I went home today for lunch and discovered our adorable little puppy, Kensie, was up to no good!  She ate all the laces out of my shoes!  This, only a few days since she chewed up Lance’s socks!  She’s still a puppy, but I thought we moved out of the chewing phase a few months ago.  And now it seems to be back… 

She's so cute

 

            Well, we’ve learned from our friend the Dog Whisperer (aka Cesar Millan) that dogs will get into mischief when they’re not getting enough exercise.  Cooped up in the house all day with no one to play with, a dog will get into things it knows it shouldn’t.  This sounds like Kensie.  If we exercise her more, she’d burn her energy in healthy (non-destructive!) ways. 

I think that, sometimes, when we don’t get enough exercise, we get into mischief, too.  I’m not talking about just physical exercise, but spiritual exercise.  It seems that when we’re engaged in spiritual exercise – reading our Bibles regularly, stretching ourselves in service to others, holding ourselves accountable to spiritual trainers, and such, we are much healthier.  We grow, we learn, and we stay focused on living lives that glorify God. 

But when we aren’t getting enough spiritual exercise… when we aren’t pushing ourselves to discover new layers of who God is and who we are in Him, when we coop ourselves up into ministry areas that we don’t have a heart for anymore, when we aren’t stretching our hearts and souls by serving others and caring for people beyond ourselves, we can get bored, restless, and can find ourselves getting into mischief.  We start thinking of ourselves before thinking of glorifying God.  Our flabby spiritual muscles allow us to give in to temptations that provide immediate satisfaction but long term destruction.  I’m sure Kensie quite enjoyed those shoelaces at the time!  But the pleasure was short lived, as it often is when we lose focus of living for our Lord. 

We’ve got to make some changes at home so that Kensie will put her energy into healthy activities that will enrich her days instead of get her into trouble.  And maybe we humans should check our routines, too.  Are you getting the spiritual exercise that you need to grow and enrich your days?   If you’re ever feeling stuck, we’ve got plenty of Spiritual Personal Trainers available to help you get in shape! 

If you see me walking Kensie around the neighborhood, be sure to wave! 

 

                                                            Blessings,

   Jennifer

Well this summer was my first experience of trying to grow my own food.  It was a ton of fun to watch our vegetables grow.  It was even more fun picking them from the vine.  Unfortunately, the first frost has come and has wiped out our vegetables.  We were able to pick some zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers before the first frost.  So we’ll have some more zucchini bread and salads to look forward to.  I feel that through my first attempts of gardening I have excelled in my spiritual life.  I started with soil that needed crap/fertilizer to fill it with crucial nutrients.  Next I picked out plenty of vegetables some of them did great and others not so much.  I learned that I had to water my garden everyday and watch it.  It took over a month for our first tomato to come up but with that came the joy of being a farmer.

I feel like a lot of the people I have been mentoring have come with just that.  I helped them in thier lives to see how the crap inside them can be used to create fruit.  We tried many different things and some worked.  One thing that was really important was to continually keep in touch and help them along the way.  Nothing compares to the fruit that comes from their ministry.  I feel God is doing an amazing thing and am very thankful for where he has placed us. 

As we step into this next season I pray that I might learn of the beauty of the changing of leaves and seeing how important warmth is when it gets cold.  How have the seasons been impactful to your spiritual walk?

http://www.daily-times.com/ci_10594719?IADID=Search-www.daily-times.com-www.daily-times.com

I was so encouraged this last week because the Daily Times our local paper for the Four Corners wrote a whole page on our new service.  They called me early in the week to ask if they could do an article on us and I felt like that was a good idea.  The best part was they did an excellent job with the article.

I felt a little concerned because I have been misquoted before and that is never fun.  My favorite misquote has to be “I think hate crimes are bad.”   Someone called me and spoke to me for a half hour and that was the most they could get out of our conversation.  What a joke.  Anyways, this one went really well so excellente and thank Daily times.

Have you ever been misquoted?

Cheers,

la

I just watched this and also am a fan of NT Wright and his works Surprised by Hope is on my bookshelf.  Once, I read more and more about the after after life I became a lot more excited about why we need wholistic ministries.

What do you think?

Cheers,

la

Now that we have gone public with our new service it is really exciting.  We’re having people come in from all over the place.  I feel more and more blessed to be in the position I am in and feel a deep desire to make a difference in Farmington.  The series that we’re doing now is called The Exchange with God, community, and the rest of the world.  For these services, we have tried to help people connect with all of the above. 

For the first two service we shared about the promises of God and tried to make them more tactile.  This was fun.  We made stations all around our sanctuary.  Some of the examples were:

• for sight we used big styrofoam balls cut in half to spell out sight in braile
• we also created a big lightswitch for darkness to light
• for truth we used a blacklight and painted truth on a canvas and covered it with a black cloth when we turn on the light you could see truth illuminate through.
• We took a bunch of ashes and put them in a bowl and then we placed a flower on top to exemplify beauty for ashes.
• For running and not growing weary we took a sports bottle and changed the label to Godade “the living water”
• for patience we lined up chairs and put magazines on them to show long suffering
• For Redemption we created redemption tickets like at a carnival
• For healing we broke a vase and put it back together using different things including bandaids, etc.
• and many more

These services were a blast and helped people to think through the wholeness that is offered in Christ.  Next week, Jenn is going to speak about eXchanging with the world.  So we’re having a tailgate party outside of the church to make people think about the people outside of their Christian bubbles.  I am really excited to see what God is going to do.  I ask for your continued prayers and if you have any fun ideas to communicate the message in a thoughtful experiential way please let me know.

Cheers,
la

After a really long process of planning and growing as a team we have finally begun our eXchange services on a weekly basis.  The eXchange seeks to help people with their eXchanges with God, one another, and the world.  We are delighted to have this new service that allows for a lot of creativity and gives people the opportunity to have an eXperience every time they come.  I would like to invite all of you in the Four Corners area to come and join us here in Farmington, NM. 

One of our biggest focuses is on leave a mark.  We believe that God has left a mark on us and that it is our job to leave a mark on others for the kingdom.  We are so dedicated to this vision that our website is www.leaveamark.us I recommend checking it out if you have time.  We building and developing the site more and more. 

Cheers,

la

I have recently heard a bunch of different testimonies from people.  Sometimes I feel very blessed to hear about what God has done other times I’m disgusted to because of some of the things I hear.  I have decided to write this blog on Top 5 testimony do’s and don’ts

Do share your personal story of what has happened pre and post coming to faith

me sharing on a recent trip to the wilderness

Don’t focus on how bad and horrible you were.  This includes going into details about how this one drug deal went down or how many men or women you slept with.  Saying you were bad and dealt with addictions or that you did not treat men or women with the respect they deserve is usually good enough.

Do include what Jesus meant to you at that moment or during that process of change.

Don’t use weird Christian lingo.  “I realized I needed the blood of the lamb” just doesn’t make sense to many people.  I recommend thinking through what you’re saying and talk it out with a friend if you have to.  Otherwise, people are going to be freaked out.

Do interact with people and seek clarification as you speak. 

Don’t take forever sharing your story.  It doesn’t take long before people stop paying attention to you/get really annoyed with the soundbite.

Do pray for the person.  Before, during, and after the interaction.

Don’t waste time getting into conversations about hypocrites or have to pull out your evidence that demand a verdict book.  Apologetics obviously has a place but I am not sure that your story is the place. 

Do personalize your message and seek an authentic exchange with the person you’re talking to. 

Don’t miss an opportunity to share with someone because of fear of what they’ll think of you.  Even though you may have been a horrible witness it doesn’t mean that you can apologize and tell the person that you are making a change. 

So that’s my Top 5.  What would you add or subtract?

This last Sunday was an awesome day in our church.  I got to share about God’s call to feed the Hungry, to give a drink to the thirsty, to invite in the stranger, to clothe the naked, and to visit the sick and person in prison.  In preparation for this service I felt a heavy weight about what I do.  I felt very humbled because there are people in our church that do so much as you can tell by the video I have included.  As I prayed and thought through how I was suppose to share to the congregation I was reminded of the fact in the instance of the “least of these” that it is Jesus that we are helping.

I remember when this first was written on my heart.  I was in a class taught by Chap Clark in seminary.  For this class we had to read a bunch of books.  One of the books we read was called Starting Right inside it there is an article written by Tony Campolo: Reflections on youth ministry: taking seriously the Least of These.  In this article Campolo writes about dealing with kids that would come to serve in his inner-city ministry context.  These kids would frequently reflect that they were glad they didn’t live there or how they felt blessed after seeing what little the people had in the inner-city.  This was frustrating to Campolo who felt that they were missing a vital part of what was happening while they were there.  So he began to teach on the Least of These in Matthew 25.  The kids began to understand that they should be honored to serve where they are.  After I read this chapter I realized that I also had missed it when it comes to being a servant.  I would go and do the work like it was a duty.  I lacked the respect for the people I was helping.

My sermon was just that.  I shared that as Christians we should be honored whenever we come into the oppurtunity to help someone.  Christ says that when we helped one of the least of my brothers that you have helped him.  We need to have servant’s hearts and seek God’s will for people we interact with.  You may have never known it but when you helped out that person who was hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, or imprison that person truly indeed was your Saviour, Christ Jesus, Amen.

What things do your churches do to reach out?  What other ideas do you have to practically make a difference for the poor and least of these?

Can't we all Get along? ~this peculiar picture was taken in Maui on our Honeymoon

In Dan Kimball’s book he expresses how people think that the Church is dominated by males and oppresses females.  He talks about how women are often times not included in the leadership of the church because of how people interpret small pieces of scripture.  One women remarked that if they want to be a leader that they can’t become priests but only have the choice of becoming a nun.  I never really saw much of this played out in my life as I grew up in a United Methodist Church that empowers and ordains women.  One of my buddies included an interesting link on his website that speaks a little more about the United Metghodist Chruch.  Check it out:  Methodist Mavericks, “Methodist Mavericks: May 2008,” http://methodistmavericks.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html.

Once I reached College however, I saw how women were not allowed in leadership roles and was given the same small pieces of scripture to abide by.  I felt that there was something wrong with this yet when looking at the Bible these guys and some gals had a point.  I was forced to search more and ended up decided that because there is neither greek nor jew, male nor female,… we are all one in Christ Jesus that when it comes to leadership it is not male or female only jesus through that person that speaks.  Furthermore looking at the practices of the early church and Jesus empowering women to preach I felt led that these verses must be misplaced in the culture and context of who or whomever Paul was writing to.  I recognize that there is a lot more to this question but I feel that women have very important roles in God’s plan for the church as leaders.  In fact, I married one of those women.  When it comes down to it, Jenn is probably one of my favorite most thoughtful Preachers.  She is very gifted at sharing God’s truth to the masses.  I feel that men and women can learn a lot from her.  The Lance and Jenn combo is an amazing duo I prefer the smaller groups and Jenn is just naturally gifted with larger groups.  I would love to share more of our story but we’ll save that for another post.

I completely agree with Dan Kimball that no matter what your theological interpretation is of these few verses we must find ways to empower women in the church.  God’s attributes throughout scripture are both feminine and masculine, we ought to experience those same attributes in our services from males and femals as we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Cheers,

lance