Things are stirring up with Kim Jong Il.

Fascinating
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/548
Goes to our non-neutrality in regards to rationality and the effect of the Fall upon thinking patterns.

Bob, our lead pastor, has a great post on missional fellowship. A very profound comment was left there by Benjamin.

Yes mission is the organizing principle. I have always thought about it like this:

If we pursue friendship we can miss out on discipleship.
But if we pursue discipleship we will end up with the best kind of friendship.

If we pursue community we can miss out on a cause.
But if we pursue a cause we will end up with the best kind of community (cause-driven community).

If we pursue church we can miss out on Jesus.
But if we pursue Jesus we will end up with the best kind of church.

A rough up Chris is working on for various uses.

Logo? from Chris Johns on Vimeo.

Spoke to the 18-30 year college and career groups in Pennsylvania at an Arabic Christian Conference. Here is what I learned from them.

• Arabs are some of the most loving and social people I have ever met. They had a deep love for one another and I instantly felt a part of the family. Once you are in, you are in!
• They love to do relationship as they stayed up late each night in joyous fellowship.
• Several of them feel disenfranchised by the American Church and its “Israel is always right” belief. I heard stories of women who were in labor in sight of a hospital but stopped at a checkpoint 100 yards away and forced to give labor without medical aid. This saddened me.
• There are Arabs who are passionate Christ followers. I knew this, of course, but it was fascinating to tell a couple of people on the plane flying home where I had been as they said, “I didn’t know any Arabic people were Christians.” This saddened me that they are stereotyped so.
• “Figs are the center of the universe” haha…an inside joke they shared.

Thank you God for giving me the opportunity to be able to meet and minister with this great group of people.

Two unbelievable tools by Puritans Watson (Free) and Brooks ($4 at Monergism, can’t beat that).

We have misunderstood repentance and relegated its use to street corner preachers with megaphones and cardboard signs. As I have read the Puritans on this, I realize this mistaken jettison and how far we have come from a Biblical view of this spiritual action. We tend to live in the shadow of repentance, merely saying, “Yeah, Yeah, I’m sorry God, forgive me,” or living under the mountain of sin because we have for so long put off repentance that we turn to see an Everest that causes us such fear and trepidation that we fail to even to begin to scale it. In the coming days, I’ll be putting up some reflections on these Puritan works as God drops some knowledge and wisdom on me.

Good News. Repentance is not a human effort but a spiritual grace given by God. Acts 5: 31God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

• When is the last time you repented? Is it a daily action?
  
• Do you have any time specifically for repentance built into your acts of worship?

Heading out to speak to a group of  about 200 Arab and Palestinian Christians in their 20-30’s this week. Yes, there is such a thing though many  American Christians who are “United for Israel” often forget we too have brothers and sisters who are Arabic. God loves Israel and He EQUALLY loves Arabs and Palestinians. I remember a service at NorthWood where a Palestinian Pastor came over and Bob washed his feet in front of 2,000 people in our service and the man wept. He had just come from a conference where he was invited to speak where a “love offering” was taken to buy Israel a tank (talk about adulterating that word “love’). Finally in this act of foot washing, he said he didn’t feel disenfranchised by his own brothers and sisters in the West.

I believe every tongue, tribe, and nation are to worship God and the Holy Priesthood, Chosen Nation of the Church should foster this with anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord be they Egyptian, Iraqi, Palestinian or Jew.

I just returned from a Quest with Fellowship of the Sword. I have had many spiritual moments in my life but other than salvation, marriage day and birth of my children, nothing has come close to the experience I had there in the mountains of North Carolina. This isn’t some mamby-pampy retreat but an intense 5 day process with 18 other men. WOW. I highly encourage you to go. I am committed to their process and thus cannot tell you what I did because it would ruin it for you. I can tell that I learned to ABIDE!

I recently watched a debate between Driscoll and Chopra on the existence of Satan. My dislike of debates grew by watching this. Debates tend to run on a scorecard system. It is more about tit for tat, stinging zingers, and getting your own fans to say, “Here, here!” than changing someone’s opinion. My guess is that no Driscoll fans who believe in the personal existence of Satan switched to Chopra’s view nor the Chopra’s to Driscolls (which is orthodox and what I hold to by the way).

Dialogue seeks to understand before being understood. It takes more time and energy.

Day one. Put those same two guys in a room and tell them the first day they cannot make any points but only ask questions (and not barbed ones). The questions can be asked so the questioner can gain understanding and hear if the other person is consistent in their belief systems, methodology, etc.

Day two. Each asks more questions as they can begin to ask each other, “Here is where I see you might have a consistency problem or truth problem. How do you deal with that? Am I misconceiving your beliefs or is that an accurate statement of what you think and feel?”  Some of issues will go away when the other party says, “No, that is not what I mean.”

Day three is persuasion day where you show how your viewpoint provides solid answers for some of the questions raised in day one and two. And the listening party can ask you questions back.

Record it if you want, but not with glaring spotlights and an audience as we tend to instantly start posturing and trying to “scoreboard.” Perhaps in this type of dialogue, Chopra wouldn’t have walked out believing in a personal Satan but at least he would 1) have walked out with a fuller understanding of the position, 2)some areas where he needs to work on his worldview and belief systems to draw them to consistency and 3) more respect for Driscoll and vice avers.

An aside…I kept yelling at the computer monitor to Driscoll, “Talk about the FLESH and sin nature. Quit letting Chopra ascribe every act of sin to Satan!” Alas, I didn’t yell loud enough as Mark didn’t hear me.

Most of the time my theological radar is sweeping. I don’t mean to ever be perceived as hyper-critical in attitude, but Truth is Truth. I am not giving free passes to theology that counters the core issues of Biblical orthodox Christianity (particularly Trinity, Christology and atonement) for the sake of unity, which in the case of bad doctrine is a front for false unity. I am all for the dialogue. I am not fearful of dividing truth from falsity.

Every once in a while I think maybe I should reduce the ping factor of my theological radar but I always ultimately think, “Nope, what is to gain by that?” and this verse echoes through my head….

Test everything. Hold on to the good. I Thessalonians 5:21

RADAR UP

Have recently read two works that I am not the biggest fan of. The Shack because a zillion people asked me what I thought. I won’t be recommending it to anyone (and here.) Also, Wild at Heart for a deal I committed to and am being obedient to their process. The whole claim of “I am not an open theist” but “God is risk-taker” drives me nutzo. If you are omniscient there is no such thing as risk. Risk by definition implies that you don’t know an outcome. God knows every outcome, thus He cannot be a risk-taker. There are two books that would much better serve their purpose and prepare hearts for their event.

I love zinger quote such as one for The Shack…

Don’t miss this! If there’s a better book out there capturing god’s engaging nature and his ability to crawl into our darkest nightmare with his love, light and healing, I’ve not seen it. ” Author’s name withheld because this isn’t about him but the content.

THE BIBLE? How about start a seeker in John? Matthew, Luke, or Mark? (I know what he means, but still, I can think of about 300 better ones).

• John Owen’s The Death of Death and about 300 other Puritan ones.
• Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress
  
• John Piper’s The Pleasures of God or any other Piper book.
• CS Lewis’ Narnia Series (his parallels are more alluded and thus don’t lead one to perceive doctrine from it subconciously or consciously)
• My Kid’s Bible Story books for that matter, at least Jesus dies on the Cross in it to accept the penalty of due us for our sin.
• etc. etc. etc.

To all of you who were wondering about how this flowed, check it out. Thanks Chris. You rock for the edit. Grab the service order and notes here.

Ancient Colors: A Good Friday Service from Chris Johns on Vimeo.

We used a simple band setup. Rhodes patch, weird percussion as kit and acoustic/electric player only. Vibey. A simple one camera shoot just to document it since there was no Imag of live stuff needed. One of my favorite services I have ever designed because it tells a story multi-sensory. Got the idea off a snippet of a graphic in an old Bible Bookstore catalogue I got in the mail.

Yes, other churches have done it. No, it isn’t totally original. Still, it was one of the most powerful things we have ever done. Our Celebrate Recovery guys and gals stepped up to the plate in transparency and honesty and paved the way for an amazing response time. (Board mixed audio with no fixes. The video is great but in no means captures the atmosphere that was in the room.)

Cardboard Testimonies from Chris Johns on Vimeo.