I have been notified on various occasions that commenting on my blog can be nothing less than a chore - due in large part to the process required by the beloved blogspot.com people.
For that reason and others which would be of little to no interest to you, I have changed my blog site to http://denverkevin.wordpress.com/.
I would greatly appreciate it if you all would transfer your readership to the new site.
In recent days I stumbled across this post on Ed Stetzer's website dealing with the topic of accountability groups. The post contains various pastors' accountability questions that they regularly ask within their respective small groups. I thought I would post a few of those questions that stuck out to me as unfortunately unique here.
From John Wesley's Small Group
1. Am I consciously or unconsciously [subconsciously?] creating the impression that I am better than I am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
8. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. Do I pray about the money I spend?
11. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
From John Wesley's Band Meetings
5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?
From Chuck Swindoll's Pastoral Accountability Questions:
(the final question) 5. Have you just lied to me?
From Neil Cole:
3. Is there anything that has dampened your zeal for Christ [this week]?
No servant can serve two masters, for 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 God and money.” -- Jesus (Luke 16:13)
"You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons. The weapons of privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege, economic privilege. You wanna be a pacifist, it's not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving up the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that." --Ammon Hennessy
I'm not a fan of pacifism, but I think this quote speaks volumes to the church about being willing to empty ourselves of what we have "rights" to in order to reach people with the gospel. I've become especially sensitive to this of late with my church working for racial diversity at all cost.
Me: I heard someone say it this way, "Some of the stuff he says is brilliant. Other stuff - he would have gotten burned at the stake for 400 years ago."
Co-worker: Yeah, so I got about 12 pages into his book before putting it down and Googling the phrase, "Is Rob Bell a heretic?" Evidently a lot of people don't like the guy.
Once again, time to catch up on too much time in as few words as possible.
The last few weeks have been really busy - as in, I haven't really been home much in the last 11 days and won't be home much for another few days. I sleep here, but that's about it.
The highlights of the last couple weeks:
The church I'm a part of has begun really pushing toward cultural and ethnic diversity this year. As a result, two weeks ago as part of black history month and as a way to give a taste of what's to come in the future for Providence, we had more of an African-American style service - complete with "spoken words", a panel discussion on racism in America and the church, and a sermon first preached by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. several decades ago.
Last week, we focused the service on introducing many Latino traditions: Spanish music (the powerpoint contained both Spanish and English lyrics), a panel-discussion on immigration and the language barrier in the church and America, a largely bilingual service, and a sermon from John 13.
Oh, and both services were 3 hours long. Gotta love it!
Last Friday, some friends and I went to a Switchfoot concert at the Ogden Theatre near downtown Denver. Unfortunately for me, I missed out on going to the meet n' greet before the show, but the concert was so good I'll forgive missing the opportunity - realizing, of course, that the act of forgiving, by definition, is entirely dependent upon a preceding passive condition of being wronged by a person or persons, which, in this case, was altogether absent, and the situation, therefore, is exempt from being forgiven and consequently disqualifies the latter independent clause from philosophical credibility, but on the other hand does qualify this sentence into the running for most confusing sentence of the year at a to-be-determined county fair later this year.
["Sing it out, sing it out, take what is left of me, make it a melody"]
[Mandolin anyone?]
[This is a video I shot at the concert. At the beginning, I am holding up Jon Foreman as he stands on the railing in front of me.]
Oh, the night before the day before the Switchfoot show, my car got broken into in the apartment parking lot. Apparently, someone from the community needed a slightly used car stereo and GPS unit and hadn't been able to find one on Craigs List at a fair price. I completely understand. **Note to thief: Next time you need something from my car, give me a heads up and I'll be sure to leave my doors unlocked so you don't shatter the window glass everywhere. Cleaning of the millions of glass bits was really annoying and I have better ways to spend my time.**
Those would be the highlights from the last couple weeks. I'm sure I'll think of more stuff I should have included, but the events I neglect to include will bother me infinitely more than they will any of you.
What I already realized I forgot:
:: I went to an IMAX with the kids from our after school program.
:: I put in a 14 hour day on Saturday helping renovate the church's community center.
:: The same night my car got broken into, I saw a guy sprint across 4 lanes of traffic on highway 6 in order to graffiti up a light pole.
:: I saw a baby prairie dog running around on the road dodging traffic. The point? Baby prairie dogs are way cuter than squirrels of any age.
