting together in prayer.

How in the world did they have the patience for it?  I have a hard time sitting for 10 minutes to pray and these guys were there for many, many days.

This led me to my second thought:  This lack of prayer in society may be why there is a lack of miracles and people seeing God at work in today’s world.

Third thought:  I’m going to pray more…care to join?

After doing a little research for a sermon today I came across the number 40 in one the commentaries I was using.  It was fascinating to read how often that number pops up in scripture!

Jesus stayed forty days after his resurrection

Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days when God gave him the ten commandments.

Noah endured forty days of flood like rain.

Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days.

Israel endured forty years of exile.

There are about five more examples but these are the major ones.  Quite interesting I know!

My job gives me the fortune of picking out what I would love to do for a trip.  This upcoming year I get the chance to go to Florida, Lake Vermillion or to Montana on a train.  How sweet is my job?

The difficulty comes in trying to balance costs for transportation, leaders, program essentials, food, van and or bus rentals, gas and all the other things that go with planning a vacation though it’s for 60 people.  Oh the joy, but hey I get to go to some wickedly amazing places with some great kids and adults.

An observation I have made in the recent years is that most people are going away from having or at least using a front porch. At least in suburban areas they tend to focus more on the back porch than the front porch.

In the past, you wanted to be on the front porch to see which neighbors are going to happen by, but nowadays it’s all about the back porch, pool and how nice your fence is.

Most urban areas however continue to have the social structure on the front porch and the sense of neighborhood is drastically different.

How is our American dream of 4 kids, white picket fence and beautiful back yard affecting how we are able to love our neighbor? It’s pretty easy to become an island from society with how we live today and we have to become intentional about how we live.

If you’re from my generation or older you may remember walking down the block and knowing every neighbor.  This had much to do with a lack of knowledge of “the dangers” out there with sexual predators because many people in our generation didn’t talk about private affairs, but with the explosion of the internet, counseling and everybodies need to get all their problems out on the table, not a bad thing, it’s put us in quite a quagmire.

Our society in the ’60’s was all about the neighbor down the street helping out the family now they have to have a background check before we ever talk with them.  After much thought, reflection and study I have become very scared to bring up kids in this society with someone right around the corner who may cause them harm.

But what has this done on a negative side to our concept of community?  Today we want very few adults involved in our childs lives because of the dangers but what possible enrichments are our children missing out on?  From my own personal experience I was one raised by the village and it has made my worldview much wider in understanding people from a large scope of backgrounds, experiences and upbringings.

Our American mindset is focused only on our family, on our child on our life.  I really wonder how America would look if we had more communities in which our children were safely, first and foremost, but raised by the village.

In some European countries when a student goes to college the whole extended family shares the burden of paying for it.  $50 a family so the burden of high priced education isn’t going to bury one person or keep a student from going to college.  This would be more difficult in America with such a large portion of students going on to college but think about it as it would be pretty sweet!

As I begin this blog I hope to unload the buckets of thoughts running through my noggin and vomit them upon this here world of net.  Much of my passion is understanding the importance of community from the family to larger scope of community and it’s range of influences upon us in our walk of life.  Your thoughts are greatly appreciated as well!

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