spazticgraphics

Updates from March, 2009

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  Psalm 73

  ben 11:05 am on March 23, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  Watch the video before you read below because my paragraph will make more sense.

  They showed this video at church last weekend and it ripped me up. I couldn’t imagine all this happening, and it would force me to be really real in my feelings and expression to God. I couldn’t imagine losing my son, I couldn’t imagine being apart of being ripped off by Enron and not wanting to hurt someone, and then to experience the heart surgeries to top it off! I am not THAT forgiving of a person where even this many year’s later could just casually mention it in an interview without some feeling showing on my face. I’m not. It’s a human expression and I guess over time the wounds heal and forgiveness happens, but these folks have been through it.

  That is what really makes a story and begs the question of why bad things happen to good people and why a loving God would allow this. It’s the eternal question, but the things I know, the things I remember, what sustains my belief is that Satan has power over this world right now. As odd as this is to say this, God allows us to go through extreme tragedy sometimes to show us extreme joy… we wouldn’t know one without the other. Bad things have always happened and assuming God is going to erase tragedy seems like an invented idea of how things should be. Anyway, the video speaks volumes on how God can restore people because they seem like they’ve dealt with it all well and the past is the past. It meant so much to me when I first saw it and I wanted to pass it on.

   

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  Aim lower! Think smaller! Give up! Go have a cup of coffee!

  ben 12:32 pm on March 31, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  We saw this at church yesterday and I thought it was brilliant.

   
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  Huckabee on Evolution

  ben 12:09 pm on December 12, 2007 | 6 Permalink | Reply
  

  I thought he answered pretty well… how about you?

  I am just finding out about this Huckabee guy and his conservative values mixed with his more moderate to liberal views on social or civil justice issues make him an interesting candidate to watch. I don’t agree with him on everything (such as border issues), so don’t slam me and label me a Huckabee man, Alex. But I do think he’s interesting and worth looking at how he stands on the issues, I’ve heard he’s against tax cuts for the rich and that’s enough to pique my interest.

   
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  "holiness" quote

  ben 1:53 am on November 26, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  “Holiness is the grace of God working in our lives by the Spirit of God to increasingly transform us into the image and likeness of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). Holiness is not something we do or don’t do. Rather it is who we are and are becoming through God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”

  -E. Lebron Fairbanks, my former college (MVNU) president and one of my heroes when asked to define “holiness” in the Nov/Dec. Holiness Today

   
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  Everything Must Change

  ben 2:22 am on October 22, 2007 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  

  had to post about this.. just because in the first 20 or so pages, I’ve gotten excited about Christianity again… it feels like it’s about Jesus again and not about “us,” not about petty differences, and not just about getting people into the club. I figured I’d put this image up there, so people could draw their own conclusions about the book, me, and others based on the person of Jesus and His legacy to us in the form of the Kingdom.

  I am excited about thinking of the most serious issues of the world through the lens of Jesus and his message of the Kingdom. Besides the questions this book will raise and McLaren’s answers to these questions, I am excited about thinking through parallel crisis issues within my own neighborhood, city, state, country, and wrestling with them over scripture, dialoging with my faith community, and guiding my family. This is what I understand being a Christian to be.

  I won’t agree with McLaren on everything, maybe not much, but I am looking forward to being stretched and developing my own opinions on what appropriate actions should be taken to our own global situation, and what I can do locally to accomplish my part.

  interesting links:
  - JOHN WESLEY AND THE EMERGING CHURCH (pdf)
  - McLaren’s blog

   
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  new mode of thought

  ben 1:51 am on October 22, 2007 | 5 Permalink | Reply
  

  I was at my parent’s church this morning and felt some of the reasons the modern church isn’t able to connect with many of the young people of this generation. I’m not suggesting they should change. What they have going works for them, continues to exist and thrive for them and I appreciated singing the hymns I remember from my days in that environment (yeah, we literally sang 6 stanzas to one hymn). The steady number of people who attend that church let me know this traditional model has worked and still works for those who know and respect this tradition (yet many of them in this congregation are senior citizens). For someone like me who grew up in this type of church, hearing the way the gospel was presented, I remembered why this model bothered me and why I look back to church ancestor Wesley’s (we like him, right?) “quadrilateral” and think about the theology formation involved in modern ministry. When we think about who scripture was written to, we rarely think of the individual, largely written to groups of people, but we currently ask the individual to take it personally.

  My parent’s pastor kept emphasizing the message of Jesus as a personal decision and accepting Jesus as your “personal savior.” I question this appeal to a selfish decision, although at an early age I made a decision to believe and have been seeking continually on the journey to figure how I can be Jesus incarnate through who I am to my friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. I make the decision constantly to be a Jesus-follower (it’s a repetitious decision for me) and it’s becoming less and less about my personal salvation, but collectively how my faith effects my community. Everyone around me should benefit from my faith, and that’s my understanding of how the church started: small groups of believers concerned with following Jesus while keeping their culture. Their understanding of scripture was often decided community by community. I think without this understanding, we wouldn’t have Christmas or Easter as redeemed pagan celebrations from different redeemed cultures.

  Back to the individual, if we follow Jesus’ example and love our neighbors, strangers, and others, our ultimate goal is to have those others benefit their community by following Jesus also. I felt the warmth from the believers at my parents church. As I said previously, it works for them: it’s not a broken system for the people who function in it. But I think to reach people who use new media, and know and question more than the general public has at any time in history, we need to look through the lens of the Wesleyan quadrilateral and see what scripture said to the people of that time, what it says to the people of our time and how we apply it to our cultural context.

  I personally would like to see what develops through the next 50 or so years as people read scripture and look at it through the lens of our time and community through reason and tradition.

   
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  Servefest pic

  ben 9:07 pm on October 21, 2007 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  

  hey, lemme put up a picture from like 3 weeks ago that I was too lazy (or busy) to put up then. This is Kelly, Ben, me and Carey, Jess and JOE after putting in some work in for the neighborhood!

  

   
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  Faith and Deeds

  ben 3:40 pm on September 14, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

  18But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
  Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.
  -James 2:14-18

  good stuff. I’ve been consuming this today.

   
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  My City My God cover

  ben 10:04 am on September 6, 2007 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  

  Are you familiar with the “My City My God” Bible that International Bible Society (IBS) published 10 yrs or so ago? It is an urban youth themed edition that includes testimonies from teens about how Christ has impacted their lives. I know I personally used it with my teens and then a couple years back, I found out that Vince was included in it (with a different haircut though). We found it to be a great resource for our urban youth as they could relate to the testimonies featured in it.

  Now you can help International Bible Society select the cover for its upcoming “My City MY God” urban youth themed Bible, which features testimonies from Generation Xcel alumni as well as an introduction by Rudy Carrasco. Visit UYWIblog.com to cast your vote.