Honduras Again

Our second small team trip to Honduras is shaping up. There are now four of us committed to going. We're going for a week in late January. Steve G. is going again, and he'll be the leader. My two main business/ministry partners with the store, Darrin C. and Warren C., are going. I think we have our 5th guy, but we need to confirm with him.

We are carefully watching the price of the airfare. It came down $70 last week! We're praying for further reductions, but it's not too bad right now. It's very cheap to stay in Honduras--$15 per day takes care of 2 meals and a fairly nice place to sleep.

While there we plan to build 5 houses. This is all a part of our "Help for Honduras" ministry. If you know of someone who would like to build a house in honor or in memory of someone, please let me know. We only need $1200 to build a house. We'll get a nice dedication plaque made, and it will be prayfully and carefully hung on the wall of the new house.

He does what?

Seems kinda strange to me, but Ian McKellan, the actor who played Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings, rips pages out of Bibles when he stays in hotels. Why? Because he doesn't like what the pages say! He is a homosexual and rips out portions of Leviticus. You can read about it here.

It got me to thinking. Don't we all do this in various ways? Maybe we don't rip pages out of the book but we certainly act like portions of the Word do not exist.

What do you think?

Should be able to use this for a while...

After years of waiting on a list, my three sons and I finally received season tickets to the Colts game this year. It's worked out pretty well. Whoever goes pays good old dad for the tickets, and he is dutifully saving this money for the purchase of next year's tickets. Not a bad plan.

Since dad only works on Sunday mornings, and most of the games kick off at 1 p.m., he doesn't get many opportunities to attend the games. He could have attended last night's Colts vs. Patriots game, which turned out to be one of the best games ever. Instead of exercising this option (right, perhaps) he chose to allow his lovely wife and his loving son to attend. Dad is now working on lists of appropriate responses to his lovingkindness.

Hope

Here's a good quote about hope. It comes from a book I just finished, "Preaching from Memory to Hope," by Thomas Long. He is emphasizing the need to talk about the future and the realization of God's complete reign, when everything will be made right. This is what we should hope for. But...

As scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne has claimed, much of what counts for hope in the current social context is "in a negative form--as a desire that certain things not occur." I hope the stock market doesn't crash, I hope I don't go into a vegetative state and die in a nursing home, I hope we don't have another 9/11. This is finally a secular hope, a hope that the party will go on forever, which Kierkegaard recognized as the despair that doesn't even know it is despairing, the "sickness unto death." Thy kingdom come, they will be done?--Oh, I hope not.

Seems pretty true to me. What about you?

Prepare to Fight!

This week we consider Ephesians 6:10ff., which discusses the Armor of God. The most striking part of the passage, to me, is the revelation that unseen spiritual warfare is taking place all around us, for us, and about us.

What do you think about all that?

Family Matters

Soon we are going to make some very intentional moves to better serve our younger families. Through Life Group discussions, based on the recent sermons regarding families, we have had good feedback that reaches across all generations. The desire and the perception of need is broad based.

While we don't know exactly what this new move will look like, it is very exciting. We have presently a lot of very young families; more than we've ever had, I believe.

We need to serve young families, but Randy Harris makes a good and interesting point in God Work:

Most of you have become family to someone who is not your blood because of your relationship in the kingdom of God. For that other person that relationship has become more important than blood. And so these commitments to family are important but they're relative--the ultimate commitment is to the kingdom of God. One of the things I always say when I go into churches is this: If you're still asking the question, "What is this church doing for families," you better start asking the other question, too, "How are these families serving the kingdom of God?" Because the kingdom doesn't exist to serve families. Families exist to serve the kingdom. It is the kingdom that is absolute.

He makes a really good point, and it reaches far beyond serving families. The church serves it's members, but what we are really after is equipping our members to serve the world, thus participating in the missio dei -- the mission of God. Right?