We’re Moving

The sign is up and the showings have begun. It’s official – the Thomas family is moving. For quite some time now Kelly and I have been wrestling with the idea of moving downtown to be closer to the epicenter of Deep Water. As we have thought and prayed the answer has always come back – yes, but not yet.

A couple weeks ago that all changed, we just felt a real peace about the move and that this was the time so we jumped on it. Our plan is to sell the house and get rid of our car and move into an apartment downtown. It’s a crazy decision but one we feel good about and are excited for.

So what do we do now? Well… we wait. Wait for the house to sell (not terribly likely between now and christmas but all things are possible) and wait for someone who wants to take over our car lease (although that’s not an absolute necessity. If you are the praying sort feel free to bring this up with the Father.

There are parts of this plan that are scary (what if we don’t find a good apartment, what if we really can’t survive in less space, what is life without a car is less practical than we thought…) but for the most part we are super excited. Excited because it’s something we feel like God wants us to do, excited because of the great opportunities for ministry this opens up, and to be honest, excited because it is a big change and we love change.

It’s scary but the fear makes it fun.

The Evil Hairs I Split

So with Halloween right around the corner I figure it’s time to confront what some might see (and might be right about it for all I know) as my hypocrisy on the subject of a couple of issues where the word evil could come up.

Magic vs Magic
Every day I walk to work past the wiccan bookstore. They do magic (actually they would probably spell it magick). I’m opposed to this. Not opposed to their right to practice but in a theological sense I think it’s evil and nothing I want anything to do with.

I read books like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and the Chroni(what)cles of Narnia. They are chock full of magic and I have no issue with this whatsoever. To me the difference is about supernatural vs natural magic.

My friends downstairs believe that by addressing their prayers or spells or other efforts to a deity (or spirt, or goddess or life force or tree or…) that that supernatural being with then intervene in the natural world on their behalf. This is about invoking a supernatural power other than God (which then I see as evil, I believe in a spiritual two party system, I know – I’m so old school).

Whereas the magic mentioned in HP, LOTR, and TCN is natural in nature. Sure maybe God built it into the world (as in TCN) but in the same way he built gravity and heat into our world. They are naturally occurring phenomena (as in HP where you are born wizard or muggle) and those who are stronger in it than others are thus because they have worked hard or made discoveries (like in athletic training or science) not because they have endeared an evil spiritual being into helping them. To me there is a difference. One is a world where the rules are different and the other is a an appeal to an evil being.

Halloween vs Scary Stories
I’m about to shock some of you. I don’t celebrate Halloween. Nope, not at all. Don’t even give out candy. Just close the door, turn off the lights, go downstairs, and hang out with my family. Why? Well the truth is I have better things to celebrate. To me halloween is a night that is about evil. It’s a celebration of evil characters and of bad character. It’s a night when, at least in the not to distant past, it was ok to go out and do jack ass stunts like keying cars, egging houses, and worse.

Some think this is an antiquated notion but I’m not so sure. For example when I was in Haiti a couple weeks ago I asked them if they ever hear the VooDoo drummers. They said only certain times of year and that the next time would be Halloween because thats one of their biggest days. I don’t feel any deep and personal need to share a celebration with those dudes.

I like scary stories. Steven King’s better stuff, some zombie movies, and stuff with enough of a supernatural edge to set you hair on end. Dean Koontz comes to mind and any number of Hollywood pics.

What’s the difference? Glorification. I think there is a line between acknowledging the evil in the world and struggle between it and good and the celebration of evil. I enjoy a story that brings out the reality of evil, even supernatural evil, in the world around us. To me there is something more real about what some would see as the unreality of that narrative than the typical “good guy/bad guy” story line.

But if the point is to full on enjoy and glorify evil I’m out. That’s why (besides boredom) I’m not into a lot of full on horror flicks because the evil guys become the heros. And that’s why I’m not into Halloween.

I know, I know, some of you will launch your arguments about how it’s really just about dressing up and having fun and not about being evil. If that’s where it’s at for you than great but I can’t see it that way. It’s just not a big enough deal for me to need to celebrate it. Maybe it’s because I’m nuts enough that I don;t have to save it up for halloween. If I take hankerin’ to put on a costume and eat candy in the middle of July I just go do it. Seriously, that’s what was going on that time you drove by and saw me in that cape covered in chocolate.

I’m done now.

The difference between the atonement and a venti mocha frappuccino

Let me start out by saying I’m a big Ed Stezer fan. I don’t know him but I have read him and heard him speak live. I have a friend who is friends with him but that’s neither here nor there. Point is despite the fact that I’m about to push back on something the guy said on Twitter this week I’m I glowing fan.

Earlier this week Ed sent out the following tweet: “If you can learn to order at Starbucks, you can learn theological language at church.” Now on the surface this seems like a very clever and therefore accurate statement but I’m not sure it’s true. As someone who tries to communicate theological truth to the theologically uninitiated on a regular basis I think this statement misses a key point.

Theological terms capture a truth that most unchurched (in the literal sense) people don’t understand or have a readily recognizable frame of reference for. Let’s take the atonement for example. How often do you think un-churched people use this term in their daily lives. How often do you think it’s used in other than theological conversations. What’s one word that people use all the time that you could insert in the place of “atonement” instead? See my point.

Starbucks on the other hand seems to me a bit different. One day my wife asked me to pick her up a drink at starbucks. The conversation went like this:

Me: What size do you want
She: Venti
Me: What is that?!?
She: Extra Large
Me: Oh

Here is the long and the short of it. Starbucks is, for the most part, renaming familiar ideas. Venti is just extra large. We all know what extra large is. Mocha is coffee or expresso with chocolate, nothing earth shattering here. We get it instantly because it’s not a new concept just a new name for it.

When we use theological language with the un-churched the issue is not that they just don’t understand the word it’s that they have not learned the concept behind it. There is no simple, one phrase (“It’s just and Extra Large”) that explains any theological term worth using. “The Fall” is not adequately explained by saying “it just means the world is messed up.”

A good theological term is packed with at last a paragraph or two of meaning. Which is precisely the reason it’s helpful to have them and much more difficult to truly understand them than Starbucks-ese.

The danger for those of us who teach theology in one form or another is to assume that people we serve only need to learn new terms for familiar concepts rather then radically new concepts and then terms that capture them.

I don’t think that’s where Ed was going but I have heard this argument enough times from enough people to want to throw in my rebuttal.

What do you think?

What’s on my mind

-I have still have so much to learn and even more to put into practice about good leadership.

-The one thing in ministry where I feel the most at home, excited, and effective is preaching (from preparation through delivery)

-Having the idea of a mentor is much easier than actually finding he right one.

-I miss youth camp.

-I miss inner city missions trips.

-I love adventure and don’t get enough of it in my life.

-I love a challenge but I hate failure.

-I need God.

- My new header picture rocks.

What United Should Have Done Differently

If you haven’t been following the story of Dave Carrol and how United Airlines broke his guitar you should check out the story here and then watch the hilarious videos here and here. Dave has over 5 million hits on theses videos and has received some significant news coverage all adding up to a heavily tarnished public image for United Airlines.

Many people have speculated about how United could have better handled this situation. Some say they should have a better claims system. True. Some say they should have offered to repair or replace the guitar immediately. True. Some say they should have been awake to the fact that the internet gives a potentially massive voice to folks who, up until lately, were nobodies and that creative types are are now more powerful than the rich. True.

But there is one major step that they could take that trumps all of those. It’s super easy, virtually free, and it eliminates any risk whatsoever of bad publicity from this sort of incident. Don’t break guitars. It’s that simple. I have traveled with guitars many times and while they require more more TLC than a brick they are not exactly fine china either, particularly when properly cased (note: dave’s guitar was in a case that was in yet another case). What if, rather then spending tones of money on a better claims department that could quickly and easily hand out thousands of dollars a day, they just stopped breaking guitars. They didn’t throw fragile stuff. They set it aside and then set it on top.

What guitars are you breaking? I knew of a preacher once who was super longwinded. He would cram 25 minutes worth of content in a 45 minute sermon. He knew he went to long. He knew he was loosing people. So he joked about it. He made light of it. He tried to mitigate the effects. He should have just preached shorter. Stop breaking guitars.

Stuff happens sometimes and we need to work hard to make it right but if you have the option to just not do it in the first place (and you probably have that option more often than you think) then don’t. Better to not do it then to do it poorly. Don’t expend tones of energy to fix it or lose buckets of credibility because you won’t address it. Just don’t break the guitar.

Here’s the question for you and me. In our lives/ministries/businesses are there places where we gaining a bad rep for not addressing or are we expanding excess time/money/energy responding to messes we have made? When you need to apologize do it sincerely and promptly. When you are in the wrong and need to make it right go over the top and do it well. But for the most part just stop breaking guitars.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into

I love to preach. Of all the things I do as a pastor that’s the one I think I couldn’t live without. It’s the one part I have a clear sense of calling (as in capital C, thunder and lighting, do this for the rest of your life, etc calling) as opposed to a sense of leading about. I look forward to it every week. I look forward to prep time and study and crafting the message.

This week though I’m a little daunted. I usually preach from the New Testament. Frankly I just like it more (yes, yes, I know that makes me a heretic). This summer I’ve gone Old Testament and it’s been great. Until this week.

This week we are looking at what is possibly the most disturbing story in all of scripture and it’s my task to present it in such a way that we see God’s truth for us to live out clearly in it. I am anxious (by my standards which is still pretty low key) about it. My mind has been wrestling with it for weeks now. I have consulted lots of commentaries and study resources. None of them have been particularly helpful. It’s a rather big task.

And I’m super, duper excited. I’m loving every perplexing moment of it. The fear makes it fun. And I’m stoked to share it with the community at Deep Water this Sunday. It’s going to be heavy and dark and there will be so many lose ends and I couldn’t be more excited. What an amazing book the Bible is and what an awesome gig to spend the week wrestling with it and then present it each Sunday.

I just don’t understand

There are may things in this life I just don’t understand like running and twitter and coffee and why they put rubber grips on the side of my deodorant container. How turbulent do they think the application process is anyway? I don’t understand why in Halifax it’s legal to park on the side of the road even if it is a clearly marked lane. And then there are more serious things like I don’t understand why, of all the folks that have walked by our prayer tent in the last 3 weeks, the NDP (you know, the “I’m ok you’re ok” party) have been the most dismissive and even contentious of what we are doing. I don’t understand how people can believe prosperity theology. There are a lot of things I just don’t understand.

There are a lot of things I don’t understand and so there are a lot of things I just don’t don’t have an opinion on. It drives some folks nuts but oh well. I remember visiting the Airport Christian Fellowship in Toronto back during it’s hay day in the late 90’s. When I got back people asked me “so is it legit or what.” My answer was usually “I don’t know.”

I understand their frustration. There was a time in my life when I thought it was my near sacred duty to have an opinion on pretty much everything and every one. I think it’s a pride thing. I still have lots of issues with pride but this is one are where I feel like the Lord has helped me to make real progress.

It’s ok to not know. It’s ok to not have a real opinion on a subject. It’s ok to say “I don’t really understand that person/policy/situation/activity and so I don’t know what I think about it.” And it’s ok to not work towards having one. Sure sometimes we need to be intentional about learning more and knowing more (for me prosperity theology would fit in this category) and formulating an opinion but sometimes it’s ok to say I don’t have an opinion about because I just don’t understand.

Vacation Recap

I’m back from vacation and hopefully back to posting more regularly. Here’s a recap of our recent family vacation.

We drove from Halifax to Caribou Maine to spend the night with my aunt and her boyfriend and my cousin Amber. I love Amber dearly. I “officially” don’t have a favorite cousin but if I did it would be Amber. My hope for her is that she loves Jesus, enjoys a meaningful career, and doesn’t end up marrying some douchebag. If you are a guy who loves Jesus, isn’t a douchebag, and like cute blondes let me know. Maybe I can arrange something.

From Caribou we headed up to by brother’s place in Athens Ontario. The drive, much like Canada, was great if you don’t count Quebec. My brother owns an awesome cafe in this sleepy little hamlet. The food is freaking glorious. I had a Southwest Chicken Fajita there that bordered on a religious experience. He does a fine business there but if he was in a place like Halifax there would be a line at the door all day. It was awesome to hang out with Luke and his family. Haven’t even laid eyes on them for 3 years and it’s been way longer since we had anything approaching a nice long visit. Got to know my niece and nephews for the first time. They are awesome, particularly Hannah. Little girls are super cool.

While we were there we went to Upper Canada Village (it’s a village set in 1860). The best part was when we went to milk the cows. There were three cows and at one point three muslim girls were milking the first one, a family of hassidic jews were milking the second, and an Amish family were milking the third. So awesome. I was talking to the father of the Amish family while we were waiting in line before hand. The conversation went like this:

AJ – Are you excited for this?
AF – Yes, are you?
AJ – Yea, super excited.
AF – Have you done this before?
AJ – Yea, many times.
AF – Did you grow up on a farm?
AJ – No but in a farming community so I spent plenty of time around cows. How about you?
AF – Oh yes, I’m a dairy farmer.
AJ – So (insert sarcastic smile here) this must be a very novel experience for you?
AF – Actually (insert wry smile here) we kind of enjoy watching the other people do it.

I can’t help but picture them holding it in until they get back to the buggy and then laughing their drably covered buts off at how stupid the rest of us looked trying to milk cows. The Amish may not have TV but they are not without great entertainment.

We then headed down to Pennsylvania to see Kelly’s folks. It was a good visit. Had a good visit with Gramma Blose in the nursing home. She is crotchety, cynical, and sarcastic so obviously she is my favorite and we get along great. We went to Knoble’s Amusement Resort. It was a cool experience for the boys. It was six million degrees out (actually it was down to 36 degrees not counting humidity by 4:30pm, who knows what the high was). The rest of the visit was fairly uneventful.

Maybe the weirdest thing about being in PA was to see just how “christian” that area is. You have to work hard to find a radio station that isn’t christian and even the local mainstream hip hop station plays some christian stuff. At Knoble’s every third t-shirt you saw was for a bible camp or had a scripture verse or a tacky slogan of the variety only something as detestable as the North American religious goods industry can produce. Felt weird and made me long for good old heathen Halifax. As much as I would love to see more and more people in Halifax become followers of Jesus I’m in it for the transformation not the t-shirts.

The drive home was long and Isaac puked a lot but I’ll spare you the details. Stopped at my parents, saw a huge black bear about 40 feet from their driveway. Our boys smell delicious to me so I wasn’t taking any chances with the bear. We got them inside ASAP.

See you soon with more bloggy goodness.

Sermon Prep Routine

My friend Tim over at Kinetic Leadership recently posted some details of his sermon prep routine and challenged us to do the same. Sounds like fun – here goes:

-For starters let me say that my brain works more like that of an artist than a craftsperson. That means a.) I work on my sermon when I’m feeling it and b.) my process has some regular components but I don’t intentionally follow a particular system and any component could be dropped, added, rearranged, or otherwise tweaked in any given week.

-My prep really starts when I plan out a sermon series. Every message is part of a series and I plan these several months in advance. Right now I’m planned through to Christmas. My record is a full year out though I’m not sure that’s the best approach. By the time I’m done planning a series I know what the text will be (I’m a textual/exegetical sort of fella) and what the big idea is.

-Next step is to sit down with my creative team a hash through the creative elements like video clips, visual illustrations, or response mechanisms.

-From the time a series is planned until I actually put my outline together thoughts are swirling through my head (for example Saturday night I laid awake in bed for about 45 min thinking about a series we are doing in November). I like to live with a message for a while before I preach it. If I have any great thoughts for how to explain or illustrate something I try to capture it somewhere, usually in the margins of my series overview sheet.

-Come the week of that message (I find it hard to complete a message if there is a Sunday between now and when I deliver it) I will print out the text with lots of margin space so I can mark it up, highlight it, and make notes. I read it and re-read it until I feel like I have a really good handle on it

-If I feel like I really don’t have a handle on some part of the text I will consult some commentaries. It really depends on how deep I am digging and how obvious the point of the text is.

-Next I take a legal pad and a pen and start writing something between random thoughts and an outline. Eventually I get stuck. Then I just start preaching it out loud off the top of my head and thoughts start to flow. I write them down on the pad. Sometime this goes back and forth several times.

-This is the part where some people start to think less of me. If I get really stuck. if the words just won’t come and my thoughts won’t congeal or I can’t wrap my head around an explanation I (are you ready for it?) take a nap. Yes, napping is occasionally part of my sermon prep. Actually I seldom get to the nap. I lay down, close my eyes, relax, and just as I’m about to drift off it will hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks destroying my nap but also my mental block and it’s back to work.

-Eventually I will have the rough skeleton of the message on paper so I fire up my computer and start to type up my final outline. Type, talk, type, talk, until it gets refined down to what I will actually take “into the pulpit” with me on Sunday morning. I take one slightly larger than half size sheet of outline with me clipped into my bible next to my passage.

-Then I practice preach it several times. I’d say on average 2-3 times. Sometimes only once, occasionally four or more. I’m at this point by Friday at the latest. Usually Wednesday or Thursday.

-Come Sunday morning I’ll head to the theatre and once I get the set-up crew on their way I’ll find an empty theatre and go in there to pray, get focused, and review my notes. Sometimes I just look them over sometimes I actually preach through them again.

-Normally this type of overview will include total number of hours spent a week in sermon prep. I have no idea how to calculate this. I’m always thinking about sermons. That’s my thing. Do I count that 45 min Saturday night I spent thinking about the November series? How about when I’m in the shower and an idea hits me? In one sense I don’t spend much time in sermon prep. A couple hours to pull together and refine the outline and a couple hours to run through it a few times. Usually in one afternoon. In another sense I spend weeks and weeks preparing one sermon. I’m like the crock pot of sermon prep. Throw some stuff in well in advance, check on it every once in a while and when it’s ready to serve just scoop it out, throw in a little salt and pepper and serve.

Prayer Tent pt 2

So we started the prayer tent last night and it went great. We (all 15 people who showed up!!!) met for a little training and orientation (thanks to my friend Kirk for some helpful ideas on that one) at the office and then we headed over to Grande Parade. We were set up and ready to go shortly before 11.

We talked to bunches of people and had the opportunity to pray with over 2 dozen people about issues as far ranging as the death of a family member, the success of a band, and my personal favorite, a chronic sweating problem. It was awesome to see.

Maybe even more awesome to see for me was so many Deepies pushing themselves past their fear and beyond what they are comfortable with. It was so exciting.

There are a few things we are going to tweak and a few peripherals we are going to try and get into place but all in all I think we planned and executed really well and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds for this unique ministry. It’s gonna be fun.