It's a Story

I met briefly today with Lori Nicol from Augsburg Fortress, and she showed me a new Zondervan product that looks really interesting. It's called The Story, and it's an edition of the TNIV Bible spliced and arranged to tell the Biblical narrative as a chronologically ordered story.

The first thing I like about is simply the format. It's printed in a single column with no chapter and verse numbers. In other words, it looks more like a regular book, and, imho, that makes it much more readable and inviting. Our usual Bible formats create a real sense of unfamiliarity and foreignness, which those of us who have been reading the Bible for years hardly notice anymore.

What I like even more, however is the reminder that the Bible is a story. It's a narrative of God and His creation that centers in Jesus the Messiah-Lord. It reveals wise rules, but it's not a book of wisdom or rules. It teaches theology but it is not a theology textbook. It includes prophecy, but is not mainly prophecy either. It is a story of God's past, present, and future with His world.

The Story shouldn't be anyone's only Bible because it isn't a whole Bible, but it's an interesting resource and could be very useful for the purpose of gaining familiarity with the narrative backbone of the Biblical canon.

Face to Face

Yesterday evening, First Lutheran had its first "listening group," and it was fantastic. Thanks to all of you who were there.

Readers of this blog will know that our church community is trying to clarify its identity and calling. Just exactly who are we and what exactly are we supposed to do?

Last night we asked ourselves these and related questions and had some good heart to heart talking about it. I value these conversations at one level just because they are good venues for articulating great ideas. But, even more, I value these conversations because they allow us to build ownership and partnership together. We can look each other in the eye and build our team together.

If any of you haven't signed up for one of our listening group opportunities yet, please do. You'll be glad you did, and so will I!

Make...Disciples

I just got back from a three-week vacation, during which time I decided to take a break from blogging too. To any of you who have been following along...sorry for the delay.

Our church-wide process of vision discernment is still underway, and I'm really looking forward to our listening groups. I'll probably blog some more about that in the next few days. Today I just want to say something brief about a book that I read yesterday, Growing and Engaged Church by Albert Winseman. Other than sometimes feeling a bit like an advertisement for Gallup Research (it was published by Gallup Press), it was a very engaging (!) book.

What I have to say about the book, however, is really something that I've been thinking about all throughout this process. I am being reminded that the Great Commission of Jesus is to make disciples. That sounds obvious, and it is. But what I've been seeing more and more clearly is that there is no equation between "make disciples" and "make big churches." They might be related, and often they are. As a church succeeds in helping people who don't follow Jesus become followers of Jesus, there will often naturally be an increase in that church's membership or attendance. But so many churches and church leaders have seen church growth as being nearly equal to making disciples that we have sometimes confused the symptom for the cause.

As we discern more clearly the kind of calling that God has for us at First Lutheran, I know it will remain important for us to make and nurture disciples of Jesus and not necessarily to pursue numerical growth. We will preach the good news of the Kingdom of God and teach the Bible and help people discover their individual giftedness and help them to grow and mature in their relationship with God.

I do hope that God will help us reach more and more people and that more and more people will join in the work to which God calls us, but those results are more symptoms of faithfulness on our part than they are goals in themselves. They are vital signs, not actual congregational or spiritual health. I'd rather pursue health than the signs of it.

Olympic Track Trials

A number of the qualifying heats have now been run out at the US Olympic Track Trials in Eugene, and the talent of these runners is just too much to be believed. After the two qualifying heats for the men's 5000, Ian Dobson (who ran 14:01!) said "you think it should be a jog to run that time." These guys obviously have gears the rest of us do not have.

A service of prayer

I didn't get a chance to blog this until just now, but yesterday morning's service of prayer was an important moment in the life of our congregation. I count myself as very blessed to have the opportunity to be a pastor of this wonderful, prayerful, Christ-full congregation.

I am very much looking forward to the opportunity to have lots more conversation among our members about the ways that God is leading us to be a part of His mission to reach our world.
For any of you who are following along with our vision discernment process via this blog, feel free to chime in with your comments as a way to start those conversations even now.

One specific thought from my end:
I wrote more about this for the cover of the July newsletter, but one of the main things that God reinforced for me yesterday is my appreciation for First Lutheran's past. As we look forward to the paths that God is calling us to walk in the future, I am struck by the value of the roads that have lead us to this point. Without God's leading and without the faith and obedience of members in First Lutheran's past, we would never be where we are now and our options for moving forward would be far more limited.



As we contemplate the steps of our journey forward, thanks be to God for the steps that have brought us this far.

N. T. Wright on the Colbert Report

Now here's a combination I don't think I would ever have expected: N. T. Wright on the Colbert Report. He's discussing his relatively new book Surprised by Hope, especially his explanation of of a "two state post-mortem existence" beginning with heaven but culminating in the full arrival of God's new creation.

I read this book a few months ago and found it pretty helpful in a number of ways, but the thing I found most surprising about this interview was how informed Colbert seemed to be. He either knows more about theology than I would expect or his prep staff is pretty good.

A Bad Sign for the Vikings

If this kind of thing doesn't make you nervous...




...then this ought to. Sport's Illustrated's infamous Dr. Z has picked the Vikings to win it all next year.

Meanwhile, I'm still harboring hope that my hometown Cleveland Browns will return to the form they haven't shown since before those black days when Art Modell moved them to Baltimore.