So what are you reading this summer?  I could disclose my ecclectic and random reading list, but I’ll save that for a later post.

i want to tell you about another book I’m reading.  I’ve read it over and over again. It’s that good. 

It’s:

• unpredictable
• surprising
• astounding
• profound
• bizzarre

The book?  Yeah, you guessed it.  The bible.

I’ve actually been reading from 2 Chronicles, which next to Leviticus, has the rep of being the most boring book in the Bible.  I disagree. 

For example, when King Jehoram (a bad king) died, the bible records this epitaph: no one was sorry when he died.  Seriously, that’s in the Bible.  How would you like that to be written about you? Challenged me.  That’s for sure. I would so hate God to make that my epitaph.

How about a small country that defeated a world superpower because God was on their side?  And all they had to do was….sing.  Seriously (again). Read this. Made me think about how powerful our God is, and how much I underestimate Him.

There’s a ton more. And that from the second most boring book of the bible.  I just had to blurt on a couple of them.

I know this sounds cliche, but I’m hoping that the Bible is the best summer read you’ve got. Cuz I think it is.

What has grabbed you in your readings lately?

It’s not what happens.  It’s how you handle it. And the difference in how you handle it can make the situation go from a day breaker to a day maker.

Delayed flights, rain on days off, an unexpected bill, nasty reactions by people you were
counting on – they can all end up being day breakers, but they don’t
have to be.

That’s a life lesson that I keep having to relearn, but I saw a powerful example of it last Sunday at our Barrie campus. 

We’ve been a portable church for eight months now, and we pretty much have things down pat for set up and tear down, until last Sunday.  As we got ready to roll out Stairway to Heaven | Highway to Hell, almost everything that could go wrong technically did go wrong.

The schedule got messed up, so key video people didn’t know they were on.  We blew lights on the set.  We blew fuses.  We failed to capture the 8:30 service on video, which means everything was riding on getting the 10 a.m. captured well.  I even forgot to take up the offering at the 10:00 a.m. until gently reminded by our host team (and it was a pretty full theater too!)  Both services started late because of technical issues, meaning the tear down time was compressed, with dozens of people lining up to watch The Dark Knight for noon sharp.  I think our guests had a great experience (few of the glitches were actually visible), but it stressed our e-teams and tech teams to the max.

Here’s what I loved.  The kind of Sunday we had is classic recipe for finger pointing, frustration, complaining and grumbling.  Our volunteers did the opposite.  After the first service, our lead audio guy, Justin, simply wanted to high five all the guys who rushed in to save the day.  The tear down crew after saw the compressed time frame as a challenge, and everyone pulled together to get it done. Everyone (I mean everyone) handled themselves with poise, grace, and class.

I love these folks.

Made me think about a few things.  Gratitude for being able to be part of such a great team.  Challenge – to make sure I don’t let things that happen control my reaction. And finally, anticipation.  We get to do this next week and I’m pretty sure we won’t have half the issues we had last Sunday.

What tough circumstances have you faced and how has attitude made a difference?

We are into our summer series Stairway to Heaven|Highway to Hell, and I’m gearing up to talk about heaven this coming weekend. 

What are your questions about heaven?  What do you most want to know? What are you most afraid of? What puzzles or disturbs you the most about heaven?

Love to hear from you.

I love summer because it’s a time for me to rethink, to recalibrate and hopefully see things through fresh eyes.

Over the last while I’ve really been rethinking my preaching.  Particularly, I’ve been rethinking the target or aim of preaching.  It probably sounds weird to non-preachers that preachers would have "targets".  But when we communicate God’s Word, I hope we’re aiming to do something.  I think one of the problems with past preaching is that often preachers aim to accomplish nothing in particular, and we’ve been pretty effective at doing that. People leave unchanged.  Not good.

I’ve kind of mentally audited my preaching over the last year and think I’ve been misaligned a bit.  When I weigh the body of what I’m aiming for, I think by default I’ve been aiming more at the head than anything. Didn’t intend that, but I think that’s where I’ve ended up by a few degrees.

To sum it up, I think I’ve over-focused on changing our thinking and, through that, our actions.  But doesn’t most real, sustained life-change come from the heart, not just the head?  It’s often not that people are uninformed (although biblical illiteracy is high).  It’s often the case that people are unmoved.  We often only change when something moves us.

So as I get ready for these next few series, I’m refocusing on the heart as much as the head. I understand that speaking to people’s hearts is about  9 parts mystery (God’s work) to 1 part strategy, but I’m really praying that the messages and the experience of Sundays moves more powerfully into transformation.

When people leave, I don’t ultimately want them to simply know more about God and do something different as a result, I want them to have experienced God and be something different as a result.  Something mysterious happens when people feel prompted by God – and it is mysterious, because as much as we plan for things, preachers can’t orchestrate that.  To orchestrate that is called manipulation. Seen that, and I can’t stand it.  But we can anticipate an encounter with God.  We can open ourselves to it.  We can prepare our hearts.  And let God do the rest.  That’s where I want to be coming into these next series. I don’t think the difference will be night and day by any stretch, but a few degrees of adjustment becomes a significant change over time.

I don’t journal, but if I did, that’s what would be in it today.

What do you think? Comments?  Questions?  Perspectives?

I know the word passion has been on my mind lately.  But back at it again.

Shared a meal yesterday with Gary Lamb.  Almost four years ago, Gary planted a church called Revolution Church, and they’ve seen over 1000 people begin to attend their weekend services in that period. They thought about opening a second campus a few months ago.  It opens in like six weeks.  Ka-yikes.  That’s fast. And it’s fueled by raw enthusiasm.

Gary’s funny, controversial and deeply engaging.  But the thing I loved most about meeting him finally (we’ve blogged and messaged back and forth for months) was his passion.  He’s just red hot about ministry, vision, reaching people, changing communities and being used by Christ.  It was contagious.  This guy wants to win whole communities for Christ, and it just inspired me deeply.

Just before meeting Gary, I was in on a one hour session on building relationships through social networking by Carlos Whittaker. Loswhit, as he’s called, was so passionate about how new media builds relationships that he was contagious. He just oozes enthusiasm for what he does. 

Earlier in the day the lead pastors from the partnership churches spent a couple hours with Andy Stanley as we dreamed about what church in the next five years might look like.  Andy just turned 50 this year (he went public with that – no news here), but what I love about the guy is he’s thinking like a 20 year old church planter who’s dreaming about what to change to reach the next generation, not a guy whose leading on the most successful churches in North America and resting on his laurels. It was great to dream, plan and imagine with a room full of great leaders.

The week before I hung out all week with Reggie Joiner, who pioneered North Point’s traiblazing kids’ ministries and then went on to pioneer new ways of partnering church leaders with parents to help make the next generation fully alive.  He’s always trying to think of new and better ways to make a difference in kids lives.  Again, I guy who will do anything but quit.  The best, for him, is yet to come.

I love being around passionate people.  I want to be more passionate.  I want to be more excited about the Kingdom at 80 than I am at 40.

I’ll remember this trip for a while.  Great leaders. Great people.  Great ideas.  Great cause.  Great Saviour.  What’s NOT to be passionate about? 

Now home, where we I pray we can unleash some incredible passion in the name of Jesus into our communities that will leave them spinning and transformed.  Ready?  What are you passionate about that you think could transform your community?

Had a good time so far with our Strategic Partner friends here at North Point. Earlier today, one of the partners talked about the difference between entering a football stadium and entering a church.  Thought it was a good point.

Though it wasn’t his main point, the thought that struck me most deeply was that everyone in the stadium at a football game knows what’s at stake and what a win looks like.  It’s just so clear.

How come it’s not that way at church?

Think about your expectations this weekend.  What does a win look like on Sunday? I think for a lot of Christians a win looks like this:

• I liked the sermon.
• They sang the songs I liked.
• It met my needs.
• I felt good about it.
• I talked to some people and had coffee.

Is that really what a win looks like?  Biblically?  Missionally?

What should winning look like or feel like for us?  Would it be better if it was something like this?

• When our unchurched friends come with us and want to come back.
• When someone decides to follow Jesus.
• When someone gets baptized.
• When we feel God speak to us and we actually change because of it.
• When a child whose parents are divorcing realizes someone else cares about them, because a small group leader made a connection with her.
• When a 13 year old boy in Xtreme finds a kid like him who’s interested in Jesus.
• When a small group leader had a heart to heart with an 18 year old girl whose boyfriend just dumped her.
• When parents go home with their kids and begin to talk about faith with their kids. 
• When Christians actually grow in love (I’m increasingly convinced that love, not knowledge, is the key to maturity) and begin to respond to each other and the world with compassion.
• When we start praying for what breaks God’s heart (a dying world) and stop praying only for what breaks our hearts?
• When you invited a friend and they didn’t come this week, but they’re watching your life and might accept your invitation next month when you ask again.
• When we welcome a stranger.
• When we fill several trucks up with tons of food for those in need in our community.

I could go on.  But what should we start celebrating in our churches?  What does a win look like? 

If the win continues to be "I liked the message and the music, got some coffee and talked to someone", get an iPod and go to Starbucks. You don’t need church or the Kingdom of God.

So…what does a win look like to you?  What should a win look like to you?  What would give us all cause to celebrate on Sunday?

Spent a week hanging with a ministry leader who has become a good friend over the last three years.  One of the things I admire most about him is his ability to weather the storms of life with friends, taking them through good times and bad times and helping them come out the other side still alive in Christ.

In many ways, it kind of feels like he’s one of those rare individuals who is able to suspend judgment and show a strong, even love more than most of us.  It’s counterintuitive to human nature, because often the people he tries to help are deep in the gulf of real life crises.  Sometimes Christians run from those or judge their way out of intimacy more than Jesus ever would.

Being around him makes me want to be more like that.   My thought?  Let’s be a community that is more like that. People would come running.  I love the elements of that kind of love I see coming together at Connexus. We’ve made big strides in that this year.  Let’s accelerate that, and who knows, we may see more people want to get around Jesus than we ever dreamed. 

So earlier today I went out with some friends to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight.  In case you have been off the planet or confined to a basement no contact with the outside world, it’s the new Batman flick that accounted for 94% of all ticket sales this week and is headed straight into the top ten grossing pictures of all time.

It was a compelling movie. The joker as played by the late Heath Ledger is one of the most intriguing, attractive and disturbing villains of all time.  As I sat in a sold-out a theater (one of four in our cineplex alone) until 2:45 a.m. watching this film, I was struck by how many people are watching this story about the struggle between good and evil.  It’s a movie about morality, limits, the nature of good and evil and human cruelty, revenge and redemption.

Which, I thought, is exactly the story we preachers are supposed to tell every weekend.  It’s the story every person – including every Christ-follower- is caught up in every day.  It’s the story of our lives – the story of life.  And thousands of people lined up to watch it.  So many more people lined up to watch it though, than they line up to hear Christ-followers tell the story.   

I found it curious that clever film makers do a better job of communicating the drama of life than many of us who know God do.

You curious about why that is?  What are your observations?  Great movie…but somehow, we’ve got an even greater story bubbling underneath. 

I am often blown away by the emotional cost that ministry exacts not only on pastors and staff, but also on volunteers. As I’ve met with hundreds of church leaders over the last few years,
the subject comes up again and again.  Summer’s a time where a lot of people in ministry ask: can I do this for another season? Usually something steals our
passion and enthusiasm, and it’s just so hard to get back. How do you
recover?

How are you doing this summer?  Enriched?  Passionate?  Alive?  Or struggling?

I remember the first time my heart went dead — it was six years ago.  Our church at the time was going through a tough season, and it just about killed me.  I just stopped feeling things.  I went to a Christian counselor for the first time, and slowly my heart began to breathe again. 

The last few years have brought their share of issues too.  And I have felt my heart at times grow more silent than I really wanted it to.   Over the last year, my heart has gradually been coming back, and this summer, it’s starting to have moments of life and joy I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s like rain coming after a drought.  It’s so good, and more and more I see it as gift.

One test for me to see if my heart is working is simply whether I feel what I ought to feel when something happens.  If something great happens, do I feel joy?  If something sad happens, can I enter that sadness?  If something moving happens, am I moved?  When the answer is no, I worry.  When the answer is yes, I feel incredible gratitude to God.

Things that have helped me move from flat to feeling the thrills and joy of life again:

• Never quitting on God, even when I didn’t feel like praying or reading the Bible.  God is faithful whether we can feel him or not.
• Having good people you can trust around you.  Often, our hearts hurt when people we trust let us down.  The challenge is to simply not stop trusting.  Then the shutdown of the heart is inevitable.
• Getting in on what God is doing.  I think sometimes we can keep asking God to bless what we are doing, but to simply cooperate with what God is already doing is so much more refreshing.
• Believing the best.  Critics abound. Humbly learn what you can, but trust that God is doing to use it to reconstruct a better you.  I get stuck when I let the negative voices be the only voices and fail to hear the voice of God (and others) encouraging me to believe His promises.  It’s great to know that God still believes in all of us.

I’ve had some experiences in the last few weeks I won’t blog about…but will talk about when I get back.  Can’t wait to share it with you back in our community.

In the meantime,

• how are you doing
• what have you found helpful when you are struggling?

One of my prayers is that my passion and enthusiasm intensify as time passes. I think often the opposite happens to people.  The older the get, the less passionate and enthusiastic they become. Tonight, I was in a room with 1400 teens at Big Stuf. Listening to them worship with Steve Fee and hear Jared Herd speak inspired me, deeply.  It reminded me how easy it is to be passionate and enthusiastic when you’re young.

Passion and enthusiasm are interesting words, though.  Sometimes it’s easy to confuse exuberance with passion or enthusiasm. 

I got thinking about passion and enthusiasm in a way that made me smile tonight.  The word "passion" comes from a root word meaning "suffering" (as in the passion of Christ).  And "enthusiasm" actually means "filled with God".  Exuberance…well, it means to be lighthearted and cheery.

I think a lot of us get weighed down in our journey with Jesus because initial exuberance gets erased by the reality of life…even by suffering.  Funny, then, that two of the words that describe the qualities many of us aspire to have (passion and enthusiasm) spring from both suffering and the presence of God, not mood or circumstances. 

What life issues have dampened your passion, or when did you feel less than enthusiastic?  Maybe the challenge for all of us is to take our brokenness and discouragement to God and ask him to fill it. Somehow, passion that springs from suffering carries more compassion and resonance than passion that does not, and enthusiasm simply means to have the presence of God fill you.  I saw that in Jared tonight, and I imagined what it might be like to have 1400 kids step into the future fully alive in the reality of God’s presence even in suffering.

Here’s to a passionate, enthusiastic next generation.