The followig is the introduction to a recent paper I wrote:

If you were to jump into your car before the 1990’s and drive off into some unknown wilderness without the assistance of a map or a prior knowledge of the terrain it is more than likely that you would soon become increasingly lost and off-course from where you had intended to arrive. In the event that you had wisely taken a map you might have been able to find a marker or a familiar object along your way by which you could measure the accuracy of your course. Even with a map you would still have needed to have had an understanding of orientation, perhaps acquired a compass, and have had some spare time to calculate precisely where you were in relation to an object notated on your map. But what if the map you had taken was a very old one? What if the names of the landmarks had changed and a new highway had been opened and the old road demolished? What if a new bridge had opened that could have saved you hours of time? With old information you would have been even further impeded on your journey.

Fast forward to today and the advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS). With a state of the art GPS it is not only be possible for you to drive directly and precisely to a previously unknown location, you are able to know exactly where you are at all times in relation to your destination. There is now no need to know about closed roads and detours because if an alternate route is needed the GPS will kindly inform you. What if you need to stop and eat? Simply ask the GPS where a good Chinese restaurant is along the way and a soothing voice of your choosing will navigate you there.

In the matter of 20 years we have gone from wandering nomads and hapless husbands stuck asking directions at the filling station to savvy travelers with up to the minute traffic jam data at our finger tips. The means by which this technology works is that each GPS device communicates with a series of satellites that are fixed in orbit around the earth. The satellites provide a source if truth which is then overlaid in whatever terrain you encounter. Through wireless data connections your map and any relevant details are updated constantly. With this system the names can change and the paths can shift however your chances to become lost are greatly reduced.

I find this story of our collective move into a digital and always-on understanding of our surroundings and direction to be one metaphor for the trajectory of the ongoing narrative of our faith. Speaking from personal experience I spent most of my early life wandering the wilderness without a map, without a knowledge of the terrain or my surroundings. I relied on the rudimentary knowledge I gleaned from my parents and from Sunday school. I navigated the Christian faith vicariously through those ties. I was okay with asking for directions at the filling stations; however I had no real concept of allowing God to cultivate an intimately connected relationship with Him.

As I matured I began to accept the possibility of a directly connected relationship with my creator and began to piece together a map of my surroundings. Soon I found other explorers and sojourners with slightly different maps from mine and we compared notes. We shared our stories with each other and as we did I added missing data on their map and they on mine. Despite our collaboration these fellow students of the faith seemed to be just as lost as me. It appeared that I had the right map for a given place at a given point in time but the language and the landmarks had shifted. I was in a realm that while vaguely familiar was eerily different, a shadow of what had been. What worked one week somehow fell short the next. To borrow from Steven King’s Dark Tower series, “the world had moved on, since then”. (King, 3) I was navigating the Missouri river of Lewis and Clark with a map of the Hudson and for some strange reason I was just not figuring out why it was so hard to get a bearing.

It is not so long ago that you could have found me paddling my canoe up the river as I pursued my quixotic calling. Thankfully I encountered some others who had been in the same wilderness, but who now shouted from it’s edges, I began to realize that the map I was trying to use no longer fit the context of my real location. I needed the equivalent of a GPS integration in my heart, an overhaul of my understanding, and it was only going to happen if I surrendered everything I had once known as the ‘right way’.

I have a feeling that this story is not just my story, it is the story of many Christian leaders today that are sitting amongst the ruins of pragmatic programs and well intentions wondering what to do next and where to go. Our common human situation renders us ineligible from being the measuring stick of growth on our own. Yet we can reflect that bit of divine truth that shines down upon us and binds us in God and to each other. By entering into a life giving relationship with the Triune God through faith in Jesus Christ we can navigate our new reality and be transformed in our character and in our relationships.  This inner renovation of our character moves us into discipleship and mission as we participate with God in the establishment of His Kingdom.

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King, Stephen. 2003. The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, Book 1) . Plume. Hampton Falls, NH.

Warning, this video is not for the faint of heart....

(HT: The Daily Dish)

Today there are countless Iranians protesting, and some dying for the right to have their voice counted in free and fair elections.  I am not of any illusionary belief that democracy is a God ordained institution, however it is by far the best thing humans have ever come up with for self-governance and it sure beats the theocratic fascism that Iran's conservative Muslim leaders are now fully revealed to be in favor of.

I have friends that have served bravely in the military and they are willing to die for their country and fellow citizens; even to die for another country and her citizens.  The earliest Christians and the underground church today are persecuted and martyred for their faith.  But is it really worth dying for?

The question of death and life and viewing some measure of worth as being associated with it is an interesting phenomena.  Is your earthly existence less valuable than your right to vote?  Is your hand being intact worth some tangible amount which once is met you agree to have it lobbed off?  Is there anyway a well fed white mid-westerner whose most dangerous experience was a brush with a 5th grader on the tetherball court after recess can identify with and say that they would indeed die for anything?

The things worth dying for are often identified as existing 'outside' of ourselves, they are bigger than our own footprint.  Will we die to save the life of another?  Will we throw ourselves on the grenade tossed before our friends?  Will we stand in front of the tanks and bullets thrown at us by extremist governments with terroristic visions of domination?

Do we have a faith in a God that sent a son that had something valuable to do, something worth being killed for?  Is the hope of reconciliation of God and his creation worth dying for?  I ask these questions because I don't think most Christians serve that God.  They have faith in the God of the Sunday morning concert, the God of the felt needs, the God of the 'feed me' consumption of targeted Christonomic Americanism.  That is surely not something worth dying for, because there is nothing 'outside' of ourselves to die for.  That is a Christian faith that is personalized, and internalized.  It is filtered, packaged, and made 'just for you' so that you can feel as though you are somehow being Christian by listening to it, reading it, or watching it.  That is the ingrown and inbred faith of 'Christian Yellowbooks' and only letting your kids play with other Christian kids.  It is a faith that is stained with red, white, and blue.  It is a farce, a false religion, a heretic gospel, and I won't die for it.

So what will I die for?  I will die for a Christ that is fully God and fully man, that was really born of a virgin, that was really a historical person, that really died on a cross, and really raised from the dead and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty!  I will die for nothing less.  I will die for a faith that causes me to embrace a radical and trinitarian love that is eternally focused on the well-being of others at the expense of my flesh.  I will die for a faith that transcends consumerism.  I will die for a faith in which all I am and all I do is but worthless unless it is bathed in the shadow of the cross.  I will die for a faith with teeth, that stands up for it's beliefs in the face of syncretism and pluralistic pandering to a culture bent on diluting everything to a pale grey.  And in paradox I will only die for a faith that is so radical in it's love for the other that we will be accused of being drunkards and harlots, sinners and tax collectors.  In short I will die for nothing less than the Kingdom of God come to earth through the incarnated hands of Jesus Christ.

Do you have something worth dying for?  If you don't then what are you living for?

For those of you that only follow what you see on TV, the coverage of the election protests following a most-likely fraudulent election in Iran are missing out on the whole picture.  Here are some links that will keep you informed on this topic.

• Andrew Sullivan - The Dish
• Twitter - #iranelection

I urge you to pray for our muslim brothers and sisters in Iran; that despite an inspite of our differences that that God's desire to protect the innocent and the pursuit of justice and non-violent revolution will prevail.

A side effect of this online news is a sign of the coming revolution of our media and news sources.  The days of big media and top-down newsmaking are numbered.  Think organic, think highly focused, and think real-time.

It was one of those summer evenings that you wish had a pause button.  The sky was clear and the air no longer hot.  Across a small lake the sun sat behind behind an Ozark mountain.  We had just finished an evening chapel service at senior high camp and I knew in that evening God wanted me to study for a life of service to him and others.  At that time/place in the Nazarene church that only meant one of three things to me; pastor (maybe), evangelist (nope), or missionary (are you crazy).  There was a limited understanding of the breadth of Christian service, of tent-making, or the possibility of bi-vocational or completely volunteer service.  But as a naive 18 year old I honestly had no idea of the specifics, only that God had spoken one word to me that night, 'go'.  I think part of the problem often with discerning God's will is that when he says something simple like 'go' we then fill in the blanks with our own assumptions of what he meant. I was left hanging, wondering what he meant exactly.

Go, was the only word from God that I was sure I had ever heard for myself.  It was implicit in it's scope, but emphatic in it's command.  So I embarked on a bachelor's degree and 4 years later found myself even more uncertain as to what 'go' meant.  Fast forward 13 years from that night at camp and I will tell you that God has just now started to give me some insight into that word and has spoken again.  In between then and now I have been relying on the voices of others in the faith, my parents, my friends, to speak into my life.  I have been relying on the discernment and wisdom that I pray to God for and desperately need.  A few weeks ago in my time of study/devotions God decided to add to the conversation and he gave me two words.  Two whole words!  God said to me, 'it's time.'

As you can imagine it's a mixture of emotions that I am dealing with.  The initial response is elation that God decided to follow up with me in such a profound way.  There is the confusion on why it has taken God so long to speak so directly to me again.  That confusion though is more rooted in my desire to 'hurry up' and get to it than in awaiting God's timing, not on what God meant.  When I graduated with my degree I was profoundly unprepared to enter into any ministry role, and I thank God for protecting the countless people I would have profoundly messed up in my immature fumbling.  The lesson of this intervening decade of life has brought about some times of intense growth, personal discovery, shedding of self-interest, etc.  When I heard God say, 'it's time' I knew it is time for my wife and I to begin to prepare for a life-long service in a multi-culture context.

My wife?  Spouses are always the interesting variable thrown into the 'God's will' equation.  The next day after hearing God say, 'it's time.'  My wife, completely unprovoked or aware yet of God's word to me, said that if we were going to make a move it was time to do it.  Those two things, so closely correlated that I knew for sure that it was God speaking and not my own eagerness.

So, what if anything can I say to anyone who reads this?  In 31 years of life God has shared three specific words with me.  It took 18 years of life for me to be in the right place to hear and understand the first word, and another 13 to be in the right place to hear and understand the next two.  God may speak to me again in 10, or 15 or never again in my life, but I know that he is there and he abides alongside me every step of the way.  I know this is true for you as well too.

So, what is next?  What did God mean?  I said I know, and I have shared that with a few family members and close friends but for now it is a private revelation until things are more concrete and I can be confident of the outcome.  Sorry for the vanity of this post, but I needed to express this story as it will shape who I am and where I serve in a profound way.  My context has been altered and I look forward to the new ways in which God is moving our family.

If, after my lack of writing, you are still subscribed to this blog than I say thank you.  Let me bring some context to my pause.

In my life I tend to routinely go through times of learning, processing, and production.  I have been spending the last few months learning and processing quite a few things that I am sure I will have to 'get out there' in some form soon.

That being said, there is only so much time in the day, and blogging has fallen down the list as I have intently focused on cultivating my relationship with my wife, kids, etc.

On a leadership side of things, I am a little more than half-way through a sabbatical from doing anything other than being present at Trinity Family.  I appreciate everyone for respecting my decision to pull-back, re-evaluate, and in the coming weeks re-emerge in a different direction.  While I have greatly enjoyed and been challenged to grow as part of the leadership these last two years it had the ironic side effect of distracting me from my relationship with God and my family.  As passionate as God is about his kingdom, I reject a mentality and work ethic that teaches an unhealthy balance in it's leadership.  God built us for relationships first and formost; the politics of leadership, and putting on a fancy show on Sundays are pretty far down the list in my book these days when it comes to where we need to be headed as a church.

So grace and peace to all of you.