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Wednesday Spotlight

Live Tweets from Jon Acuff’s Start Night

Chris —  May 1, 2013

via @Growth_Mission

Start Night live tweeting beginning.

I visited a hipster Church in Austin. The kids sang Father Abraham had Many Mumford & Sons

What do you do when all the excuses for not chasing your dream are gone?

The most depressing hour of the week is Sunday at noon.

The Road to Awesome  ow.ly/i/20Ha6
Retirement is dead. Anyone can play. Hope is Boss.

Nobody accidents their way to mastery.

You used to believe you we’re awesome.
How brilliant of fear that it can plant a flag in 2nd grade & it defines our lives.

Covey said begin with the end in mind, not the end in stone.

Christians like to rank honeymoon sex just above the second coming.

Ready is a myth

April’s Top 10 Posts: It’s been another record month at Growth and Mission. I hope you’ve benefitted, and will… bit.ly/12S84U9

Start before you’re ready. You can’t steer from the shore.

Never compare your beginnings to someone else’s middle.

When you start something new, you have permission to be horrible.

Beware what your voices tell you.

The weight of the heroes clothes are often heavier than the fear of the villains.

Inspiration without instruction is useless @DaveRamsey via @JonAcuff

Write your fears down. Follow it with one line of truth. Share it.

We need mirror friends who reflect back the truth to us.

If you can figure out the core of who you are, your job is just execution.

1 Insult + 1,000 Compliments = 1 Insult

Don’t try to turn haters into likers into people who love to support you.

Feedback is for improvement. Hate is to create a wound.

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Three Essential Leaders Missing From Your Church

Chris —  April 23, 2013

JR Woodward is a fellow graduate of the Fuller MAGL, the head of V3 Church Planting. His book Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World, synthesizes much of what we studied in the MAGL with his own philosophy of church planting and leadership.

According to Woodward’s, there is a direct correlation between the forms of church leadership and the spiritual lives of individual believers.  He draws on Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4 that there is a “link between the spiritual maturity of the church and the five kinds of equippers operating in the church: apostles (what I nickname dream awakeners), prophets (heart revealers), evangelists (story tellers), pastors (soul healers) and teachers (light givers)”.

This view of church leadership is occasionally referred to as APEPT.  The modern churches obsession with Pastor/Teachers often leads to the joke “where are all the APEs in the church?

Here’s a quick overview, and my response:

Continue Reading…

In Church, Mission , , ,
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5 Books to Help You Grow Up

Chris —  April 18, 2013

A few months after I graduated from college, I learned how utterly unequipped for adulthood I was. My roommate called me up, and tried to be nice as he informed me he was throwing away all the food in our refrigerator. The electricity bill was in my name, and I hadn’t paid for it.

High School and College had provided a clear framework of how life was supposed to work. I just had to show up for class, do my work, and not do anything too stupid. But now I was in the real world. I had to find a job and pay my bills and find my place in community.

Unfortunately, there are no printed guidelines telling us how the game of life works. We have to figure it out, more or less on our own. Scriptures, and most plainly, the Sermon on the Mount, provide an ethical framework of how Christians interact in the world. But how do do you deal with disappointments, find a job, talk to people and get stuff done?

Andy Stanley says that it’s not experience that’s the best teacher, but other people’s experience. Here are five of my favorite resources from other people who have already figured out what it means to act like an adult.

The Road Less TraveledThe Road Less Traveled – M. Scott Peck

M.S. Peck’s classic will help you grow up by admitting that life is tough, love is hard, and then getting over it.  Peck was not a Christian at the time he wrote it, and it is fascinating to see his thinking on psycho-spiritual issues taking shape.  I think of this book everytime I run into a difficulty, or have to fix my car.

Life is Difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly see that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

You can read my full review here.
Continue Reading…

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lagenummer31

31 Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before I Was 31

Chris —  April 3, 2013

Today I turn 31 years old.  I’ve learned a few things….mostly the hard way.  Here are a few lessons I wish I had known before about the three things that take up most of my thoughts: God, Girls and Growth.

Girls

1.  Girls want to be asked out.
A few years back I realized that, due to a string of crises, I hadn’t been on a date in years and I didn’t have anyone to ask out.  I bit the bullet and signed up for online dating.  Lo and behold, there were dozens of beautiful girls, just waiting to be asked out!  Many of them I knew and had never realized it would be possible to date them. The truth is, they want to be in a relationship, too, and were just waiting to be asked out!

1193153_girl_silhouette

2. It is better to be rejected than to regret not trying.
When I started seeing a counselor, I told him about a girl I’d had a crush on for years.  She was so beautiful, funny and kind that she scared the daylights out of me!  My counselor told me to ask her out, and wouldn’t drop it until I did. The date itself was horrifying. I learned I could do it, and I swore I’d never again get in that cycle of fear and regret. 

3. Birds of a feather flock together.
Know a girl who seems just perfect, but she’s unavailable?  Get to know her friends!  Wonder why you keep dating terrible hateful human beings? Do they seem to be all alike and hang out in the same places?  The old adage is true! Birds of a feather flock together.  Find out where a good one flocks, and you’ll find more just like her. (Unfortunately, they’ll probably be friends. Play it cool.)

4. Never trust a profile picture taken at an odd angle in a car.
Here’s a hard earned lesson from the alternative universe of on-line dating: If someone is taking a picture at an odd angle that doesn’t make any sense, they’re hiding something.  Trust me.

5. Do something free on the first date.
Chances are you will go on a fair number of first dates.  Wait to do something fancy until you think she’s worth keeping around.  It also forces you to be creative. This increases the chance of making great memories!

6. Judge by fruit.
I could put this one in any section, but I’ll keep it here.  Like John the Baptist said, judge a tree by its fruit.  You can’t have a relationship with “the person I think she could become someday.” You can only have a relationship with the person she is today.  The best predictor of future behavior is past performance.  Continue Reading…

In Growth, Life , , , , , , ,
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repost

Two Reasons Fundamentalists Can’t Read Books

Chris —  March 18, 2013

I’m devoting my time for the next week or so to writing my final integrative paper for graduate school.  In the meantime, I’ll be reposting some of my favorites.  Enjoy.

I recently bought a book off of Amazon that was so marked up I almost couldn’t read it.

My friend and fellow MAGL cohorter Margaret Yu suggested I check out Peter Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak.  Palmer is a Quaker, which is really the closest thing that Protestantism has to a mystically tradition.  Mystic’s are concerned about the inner journey, and are often having a much different conversation than fundamentalists are.

The previous owner of the book marked almost every page in pencil with a clear and effeminate script.  For the statements she agreed with there were little checkmarks.  For those she disagreed with, she cross them out and write a diatribe, including scripture references to prove the author wrong.  Time and again, she would argue with a word, phrase, or her misrepresentation of Palmer’s point.

My definition of a fundamentalist, whether it be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Marxist, Atheist or Anarchist, is a person who is so rigidly committed to a set of beliefs and practices, that they are unable to accept, converse with or perhaps even live near someone who doesn’t agree with them.  For a fundamentalist, life is a constant witch hunt.

Find out what the two reasons are by read the full post here.

In Life, Mission , ,
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