charlieDEAN’S Blog

Yes, if you’re following along, my calendar has been too much — funeral last saturday, spoke to our high school group last Sunday, spoke at New Community Wednesday, and then three servcies this weekend.  Anyway…this weekend I wrapped up a series on prayer, talking about “Unanswered Prayers.”  I don’t really have much to add…but here are some resources that I either quoted directly or leaned on heavily for this talk:

• Prayer – Philip Yancey
• Reaching for the Invisible God — Philip Yancey
• Mudhouse Sabbath — Lauren Winner

The Switchfoot song that was later covered by Mandy Moore for the movie A Walk to Remember, is called “Only Hope.”

Just a cool experience…

Yesterday I had my message for New Community all prepped and ready to go by 4:00, and there’s a growing group of staff that gather in the auditorium on the stage just to worship & pray for New Community for about an hour.  So I joined ‘em.

So they asked what I would be speaking on and I told them about the whole “stories of deliverance” message that I would be giving and then they prayed over me…and it was cool…I really felt empowered to teach the message I had prepared.  And then as different people were praying, there were words & phrases that they used that inside I felt Holy Spirit saying…”you need to say this.”  And so, after prayer I went back to my manuscript and added some stuff…particularly to my conclusion.

It was a really cool thing…to think of the message last night, not as “my message,” that “I prepped” and “I preached,” but a message from God confirmed, empowered and strengthened by a community of people.

The “challenge” for me in the Old Testament Challenge is there is so much stuff to cover in a limited time!  So, yes, last night I was talking fast because Exodus is so important and there’s so much to say!  So I had to gloss over the burning bush encounter in Exodus 3 & 4…which killed me…but maybe some other time.

This week I don’t really have anything to add to what I said last night.  I’ve been on an interesting journey recently of thinking more and more about Judaism and the connections to Christianity.  In the evangelical subculture there’s lot of talk about support for Israel but very seldom do you hear evangelicals talk about the beauty of the law and what it means to us.  I think this is what’s been happening in me…I used to hate the OT because is was irrelevant and the law just didn’t make sense…but more and more I’m falling in love with the OT and the law and the deep connections between Old & New Testaments.

Last night I kicked off our 32-week series, Old Testament Challenge, by talking about the first 2 chapters of Genesis.  The big idea was something like this: God created for us, so that we could be in community with him and each other.

In one sense, last night was a hard message to put together, because there are such huge, seminal ideas that spring from Genesis 1 -3: God, Trinity, imago dei, creation, environmentalism, original sin, gender issues, etc.

I was telling someone afterwards, that if I could have spent the whole evening talking about Genesis 1:27, I would have, because I believe that maybe, for me, the key idea in all of Scripture is that we are made in God’s image.  I think the gospel really springs from this idea: that God created us in his image — we defiled that — Jesus made it possible to recover that — and someday God will fully restore his image in us.  Powerful stuff.

The thing I love about teaching at Northwoods…is that I had a fear last night, that because I didn’t make this big “6-day, 24 hr” statement about creation, that I’d have somebody angry…and there wasn’t a word.  This isn’t a place where people are just looking for a reason to hammer you over something…which is good.

I spoke this past weekend at Northwoods in our continuing series: Real Heroes.  My topic was “unassuming heroes” and I was talking about Deborah (Judges 4) — I used the title “backstage heroes.”

So, let me flip to the other side and talk about the spotlight for a second.  I think it’s possible (and healthy) — if you’re a person who is often in the spotlight, to figure out how to have a backstage attitude.

Some of my personal strategies for developing a backstage attitude are (I’m far from perfect, but these are some of the things that I try to do):

• to make sure that I get my hands dirty as much as possible — intentionally try to do things that other people won’t notice
• to — as much as possible — ignore my press.  Someone very wise once told me, that you’re never as good as people say, and you’re never as bad as people say either.”
• refuse to self-promote

This weekend I spoke at our weekend services.  I opened a new series called “Ordinary Heroes.”  Here’s a thought beyond the message.

I grew up in this crazy fundamentalist environment where I remember people criticizing churches for “just preaching good works all the time.”  And I guess I know what they were saying, but it felt to me that at some level there were anti-good deeds.  But when I look at the life of Jesus, he was all about doing good things for people.

One last thought…I ended with a benediction, albeit a very non-traditional one as it came from Seth Godin’s book The Big Moo.  Several people have asked me for it, so here it is:

You are not a cog.

You are not an assistant or adminitrator.

You’re not a gofer or middle manager, either.

No, you’re creative.  A valuable asset to your family and your community.  A person who can make a difference to an organization.

You are capable of having an impact, leaving a legacy, creating things that are outstanding.

You are not ordinary.

In fact, you’re remarkable.

Now, hurry.  Don’t let yourself (and the rest of us) down.

Okay, this is a little late, but I’m still thinking about some things from this talk that I gave to our high school students about heaven.

From a biblical standpoint, I think heaven is difficult to talk about because the Bible really say very little, and what it does say seems ambiguous in that it’s hard to know what to take literally and what to understand figuratively.  Here are a couple thoughts and/or questions to chew on:

• Does the bible ever say that after we die we go to this place called “heaven”?  I’m not sure it does…it talks about being united with our bodies…only an unblemished version.
• Is the phrase “kingdom of God” synonymous with “heaven”?
• It seems to me that there is much more focus on heaven coming to earth (the “already” as opposed to the “not yet”)

Two preaching attitudes…

1. “I know what I’m talking about cuz I studied a lot, so listen to what I have to say about, then go do it!”
2. “Here’s where I am as I struggle through this issue myself…let’s begin a conversation.”

Some topics tend towards #1, but I think most topics tend towards #2…at least that’s the attitude I’m striving for myself.  So I often find myself the day after a message thinking new thoughts or continuing thoughts…

So, here’s the deal…I’m going to try to start blogging a “message wrap up” where I may summarize a little but then put out some continuing thoughts.