Are We Yet Alive?

Here’s a great little interview with one of my new favorite thinkers Jonathan Merritt. For so long Christians have been presented with two options when it came to politics: the religious right or secular liberalism. Jonathan Merritt is articulating a third way with his last line on this interview:

“I care more about my theology than my politics.”

Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz opens in a few weeks, and is apparently being criticized pretty heavily by other Christian movie houses for being offensive.

Here’s a great article on Christian movies from the creator of Blue Like Jazz.

And if you haven’t seen the Blue Like Jazz trailer yet, here it is…

Everything we learn about God through Scripture and in Christ tells us that that he knows what it is like to change a diaper for the thirteenth time in the day, to see a report over which we have worked long and carefully gather dust on somebody’s desk for weeks and weeks, to find our teaching treated with scorn and indifference by children and youth to discover that the integrity and excellence of our work has been overlooked and the shoddy duplicity of another’s rewarded with a promotion.

From Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

As is now widely known, we are leaving Asbury this June to serve a church in Missouri.

Here are a few thoughts running through my head about leaving:

1. The process of leaving is way harder than I thought it would be (and I thought it would be really hard).
2. I have a strange mixture of sadness and excitement right now. It’s hard to know how to deal with those emotions.
3. I’ve known this move was coming for a few months and had to keep it secret. I’m glad it’s out in the open.
4. United Methodist ministry is likely to be a lifetime of building relationships and then saying goodbye. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.
5. We really believe God has led us to this new church, but it doesn’t make it easier.
6. One of the ways people have followed God’s will in history and in the Bible is by leaving what is comfortable and what they know in order to share the gospel in a new place with new people.
7. When we decided it was time to leave Asbury, we put our name up for an appointment in an itinerate system that could have led us in a number of different ways. That decision was probably the biggest act of trust in God I’ve ever experienced.
8. Asbury Church has been overwhelmingly generous and supportive of me throughout my time with the church. Their generosity has been shown in this decision, too. Thank you, Asbury.

“Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.”

from Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Jesus cares deeply about the lost, do we?

A short reminder from Penn Jillette