Things I'm Looking Forward To In The Near Future or I Really Do Not Blog Often Enough

Starting classes at Nazarene Theological Seminary in January
- kinda scary. Even though I have been keeping up reading and thinking critically, I have been sloppy in both over the past couple of years. Can I clean up enough to justify paying more student loans in the future? When I start in January, I was hoping to actually be done with seminary in that same 3 1/2 years. It is a little bit frustrating. I like to think of myself as smart and intelligent, but it is easier to feel that way when I am around less educated people. So, in a sense, I'm a snob with less educated people, but feel not so great around those who are more educated. Several have given me genuinely nice praise about my intelligence, and that is one of the reasons why I am going ahead and pushing towards getting graduate education.
- the thing that I am more concerned with is that I don't like who I am when I'm a snob. People should always feel valued and shouldn't feel belittled because they don't know or act like what I think they should. Over the past 2 years specifically, I have been hesitant to pursue any graduate education because I do not want to separate myself even further from the people I am around. That being said... should education really be a barrier between people? Isn't education supposed to help remove barriers and bridge gaps? I would appreciate any prayer from any who read this.

Rapid Reading
Just started a book on rapid reading. I already read fairly quickly, but would like to read at a faster rate and add more comprehension. It is supposed to take six weeks, so we will see how much it helps. I tested myself at 442 words per minute off of a thick theology book, but my comprehension was lower than I hoped. I thought I might have missed one or two items out 9, which is tremendous retention rate. But glancing back over, I was about 8/16... not so good. Now the catch is when we are looking for what we missed, we will find more than we expected. So in reality, I probably was around 8/12 which is 75% retention, which is still very high. I would like to increase that. We'll see how it goes.

Planting a Church
Though I have been scouting the area for the past 11 months, I will take my first official actions as a church planter starting next month. We will be organizing at least 2 small groups with no less than 7 people being involved and have the possibility of as many as 3 or 4 with up to 20 people. Either/or would be tremendous to start with. We'll see how it goes.
- This will also mark the start of breaking up with the Norwin Church that I am an associate pastor. I currently average around 40 hours a week at Norwin and that number could easily drop to around 20 which will truly test how I've done in the first 6 months. I am only required to do 20 hours, but once things start moving, it will eventually be a mostly independant growth from Norwin.
- It becomes sad as I truly love the people that I have worked with over the past half of a year. Some of the best people I have met in my lifetime make up that church. And though I will still get to see them, my overall contact will be less as I am working on the church plant. I feel bad for my teens particularly, because I really care about the things they do and decisions they make. They are all precious, and it will kill me to be in less contact with them.
- On the flip side, it is exciting to do something that I have felt some form of calling to for the past 20 years or so. Ever since I was around 10 I wanted to start my own business from scratch, but I never knew how that would work out with my call to pastor. About 11 years ago, I was introduced to the idea of church planting, and eventually my passions matched my calling. I am so afraid that I will screw it up.

Oh well, too long without blogging... sorry all two or three of you who read this.

Conversation with Carlo

A note from a friend to me on Facebook:

Hi Mike. Long time. Forgive me for barging in, but I was drawn to your status and read your dialogue with Mr. Crutcher above.
Dear sirs, how evil does the church's example have to become before we conclude that God has rejected it/given it over? Could it be that the institutional church is the body of Satan and God's greatest enemy? Is it possible that God has replaced the church with humanitarian organizations (religious and secular) as the limbs and hands through which He now ministers to the world, much like He formerly had replaced Israel with the Church as His people/body? I ask not because of this issue you were talking about Mike, but church history and contemporary "Christianity." I also believe that while the institutional church is no longer Christ's body, He has preserved a (albeit sparse) remnant of authentic Christians.

My response here:
I want to be careful when we speak for God in ways that he has given up on the institutional church. Maybe I am a little naive but I am not convinced that Christ's bride, the church, is God's greatest enemy or the body of Satan. We are not without error, but we also do not walk with an eye towards the future. We are walking with our eyes always in the past trying to figure out how much causality will affect what will be. We are constantly living in the already/not yet world, so we see the glaring mistakes with more bias right now.

Is it possible that God has replaced the church? Yeah, it's possible, but I do not see it. And if it has been replaced, it seems inconsistent that humanitarian organizations would somehow be the carrier. Jesus was definitely a resident of Israel. He did not come from the outside in, but the inside out. Also, he never broke with what God had already been telling Israel for years. Therefore, I am not sure I agree that Israel was formerly replaced with the Church.

Remnant of authentic Christians... I think I feel this way more times than is actually true. Having met up and conversed with several hundred Nazarenes over the past couple of weeks has greatly encouraged me. Yeah, there are still things going on that I don't agree with, and it seems to take forever to change, BUT there are literally thousands of Nazarenes alone who are trying to serve God in all of their known capacities. If that is true about Nazarenes, how can it not be true with other Christians across the world? Granted, I took a logical leap, but I refuse to believe that Nazarenes are the only one who want to follow Christ. Which of these are a part of the sparse remnant? Can we really say?

So that is my response, Carlo. I'm sure we will continue to disagree, but I am okay with that. It is good to hear from you, and please feel free to barge in any time.

Grace & Peace,

Mike

Bringing Scripture to Life

In light of all the conflicts with certain groups of the concerned, I thought this passage of scripture Acts 21:40-23:35 was particularly relevant. Because it might seem that I am looking for scripture to justify myself, you are more than welcome to look through my daily devotion that I write each day you my teens and young adults at http://norwinnazdevotions.blogspot.com/. Today happened to cover this section.

One of the commentaries I consult is the New Interpreter's Bible. Reflecting on today's scripture, Robert W. Wall says:

"What is the reader of Acts to make of the passionate and violent responses within Israel to Paul's declaration that God's Messiah has called him to go to the unclean Gentiles? Why do pious people conspire together to kill God's prophet? In part, the hostile response to Paul is due to the parochialism of his opponents, who define God's salvation in nationalistic terms. Had Paul claimed that the Lord sent him with a word for Israel alone, his Jewish auditors may have continued to listen to him. Had he included the purification requirements of the Sadducees in his message of the resurrected Messiah, the Sanhedrin may have united behind him instead of dividing because of him. The danger of the gospel is that it makes particular and absolute claims of who God is, what God does, and to whom God belongs; and these claims sometimes challenge our current beliefs and traditional sensibilities. Paul's Jewish opponents disagree with his sense of vocation, as they also disagree with his interpretation of Scripture, because these are particular expressions of an absolute truth that imperil their own social requirements and religious beliefs. It is hard for any of us, no matter how spiritual-minded and intent we are, to embrace a version of "the truth" that includes those we exclude and grants access to God's liberating grace via a different route than the one we have taken."

Words to encourage, sharpen, and shape us. Thanks be to God.

Ready to be back in PA

Well, I'm glad we are leaving Florida soon. It was great to get in better walking shape, but I am exhausted and ready for my own bed.

Today (Wed) was very exhausting watching the ballots return for electing a GS. There were so many times that I hoped we would elect someone who would bring more diversity or at least variety to our General Leadership. Instead, we have let one church be the most important one in our denomination.

I am trying to look at this in a positive light, and a friend gave these words of encouragement, "We came in with five white Americans and we will leave with five white Americans. At least we didn't take a step back." We traded a white lady for a black man from another country, so that is good. But we were so close to electing some better choices... or at least I think so right now. Ask me in 8-12 years when we have to elect new GS'.

The best news is that few bad doctrinal changes were made. A few things got filibustered, including the issue I cared most about, but at least there is still room left at the table for people like me and you.

I have so many irons in the fire right now, but I'll do my best to give my overview of what I saw at General Assembly before Sunday.