Alan Goldenbach of the Washington Post writes the story of Herb Lusk, the Philadelphia Eagles tailback who started end zone prayers 30 years ago this month.

Because the links to these articles tend to become dead after a few weeks, see the whole article after the jump below.Read more

Last week I was driving from Memphis to Nashville on I-40 to attend a pastor’s meeting. I was scheduled to give the morning devotional, and I was running a few minutes late. About an hour and a half into the three hour drive I came across what I thought was a very rough patch of the road. The car started to shake and make a very loud noise. I quickly realized that it was not a problem with the road; it was a problem with my car. I had a flat tire. Read more

Several friends’ worlds are falling apart.  It’s a little too personal, immediate and raw to discuss on an internet blog, but kind of like the first year after college was “wedding season” this seems to be “disaster season.” 

And while I try to hide in humor, candidly, I am struggling to cope.  It is a lot easier to live in a world where bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people – where the question “why” has an answer.  But that doesn’t seem to be my world, right now.  It’s the “little things” – not war or genocide, but a friend who “just doesn’t believe this stuff anymore,” another friend who is exploring “alternative lifestyles,” the friend who got fired from a job, other friends dealing with engagements and even marriages being called into question.  And we talk, and at a certain point there’s a pause where I can’t hide in the listening anymore.  And while I want –desperately – to say the words that will change the situation and make it all better and comfort but also light the fire of inspiration, I realize all the words I am contemplating are too small to fill this great void that has opened up.

And then there is my friend Prosper, who just arrived back in the States.  Prosper Ndabishuriye is the former country director for Burundi for Campus Crusade for Christ.  In 1994, when Burundi experienced the same ethnic slaughter between Hutu and Tutsi as did Rwanda (the small countries border each other), Prosper left Read more

In August, three friends and I journeyed to Rwanda in search of stories of forgiveness and reconciliation between survivors of the 1994 genocide and those who slaughtered their families. It was gritty, soul-wrenching work. If not for grace, it might have been too much. But, grace breathed its fragrance around every stomach-churning story, every mother’s anguished moan, every orphan’s lonely prayer. And so, I invite you to journey with me for a few minutes, to peak behind the bloodied machetes at a few tender shoots of grace.Read more

Recently I attended a gathering of Christian men and women who are in the scrum of lives and missions that Jesus has called into being.  What the Lord is doing across the US, and across the world, in micro and macro efforts, inspired me. It seems perhaps trite to say that He is a huge God with a deep love for people and the world, but those thoughts came to mind again and again as I heard brothers and sisters tell their stories of Jesus’ call on their lives. I’ve not felt real spurs digging into me, but figuratively I felt spurs stimulating me to think more about Jesus, to love Him more, to love my neighbors more, and to be more focused in doing the work to which He has called me. These young servant-leaders whose stories I heard at the gathering—these men and women are laying their lives on the line. As one organizer said, “These people are all in.”

 

How are they all in? 

One works in publishing, not only reading broadly and deeply himself, but also seeking to find and nourish Christians who can write great stuff across market niches. As in, write such great content that it transcends the Christian book ghetto. Read more

I have a confession to make: I am a New Urbanism junkie. For those of you unfamiliar with my addiction, the Congress for the New Urbanism is a collection of architects, developers, city planners and concerned citizens that promotes the creation of neighborhoods, towns and cities that are sustainable and oriented around the pedestrian rather than the car (For a more in-depth look at New Urbanism and the Church, read Sidewalks in the Kingdom by Eric Jacobsen). Ever since taking a class on Community Planning in college, I have been a sucker for all things mixed-use, dense and urban. After all, who wouldn’t want to walk to work or live on a place where neighbors spend their evenings mingling on sidewalks, in parks and from front porches?

There are two things that really appeal to me about the New Urbanist agenda:

1) New Urbanist ideas address a wide variety of pressing concerns. Many of the problems facing our country right now arise from the fact that we spend vast portions of our days in our cars. If we can begin to build cities that allow people to walk, bike or use public transportation to get meet their daily needs, suddenly we are making huge strides regarding issues like global warming, dependence on foreign oil, chronic obesity, civic decline, loneliness, and rampant consumerism. Moreover, New Urbanism is designed to foster things like neighborliness, daily contact with strangers, and the full integration of the young, the old and the poor into society. In my mind, all of these issues are of great importance to the Church and the Kingdom of God.

2) New Urbanist ideas are mostly old ideas. Essentially New Urbanism argues for a return to building communities the way we did before World War II when people didn’t have the option of driving. While New Urbanists are certainly innovative, they are mostly advocating the return of ideas that were carefully conceived, time-tested and full of wisdom gleaned from generations of trial and error. Most cities in Europe, as well as older American cities like Boston, are prime examples of what New Urbanists wish to accomplish.Read more

Protestant Christianity has taken the brunt of the devastating winds of Western philosophy. Every corner you turn, it seems, there is damage. The difference between

New Orleans

and Protestant Christianity is that in

New Orleans

the damage is noticed. In Protestant Christianity, sometimes it isn’t. Some sincere Christians don’t see, for example, how the street-level fallout of Western thought has so often been inappropriately mixed in to our understanding of Scripture, in a way that castrates Scripture’s claims.[1]

Take, for example, the way a lot of people view stuff. “Stuff” (a most respectable philosophical term!) is what you feel, smell, hear, and your eyes light on. Now think for a minute of most people’s mental associations about the word, “spiritual.” Most people think it means, “immaterial.” That shows that people have a “default” that sets stuff and spirituality in opposition. People sometimes disbelieve that it could be spiritual to delight in stuff, or that God loves stuff. Such people feel that delighting in stuff can only be idolatry, or sub-par discipleship.

True, we know Genesis 1, Psalm 104, Colossians 1, John 1, Luke 24, and Matthew 19:28—familiar passages which proclaim God’s creating and sustaining all things for the sheer delight of it, the Lord’s incarnation and resurrection for the sake of the renewal of all things. But something blocks our gut-level living out of the Christian life from coming into accord with these transforming actualities. What we tend to live out is the maxim that God doesn’t care about stuff and we shouldn’t either. And when we do care about stuff, we just assume we are back-slidden and vain, or downright idolatrous.

          Jesus talked about the law a lot.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus intensified the law when he took the 10 commandments and said “It is not just your outward behavior but if you sin inwardly you have broken all of the law.” Then in Matt 22:37 he summarized the law with two prongs. He was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” He replied: “Love God with all your heart” (summarizing the first four). And then: “The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself” (summarizing the last six). Jesus made the law even more dangerous and intense than it was in the OT. He wasn’t explaining the ethical code for his followers; he was freaking people out so they would know their need for a savior. Read more

I have lately had my vision of heaven dramatically altered. You see, I have always imagined myself in heaven living in a beautiful palace and walking around on streets of gold. Every now and again, I might journey to the center of the city to visit Jesus, reigning on a throne of light with this Father.

But then I actually read Revelation 22. Notice carefully:

9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God...

Now, verse 9, I understood. The Church of Jesus gets called a “Bride” throughout the New Testament. And that particular truth has always been deeply gratifying. Along with the rest of believers throughout history, we constitute Jesus’ forever love, his spouse. And the angel invites John to come take a look at her. But what does he take him see? A city! The text does not say that the Bride dwells in a city, but that she IS a city. John’s visions in the Apocalypse are full of mixed metaphor, and the glory of the New Jerusalem is not that the Church will live out her days IN it, but AS it. Read more

A pair of spurs is a tool. Spurs are not cruel tools used to punish a horse. Used properly, spurs acheive results more quickly than kicking a horse in the ribs.
          David Stoecklein, Author/Photographer

David Stoecklein's insight about one of the horseman's most basic tools echoes the book of Hebrews: "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds."
       Read more