Deep Thought

Sometimes it overwhelms me to think that there are so many other people in the world who are not me.

Easter at GCC: Viral Moments

It was an inspirational Easter weekend at GCC. This photo is a picture of about 1900 people raising and lowering as many glow sticks in our auditorium as Mark Beeson demonstrated what it could mean to the world if the Gospel went viral in today's lightning-fast, ultra-connected world.



The service was a departure from our usual as we continue to try to make the Arts and the audience intimate friends. We did this by bringing Mark and our vocalists right into the crowd on platforms that were located inches from the crowd. We also made the message tactile and participatory by playing a huge game of "SIMON" as four color groups repeated color patterns shown on a video of sampled tones from the music of Daft Punk. The audience roared with delight.



If you missed it, and even if you didn't, you MUST check out last weekend's service.

Triple-Word Score

I love to play board games. I think it’s because I love strategy and I can be really competitive. Risk, Monopoly, Chess … I even like to play Scrabble. Yep – Scrabble. I like to play against my wife because the games are always close. She’s really smart and a great speller. Am I a great speller? Nope. Am I smarter than my wife? No way, she’s brilliant. The only thing that allows me to even hang with her is the triple-word score opportunities; those red boxes that turn feeble little words into lexiconical titans. You see, my triple-word score on the word BAG (6pts x 3=18pts) beats Chris’ single score on PLANARIA (10pt x 1=10pts) every time!

Give your opponent a triple-word score, and you could be in serious trouble.

The Bible says we have a very real opponent who is playing hardball. That was made even more evident to me today when I read an article on consumer debt that disturbed me. It said that Americans are carrying more than $2.5 trillion in non-mortgage debt. It’s a staggeringly large number.

I think excessive debt is the Enemy’s triple-word score sin tactic.

You see, when you commit the sin of excessive debt, you may have to face choices that force you into further sin. It’s the sin that gives the Adversary extra points. Here’s why I say that:

If you owe so much to collectors that in order to pay them, you cannot tithe – you commit the sin of robbing God. Say you instead decide to honor God with your tithe, but now you sin by failing to fulfill your obligations to your creditors. Finally, suppose a friend approaches you with a real financial need and you cannot help because you have paid so much to creditors … you cannot help them or tithe.

It is a cunning trap our Enemy has devised. I am so glad that over 400 people have chosen to meet weekly at our church to attend Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University to find a Christ-centered way to become free from this bondage. Keep it up, guys! Help is on the way!

Never Far From the Tree

There's this couple at our church I would like to get to know a little better. Maybe I could just hang out a little and see how they talk to each other; observe them for a while. I would like to listen to what they say to other people and how they treat them. If I could, I would travel back in time to see what they did raising their kids. You see, I am a parent trying to bring up great kids in a tough world.

Parenting is a hard business and it seems almost impossible sometimes.

Yet, every now and then I get a ray of hope as I encounter an extraordinary young person. I got the pleasure of hearing Jason teach this weekend at GCC. Steve and Deb, well done!

Do The Test

The Tide

I had a chance a few months ago to enjoy a little time walking the ocean shore. I love the ocean - it's mystery, it's beauty, the way it's tide rolls in and out. I especially love high tide because it makes the ocean even more beautiful. High tide covers a lot of debris, seaweed, and dead fish along the shoreline. The ocean even smells better at high tide. During high tide, all the boats float a little higher.

I sometimes feel success is like the ocean tide. It's amazing what the high tides of success in life and business can cover - a myriad of trash and dead fish. I had a supervisor years ago who told me great sales numbers cover up a lot of ills in a business. He said that when companies are doing really well, and money is plenty, the problems they have are less evident. Issues go unnoticed, concerns overlooked. Everyone just celebrates the success - complacency sets in.

I am grateful for the high tides in my life but I am learning to appreciate the low tides as well. Low tides reveal more about what lies underneath; those things I need to pick up and treasure and those things I need to clean up before the next high tide comes in.

My Greatest Vacation Ever

What's your greatest vacation destination ever? Aruba? Hawaii? Camping at Yellowstone? Fly fishing in Alaska? For me, it was Jenison, MI a small community just outside the city limits of Grand Rapids - I spent three days there. I took three vacation days from work to hang out in my home office and work on our family's finances. Sound's fun, eh?

Several years ago, when I was still working in the marketplace, we found ourselves in a financial bind. Because of our son's autism and my career we needed to make several moves over a short period of time. If you have moved, you probably know that moving is ridiculously expensive. Also, so that I don't paint a picture that we were merely victims of circumstance, I must tell you we were also undisciplined in our spending habits and savings practices. Financially, like many Americans, we spent more than we made and saved very little. After many years of living like this, we had accumulated many and massive debts. The stress of that was immense. To make matters worse, we didn't even know financially where we stood. Wave after wave of bills came and were paid haphazardly sometimes a little late or sometimes skipped because we were so unorganized. We occasionally bounced a check because Chris and I were not communicating or bought something we didn't plan. We were playing a lot of interest because we were opening many accounts at stores to save 15% on purchases we didn't need.

Although we were making a good income, it was a crazy and out of control time for us. The worst part of it, we were financially contributing to our church but not truly tithing. We were, in fact, robbing God. I found that the stress of it all was not only hurting my relationship with my wife and children it was also hurting my relationship with God. After several sleepless nights, God convicted me to lead my family out of this lifestyle. So, I scheduled my financial vacation.

Three days in my office, running credit reports, cutting up credit cards, calling credit card companies. I also used those days to make a detailed budget using an excel spreadsheet I still use every week. I titled the spreadsheet "Financial Freedom by Forty" because I wanted to be free of any debt (other than my home) I had by the time I was forty.

The budget told us where we were financially and that was a blessing in itself. It's almost impossible to get to a destination unless you know where you are.

The debt we had was so large that being debt free by the time I was forty was not mathematically possible - it was a dream. But we started anyway. We began paying down debt, we started giving more to our church, and a while later began to tithe.

I am uncomfortable talking about miracles because they are often so much about individual perspective. But I have experienced a few miracles in my life and what happened to us after we started tithing was to us, nothing short of one. I won't go into detail about all the unusual financial blessing that started falling into place after we began to tithe, but they were unusual and many. And, we reached our goal when I was 38. I went into full time ministry the next year.

Today I am 42. Chris and I have been gladly giving well beyond a tithe and we find ourselves as financially at peace as ever. It is a blessing I would wish on everyone. This weekend, Mark encouraged our church to join in that blessing. I pray that everyone will trust God in this area of their lives.

I am glad I took that vacation in Jenison that year because it got us on track with God and it made so many better vacations possible for us.

Bows, Arrows, and Emails

I found my daughter crying the other night under the iridescent glow of our computer. She had been on line chatting and apparently, a friend said something to her in a series of three-word sentences and abbreviations that hurt her; she then proceeded to hurt her friend. It was painful for them both. I have seen the girls together before and it seemed as though they were on the path to friendship. Of course, they were in each other’s company. It’s startling what we are capable of saying from the virtually infinite distance of cyber space.


Years ago I took a class called War and Morality. The class offered great content, riveting discussion, and a passionate professor; it marked me. One day we discussed the impact of the bow and arrow on early warfare. We learned that the development of projectile weapon technology made the killing of another human more palatable; that shooting a man from a distance with an arrow was more psychologically acceptable than looking him in the eye, impaling him with a sword, and watching him die. Who would have thought?

The reasoning was simple:

• The greater the distance from someone, the less we experience those things that make them human (their voice, facial expressions, and emotions).
  
• The less human another person becomes, the easier it is for us to harm them.

So, as weapons were developed, technology was employed to not only do greater damage, but also to increase the distance between the warrior and those targeted. Today, we can fire missiles from continents away, drop bombs from miles above, and fly drone bombing missions as though playing video games. By design, the warrior of today may never have to see the face or consider the humanity of his enemy as he destroys him.

Bows and arrows, and emails are frighteningly similar in that they both can be used as weapons fired from a distance.

This has been a concern of mine since I first received an email account in the workplace thirteen years ago. In concept, we are closer than ever (an email to the next cubicle takes as much time to send as one to the other side of the world) but the reality is our potential for psychological distance is unprecedented.

As I write this, it is quite possible for me to close the door to my office and not have one face-to-face conversation with my coworkers or friends today. In an average day I receive and respond to 40 or 60 emails, 20 -30 text and instant messages, I may receive a letter or a hand-written note. I estimate that over 80% of the unique communication events I make in a given day will be non-verbal, written text on electronic paper. Your percentage might even be higher.

While the pure quantity of communication in my life has increased my connectedness to others, it has not increased my community with others.

I have learned that distance and community can be the fiercest of enemies.

As communication battles rage, it has become easy for me to shield myself behind the screen of my laptop and let fly terse and insensitive emails like arrows from a watchtower. I do not have to confront the humanity of the person who must read them or see them ripped open as those sharp words fall. Sometime my words hit their mark with great accuracy. And though victorious at the end of the battle, I am left feeling more the coward than the valiant.

My concern is not only that we can hurt each other as a result of distance, but also that we are driving to extinction the art of conversation. In my experience, written words often cannot and do not say enough. The other day, some friends and I were discussing a scene from a movie we all liked. We laughed as we imagined what it would be like to receive the following as an email:

“Are you talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me? ...”

These words written on paper or electronically are innocuous. But if you watch and listen to De Niro deliver those exact same words in front of a mirror in the film, “Taxi Driver” they are powerful and insidious. The gap between how communication is read and how it is heard can be wide. Today’s communication methods allows us to read virtually everything that is said but eliminate almost everything required to understand what is truly meant.

The other day at church I asked a friend going through a difficult time, “So, how are you doing?”

“I am doing fine,” she replied.

This was a lie. Her eyes told me that, the timbre of her voice, the ever-so-slight pause between the words doing and fine, her forced smile before she looked down to sip her coffee. I could not have detected her lie unless I had been in her physical presence. I could not have been able to be her friend had I not been there – I would never have known.

As I attempt to communicate with others in the sometimes frenzied melee of Church leadership, I am continually trying to force myself to put down the bow and arrow and head into the battle on the ground – face to face. Sure it’s messier, more time consuming, and tiring, but I think in the end, there will be fewer casualties on both sides.

I Love the 80's: Tight Like Spandex March 1/2

You know, I never dreamed that in a single service we could talk about spandex, hot dogs, flannel graph images of Jesus, the 80's, and tithing and it all make sense. This was one of those services that shook me to my foundation. It was a service where I laughed out loud and yet was challenged to my core. Mark Beeson was in the teaching zone - he nailed it - I love being able to serve with him.

I also loved the arts this weekend - I think because we got to be funny around a pretty serious concept: obedience to Christ. The video teams rocked completing 5 videos that I felt really delivered what we wanted to deliver. Jeff, Russ,Carl, Dustin, Ben, Albert, Kristin - way to go!

If you missed the service make sure you watch it here.