There are some who call me … Tim

My friend Seth just posted about a very cool new online web site – YourVersion.com

I use Biblegateway.com quite a bit, but in some quick testing I think I already like YouVersion better. It’s got easy places for you to save notes and things, but it also has a very cool community aspect as you can share thoughts, pictures and weblinks that are connected to passages. Sure, you could get some nutty or goofy stuff in there, but it could also make for a very cool resource.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

I just realized I’ve never posted pictured of my son, Vinnie, on the blog! Shame on me…. anyway, here are a couple of pictures from child care here at Grace….

Journey Bumper Video - very vool!

Weej two of “The Journey” started with a quick recap of our big idea from last week; “God keeps his promises.” Then we mapped the lineage from Abraham all the way through the Promised Land.

* Abraham
* Isaac
* Jacob
* Joseph
* Egypt
* 400 Years
* Moses
* Joshua
* Promised Land 

There were all sorts of crazy, uncomfortable and confusing things that happen in this family and time and we have to remember that these stories are about God protecting the promise. (And the drama and danger of the promise looking like it would get comprimised time and time again!)

To make this week interesting and get the point across in a creative way, I had Jason follow the story and create gestural drawings to go along with it as I spoke. Here they are for your viewing pleasure. I’ll also post the rest of the message here to match the drawings

1. Jacob has 12 sons, one of whom was Joseph. Jacob like Joe best and made him a sweet coat of many technicolors. Joe had dreams of the other brothers bowing down and serving him. And he told them about it…
2. The other brothers weren’t down with Joe being the favorite and sold him into slavery into Egypt.
3. Joseph becomes a very big deal in Egypt. There is famine in the land of Jacob and his family eventually they are reunited with Joe in Egypt. They move in as guests into Egypt to escape the famine. There are about 70 people in the family at that point. It is allvery nice and cozy and wonderful at this point.
4. The jews have LOTS of babies. Over the next 400 years they go from guests to slaves as a new pharoah comes into power and doesn’t like having all these people around who could join their enemies. They continue to have lots of babies. At the time Moses is born there could have been anywhere from 1-2 million jews living in Egypt!
5. Pharoah doesn’t like where things are heading so he orders all the baby boys killed. Moses’ mom protects him by floating him down a river. Moses eventually leads the people out of Egypt, gets the ten commandments and all that great stuff.

We give Jason a big hand for his drawings. aand prepare to sell his drawings on ebay – eventually won by Dave Q!)

This takes us to our Big Idea and an “In your face” end to the message… We need to be very careful to not allow anything, outside of God, to become our master.

The jewish people didn’t become slaves overnight. It took getting comfortable, not being careful and serving a master who didn’t love them. The master that try and do the same thing to us are…

Stuff – When we owe someone money money for anything, we allow them some mastery in our lives. There are too many peoepl who serve the masters of their car payment, home payment and visa bill. And when those masters don’t love us, the only choice we have is to work more jobs and longer hours to serve them. Then, for some it really falls apart and there masters come and take away everything. These masters steal our time, keeping us from our families and from serving and living in God’s Kingdom.

Sin – It always starts small, doesn’t it? Most murders and adulterers don’t start as happy and nice. It starts with a little anger, a little lust. A wrong word or a lingering look. Sin is a master that likes to come in and take control. And if we settle in and get comfortable, sin is a master who doesn’t love us and wants to control our lives.

We need to be very careful to not allow anything, outside of God, to become our master.

Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Paul identified himself as a servant in Galatians 3:29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

The rest of the night
We had another great game night in the gym! The students split up by grade and gender for races in the gym and pyramid building. I don’t remember how music went, but I’m sure it was rockin’!

So apparantly we just had an earthquake here in Indiana. It woke Heather and I up as the house was shaking pretty good! 5.4 is what they’re just saying on the news for strenght. Pretty crazy stuff to wake up to!

I’ve been teaching a lot lately (Barry Rod is going to be teaching 3 out of the next 5 weeks, which is a nice break) We also filmed a message that Craig is editing for us to show this weekend at small groups.

In getting ready for the video I found that I had to work very hard on the exact words I said and saying them exactly the right way. Which led me to this thought… Do we put too much pressure and emphasis on any one message to change a student’s life?

On one hand, I take each message very seriously (even if I have a lot of fun with it!) but I also know that life change doesn’t seem to happen very often because of any one message. So should our concern be with consistenly teaching similar themes and ideas that can lead to life change over a period time?

My concern there is that I don’t think we should teach on the same topic every week. So, what does it look like to consistenly teach well, carry similar themes throughout and yet be creative and original in a way that leads to life change? All the while allowing for any single message to have an impact on its own…

And, are those themes the kind of things we want to students to know or feel? For example, it’s one thing for a student to know God loves them, but it’s a whole othere thing for the to feel God loves them.

Any thoughts you out there on the internets have would be great! I think I’ll work on a list of the themes I would think need to be woven in and out of messages so that a student leaves knowing or feeling these things or ideas after their time in the ministry. (I’m not talking topics, but ideas that fit into topics… like “We can’t earn God’s love”

Journey Bumper Video - very vool!

(We’re actually a few weeks into the Journey series, but I thought I would get back to posting recaps, so I am going back and starting from week 1.)

We’re starting a longer series this week on “The Journey.” Looking specifically at the journey God’s people took going from Abraham to the Promised Land. Week 1 was an intro week, setting up the series and the main idea that will run through it; “God keeps his promises.”

I started things off with pictures from some of the greatest sci-fi stories of all time and some of the worst. the point being that the good story writers always knew what happened first, before the story we saw, sothat everything made sense. This week, we had to talk through “the story before the stories” so that everythin else made sense.

We looked at all the promises God made to Abraham in the light of the promise being a “Hittite Suzeran Vassal Treaty” (You’re favorite treaty and mine!) Basically, what matters is that God’s promise, or treaty, isn’t made between two equal parties. God is God and Abraham isn’t. And God keeps his promises. In fact, a lot of the goofy and crazy stories that come after this, are more about God protecting and keeping his promise than each individual story.

Abraham lies about his wife, saying she is his sister, so she almost taken as someone else’s wife and the other guy is punished!?!? The moral of the story is not “God wants you to lie.” but “God keeps his promises!”

Since God keeps his promises, we ended the night listing out the promises of God we can hold on to today. The students had some awesome answers and we prayed as group thanking God for those things!

Click here to listen to the message.

The rest of the night
This series is the first one with Craig settled into his position and he and Noah are working really hard to make the games new, fun and creative. Most will be team games and we split the students up by grade and gender to make six large teams. We did the games at he end of night (I had to get home to a very sick wife and the guys adjusted for me… I love them!) and they were just some fun, new silly relays… and the kids loved them!

Our friends Jason and Michelle (Jason is a small group leader and plays drums in the band) just adopted a baby boy and he is one cute kid! Adoption is such a beauticul expression of God’s love and Grace. We got to meet the handsome new guy the other night and he is just great!

I’ll admit I haven’t been reading as much as I like to. (just like I wasn’t blogging!)

But here are the few books I have and loved and the ones I am reading now…

“Under the Unpredictable Plant” A great read for anyone in or considering vocational ministry. While I think Peterson’s personality, gifts and view of the church play a large part in some if his applications and practices (why wouldn’t they?) this book really challenged me and was perfect for a group discussion.

“How to not speak of God” This is a book that takes the theology of the emergent conversation to a whole different level. Rollins brings maturity and careful thought to the topic of our understanding of God and how we can and can’t speak of God. It challenged me, stretched me and caused me to think in wonderful new ways. He also uses big words and long sentences…

I’m just starting “The Price of Priviledge” and “Everything must change.”

Any book suggestions you have?

So, I’ve been very lazy in not bloggin for a while. Here is my excuse…

Things got really nutty and busy around here when one of my employees left and moved to Atlanta. (Chris) Well, we couldn’t replace him for a while as money is a bit tight at Grace these days. So., I had to make some decisions about what to do and what not to do and I decided I needed to take a break from blogging to try to stay on top of life here.

Then, we hired Craig to replace Chris… and… I didn’t start bloggin again cause I was being lazy!

But, I’m back and being realistic about how often I will be able to post. I’m going to shoot for once a day in the morning for a while and see how it goes!