rather than

“The degree to which you are concerned for the common good, rather than for your own good, is the criterion by which you can judge how much progress you have made."

– Augustine

concerned for the common good RATHER THAN my own good.

that feels so not intuitive or natural or what we want to do.

it feels that way because... that's just the way it is.

and i guess "progress" is going against the grain. moving away from human nature and cultural norms that we are held down in and expected to operate with.

actually, i can't even remember where i read this quote. i can't remember where or when i wrote it down. i don't know the context Augustine wrote it in or specifically what he was even talking about.

i hate when people rip quotes out of context and bend them to say whatever, so i will say no more about it.

but go back and read it again.

feel the weight of that.

those words should stir something in your soul.

i hope it changes you.

those words are changing me.

maybe they can change the world too.

I hate all your show

Below is just a chunk of Isaiah 1... God talking to His people saying:

“The multitude of your sacrifices—

   what are they to me?” says the LORD.

“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,

   of rams and the fat of fattened animals;

I have no pleasure

   in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.

Stop bringing meaningless offerings!

   Your incense is detestable to me.

New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—

   I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals

   I hate with all my being.

They have become a burden to me;

   I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands in prayer,

   I will hide my eyes from you;

even if you offer many prayers,

   I will not listen.

Your hands are full of blood;

 wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds

   out of my sight!

Stop doing wrong,

 learn to do right!

Seek justice,

   encourage the oppressed.

Defend the cause of the fatherless,

   plead the case of the widow."

wow, that's pretty hard core.
is it possible that God could feel this way about us?

here's Jon Foreman's updated take on that passage from his song "Instead of a Show":

I hate all your show and pretense
The hypocrisy of your praise
The hypocrisy of your festivals
I hate all your show
Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stomp on my ears when you're singing 'em
I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living, living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show

Your eyes are closed when you're praying
You sing right along with the band
You shine up your shoes for services
There's blood on your hands
You turned your back on the homeless
And the ones that don't fit in your plan
Quit playing religion games
There's blood on your hands

Quit fooling around
Give love to the ones who can't love at all
Give hope to the ones who got no hope at all
Stand up for the ones who can't stand at all, all
I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living, living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show
I hate all your show

sometimes i think it's possible that we're kidding ourselves. singing our songs but closing our eyes to the more important things God cares about.

just a reality check.

new volunteer

there's this church on the corner of our neighborhood. It's a big, stately looking brick church. it's called Oak Grove United Methodist Church.

i dropped in once on a Sunday morning (back when Ridge was meeting Sunday nights). it's the opposite of our style. opposite of my preferences. i didn't even stick it out the whole way through their service.
(but that's OK, if they came to Ridge they might not dig it either.)

i don't even know that much about the Methodists. i know John Wesley and think he's pretty cool. one of my seminary profs was a big shot with the United Methodists. that's about all i know AND that our styles are very far apart.

i guess that's why it's kind of funny that Crystal and i are the newest volunteers at the Oak Grove United Methodist Church!

yep. we're hanging out with the methodists. and they're actually pretty cool.

i didn't quit my job at Ridge or anything... we're volunteering on Wednesdays when a team from the church simply comes together to make about 500 sandwiches for the homeless people who live in downtown Charlotte.

They have a pretty sweet system for making the sandwiches and then they have a couple huge coolers we pack them in and then deliver them to an urban ministry shelter in the heart of uptown Charlotte.

i love that the church is literally in our neighborhood. Crystal and i walk to it. there's something kind of cool about that.

one thing i did know about the Methodists is that they're all about social justice. that's like their "thing". and i'm all about that.

it's a beautiful thing hanging with these people who worship in a radically different way on sundays... but we're worshiping together and in the exact same way on Wednesdays making these sandwiches.

so here we are. the newest volunteers at the Methodist church on the corner. we look a lot different than the rest of the volunteers, but it's all good.

what do YOU care about?

(This was originally posted on January 29, 2009.)

I sat down to read Proverbs 29 today after stuffing myself at the Penguin with a Big Block burger & some fried pickles. (You can read my thoughts about reading Proverbs HERE.)

1 sentence STILL will not let me go & hopefully it will do the same to you:

"The righteous care about justice for the poor, BUT the wicked have no such concern." - Proverbs 29:7

Whoa. This theme runs throughout Scripture. You can pretty much separate righteous people from wicked people based on their relationship to the poor (sounds like a story Jesus told in Matthew 25). Pretty crystal clear. plain and simple.

So, what do you care about? Justice for the poor? Or do you have "NO SUCH CONCERN"???

the justice conference

The Sun is Rising from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

that's easy for you to say

has anyone ever said that to you? = "that's easy for you to say". it's usually when you're far removed from the context of a situation and say something insensitive like "oh just do A + B" and the other person who is in the middle of the situation is like "that's easy for you to say. try walking a mile in my shoes..." or something like that.

i heard something recently that made me cringe a little. & i wanted to shake the guy who said it and say "that's easy for you to say!" way too easy to say because you are so far removed.
unfortunately the comment came from a very famous/well known Christian leader (who will definitely remain nameless). i have actually met this person and believe he loves Jesus... but is misguided sometimes... like all of us are.

here's what he said:

"The only reason Jesus came was to save people from hell..." 

(WOW! that's a pretty big blanket statement right off the bat. the ONLY reason? really? he didn't stop there...)

"Jesus had no social agenda...[He didn't come to eliminate poverty or slavery or] fix something in somebody's life for the little moment they live on this earth."

my immediate reaction = "Why would he say that?!?" and then i kind of wanted to punch him because i was angry. [that was not a great reaction, but i'm just being honest.]

1st of all i find his whole theology a little ludicrous based on... well... the Bible for one. even Jesus' very 1st public message in Luke 4:14-20 tells His "reason" for coming... and it's WAY off from the above quote.

This guy is one of the most popular authors, pastors, speakers in the whole world of conservative evangelicalism. i'm not sure how he can make statements like that?

& where in the world does he get off saying "fix something in somebody's life for the LITTLE MOMENT they live on this earth."

wow. "THAT'S easy for him to say."
i wonder what the single mother of 5 living in poverty in Africa would say?

i wonder what the man with no hope dying of AIDS would say?

i wonder what the orphaned child with nothing to eat or drink dying of a PREVENTABLE disease would say? (and btw, there are 26,500 of those children who will die today.)
it's easy to dismiss the "little moment here on earth" when your little moment is nice & cushy. probably doesn't seem like a "little moment" for the billions living in poverty.

Thankfully, Jesus had A LOT to say about these people and the "little moment they live on this earth"! somehow our famous Bible scholar friend must have missed that?

OK, now i'm kind of angry again, so i better cool down. although, i wonder if statements like that make God really angry too? probably.

i'll sum up with a great quote that came to mind from a friend of mine that i think is a perfect response to this. i posted it on renown long ago in "Quotes of the Week":

"rich american white boys saying that people need the gospel more than they need drinking water is absurd unless we are willing to take our wealth and share it with our fellow humans..." - Kris Hassanpour

that's seems to be essentially what our famous author friend above was saying. although, i would just like to add that giving people drinking water who need it IS also the gospel.

thirsty?

These 2 people live in Bulgeta, Ethiopia. i don't know their names. They are getting water to drink. Every single person in the town drinks the water from this pond.

I showed this picture to my wife and she had no idea it was even water. She said she thought the people were playing in a sand box. that made me want to cry.

NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DRINK THIS WATER!

There is no reason anyone in our world should still be dying from unclean water... but several died from unclean water since you've been reading this. that's messed up.

Thankfully some other people thought it was messed up too. They gave to Charity:Water (an awesome org. that i love) and they built a clean water well in Bulgeta! These 2 people never have to visit this pond again. People from this town won't die from unclean water anymore.
*Because some people were generous. They thought the future for this town should be different so they did something about it.

you can read more about this town and water project HERE and there are even links that will take you to the google earth coordinates to see these villages who have been helped in Ethiopia!

Would you be willing to be generous so that an entire town would have clean water instead of drinking from that "sand box"?

$13 million and our new money experiment

i have been writing about our financial "plan" from Dave Ramsey & then i wrote a couple posts on our story walking through that plan so far HERE and HERE if you care to read about it.

i'm really thankful that God guided us to jump onto this plan and for the patience and discipline we've had to stick with it!

*Crystal was on Dave's website about 1 year ago and there was a retirement portion that would figure what you will retire with. She plugged in all our numbers (income, bills, home mortgage, etc...) Basically, if we NEVER make more income and everything stays exactly the same and we just stay on pace... when we hit 65 we will have a fully funded (6 month) emergency fund, a home mortgage that is paid for (by the time we're 31 or so), college paid for for 2 kids (which we don't have yet, and $13 MILLION DOLLARS!!!

yeah. that's what i said. $13 million. insane... and that's just in our retirement accounts. and that is an extremely conservative estimate. i'm pretty sure there's a lot i could do with $13 million.

*That's what Dave is talking about when he says "live like no one else, so later you can live like no one else." Maybe we don't go out to eat as much as other peeps and we have a tight budget and all, but $13 million... that's pretty cool.

& i also mentioned our latest little money experiment. Back in April Crystal and i talked and felt like this experiment was something we should do. i felt like it was a "God thing."
We decided that ALL the "unexpected" money we get - which fyi, we don't really get much of that. Unexpected money is like stuff that just shows up out of nowhere. stuff we didn't budget, stuff we didn't work for, gifts, money that turns up.
For example = the $20 bill i literally FOUND on the sidewalk, the $100 i made selling an old foosball table, the $400 that showed up in my account from my real estate company... just extra.

Anyway, we're GIVING HALF of all that unexpected money we get to missions and to the poor (social justice projects). not for everyone, just what we felt like we should do. we're always trying to give MORE and figure out how to budget it... but we're like why don't we just give away 1/2 of unelxpected money we get.

so, we started that in April. we've been doing it for about 2 months now and we have gotten OVER $1,000 that was completely unexpected. that's pretty crazy! $500 per month average so far. i don't remember ever getting that much unexpected money!

i wonder if there's a connection? could be a coincidence? beats me really. we are just really excited to be giving away a ton of extra money + getting the extra money isn't bad either.

(We're excited to be funding some entrepreneurs living in poverty through Hope International and helping some peeps go on mission trips. looking forward to what we can do with any more unexpected money God blesses us with.)

i'll be on the radio tomorrow

Tomorrow, (Tuesday, May 25th) from 2:30PM-3:30PM I'll be on the radio for 2 straight shows (2:30 & 3). just wanted all you guys to know in case you're bored and wanted to listen?
(When i was a little kid i was on the radio a couple times, but just as a caller. This will be my 1st time actually being interviewed. pretty exciting.)

If you really want to listen, i'll be on 89.3 The Storm. They'll be interviewing me on the 2:30PM show and the 3PM show back to back.
(i'll be honest, i have never actually listened to 89.3 here in Charlotte. anybody out there listen to this station?)

The topic for both shows will be Social Justice. That's what i was asked to talk about in this radio interview.

i think specifically the hosts will be asking me about some cool stuff like:  
- Advent Conspiracy and building some clean water wells through Living Water International,
- Compassion International and specifically the Upstreet kids sponsoring a child in Kenya through Project Generosity at Ridge Church.
- the Junky Car Club!
- and the Now Project at Ridge Church.

(i have probably written 50 blogs posts on all these things, but instead of linking them - if you really want to know what i have to say about this stuff just use the "SEARCH" option up in the top left hand corner of renown. example - type in "Advent Conspiracy" and all my posts will come up for you.)

So, if you want to listen to these 2 shows with me on the radio you can simply tune into 89.3 here in the Charlotte, North Carolina area at 2:30PM.

But, if you don't live in Charlotte, here are a few links for you to listen live online!
-  For live streaming audio click HERE.
-  it looks like (unfortunately) you must listen to the streaming radio show with Windows Media Player. (so, if you have a MAC like me the links won't work and you will have to download WMP for MAC HERE.
-  on your iPhone, download the "Pocket Tunes" app to listen to 89.3.
-  on any other phone you can download an App called "Moodio" HERE.

*Hopefully the interviews will go well. my prayer is to represent Jesus well and somehow bring Him glory and make His name famous to people who may not think much about God. i'm excited to talk about "social justice" = helping the poor and those who live in poverty. for me it's a God thing. it is the gospel. it's not separate.

Any expert radio peeps out there have any advice for a 1st timer like me?

anyone else have any thoughts?

outback or bologna sandwiches?

(This article is reposted from July 2, 2008.)

Peter is the young boy that Crystal and I have the awesome privilege to support through Compassion International. Make sure you go read a little more about Peter & Compassion here. That's where I wrote about him on one of my very 1st blogs.

He's our "adopted orphan" - the only kind we can afford for now. We'd love to "really" adopt an orphan in Africa one day, but for now we send support to him each month and Compassion makes sure he has plenty of food, clean water, health care, education, AIDS prevention and help for his brothers & sisters, a place to sleep, and they also make sure he hears the amazing stories about Jesus.

So, I went to the mailbox this past weekend and pulled out a letter from Peter. (He writes to us every 2-3 months.) It's always really exciting when we get a letter from him. I was stoked, but I had to wait on Crystal to get back because we always read them together. As soon as we opened it we could tell that he wrote it himself! This is the 1st letter from him that he actually wrote with his own hands. He is only 5, so a translator had to write it for him up until now! Looks like that $ is paying off as he has already learned to write REALLY well! Really well for a 5 year old anyway as there were a few backwards letters and misspellings, but not too bad. I thought I would share some of the letter with you guys:

How are you. I hope you are fine. I am also doing great because of the Lord. How was your Easter? Mine was great. I went to church and learnt about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Thank you very much for your continued support and the gift you sent to me. I bought a goat worth 972 kshs and 50 kilos of maize worth 500 kshs.

Please pray for me that may do well in my studies. Is there any special prayer you would like me to pray for you? Bye til next time.

Love, Peter

Oh man, totally jacked me up a little when I read that. Definitely choked up a little. Pumped that he learned the coolest story ever - Jesus dying and coming back to life for us.

And then I read the next part. Crystal and I sent him a little extra $ for a Christmas gift. I think it was only like $50. We figured he could buy like a soccer ball and some toys or something. NOPE, he bought a GOAT! I read that and I just busted out laughing!!! So, I guess we got Peter a goat & some maize for Christmas. Actually I had some goat & maize together for a meal when I was in Africa. It's not bad when you're really hungry. Any of you ever got a goat for Christmas?It's just really funny to me.

Anyway, reading that letter makes it worth it all right there guys. When I think about there being 30,000 children dying every day from poverty, disease, and unclean water - it's crazy. But when I realize that for a little bit of my $ every month, Peter won't have to worry about it... what's a little bit of extra $? What's $40 a month going to do for me? 1 extra night out at a restaurant. But for Peter it guarantees he doesn't become a statistic! It gives him clean water, food, an education, medical care, etc... And it guarantees that he gets to be loved by a community of believers near his village who tell him the greatest stories ever told! His life is absolutely changed because of that money.

So, what do you think is more worth it? The night out at Outback or Peter? Get with it & sponsor a child! Go to compassion.com right now and make Jesus really happy.

As for me, I'm cool with the bologna sandwich for almost free at my house.