Church

Today (Friday) is my normal day off and I decided to take a road trip to Sacred Heart Retreat Center in Sedalia.  Unfortunately, so did a high school group of about 50 loud teenagers.  I gave reading and contemplating the old college try but finally gave up. So, I packed up and did something I've not ever done before: I went to mass.  (I think I was in a reflective mood and a bit disappointed by my Sacred Heart experience).  I arrived in downtown Denver just as the noon mass was beginning.  The audience was an urban garden of people. Without a program, I followed the lead of an elderly Filipino lady to my right.  She knew what she was doing.  Or, everyone else was following her lead, too. After a homily and a few responsive readings, it was time for communion.  I took my spot in line and watched…

We do not need to manufacture great things for God; God is more than capable.  But here is the incredible part: God chooses to display his power within us.  As we make ourselves available to God, it is “his power at work within us.” This explains why we find ourselves serving in ways we never thought possible.  It is the reason why normal people do extraordinary things. Having spent fifteen years in California, I had the opportunity to watch people surf.  A good surfer is not deemed good because of her ability to manufacture the waves.  That’s impossible.  It is her ability to ride the right wave that makes surfing enjoyable. The same is true in your faith walk. Too often, we think it is our job to generate spiritual activity.  It’s not.  It’s our job to discern where God is moving and then align ourselves with his power. When…

This is the sermon I preached last weekend at the close of our Faith series. Obedient Faith from Mountainview on Vimeo.

I'm in a Wednesday morning Bible study with a group of leaders at our church.  We've been working our way through the book of Acts.  This morning we landed in Acts 19.  Tucked in verses 13-16 is a little story about a group of Jews who are trying to cast our demons in the name of Jesus.  It's not working. Finally, the evil spirit speaks up: "Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?"  That happens to be a great question to everyone trying to pass themselves off as something they are not. Then the demon-possessed man gives the seven sons of Sceva such a beating that they run off naked and bleeding (never a good combination).  Here's the result: "When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held…

Why do people in churches seem like cheerful brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?. . . On the whole I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return. -- Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk