Life2gether

Here’s a brief description of Kenda Creasy Dean’s provocative book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church:

In Soul Searching, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that American teenagers have embraced a “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”–a hodgepodge of banal, self-serving, feel-good beliefs that bears little resemblance to traditional Christianity. But far from faulting teens, Dean places the blame for this theological watering down squarely on the churches themselves. Instead of proclaiming a God who calls believers to lives of love, service and sacrifice, churches offer instead a bargain religion, easy to use, easy to forget, offering little and demanding less. But what is to be done?

In order to produce ardent young Christians, Dean argues, churches must rediscover their sense of mission and model an understanding of being Christian as not something you do for yourself, but something that calls you to share God’s love, in word and deed, with others. Dean found that the most committed young Christians shared four important traits: they could tell a personal and powerful story about God; they belonged to a significant faith community; they exhibited a sense of vocation; and they possessed a profound sense of hope. Based on these findings, Dean proposes an approach to Christian education that places the idea of mission at its core and offers a wealth of concrete suggestions for inspiring teens to live more authentically engaged Christian lives. (Taken from Dean’s website)

• Buy the book here
• Read CNN’s take on it here

Did you see Al Michael’s interview with Brett Favre last night? I think it revealed a few things about why he came back another year.

1) Favre hesitated in making a decision to come back because he fears failure and he fears man. He said that he did not want to let people down either by playing or not playing another year.
2) Favre misses the camaraderie of being part of a team … he said there’s nothing like it!
3) Favre knows he will make a lot of money. No brainer.

Whatever the reason … I’m glad he’s playing another year for my favorite team — the Vikes!

My wife, Jaime, who is incidentally celebrating her birthday today, writes:

America’s Got Talent is one of my favorite shows.  It airs on Tuesday nights (and Wednesday for result shows) during the summer and goes until 11:00 pm, so my family is usually all in bed and I’m watching the end of the show by myself!  This last performance brought me to tears and I had to wake up Doug before going to bed to tell him about it.  I was just amazed at the gift that God has given this little girl.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you gotta see this…

Since my twin brother is a missionary in Japan, I found this quote to be quite fascinating in regards to community:

The Japanese word for human person is ningen, which literally means “between people.”  To be human from [their] viewpoint is to be together with others.  ”Community” is thus built in to the very nature of “humanity,” as the language serves to reinforce the strongly held conviction that the group comes first.

~ Joseph H. Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family, p. 20.

**BTW … for all you LBC folks, make sure to come out this Sun. night @ 6:30 to see my brother and his family as they share about “The Fight of Faith for All the Nations.”  Should be fun!

Tullian Tchividjian’s book, Unfashionable, has been a challenging read for me this summer.  I’ve been chewing on what it means to be an agent of renewal — to join God in his work of renewing all things.  I wonder what would happen if we took this seriously — to become missionaries who bring good news and good deeds to broken, hurting people.  Tullian writes:

The mission of the church is spiritual and physical, individual and cultural.  God wants us to involve ourselves in the rehabilitation of hearts and houses, souls and society.  We’re to care about the renewal of both people and the environment.  The requires word and deed, proclamation and demonstration.  God is renewing human hearts and recreating all things through his church.  This is our mission to the world (p. 62). 

My wife and I will be spending an evening with Spurgeon tonight at New Life Church in Louisville.  Obviously this is not your typical date night, but we look forward to it!  If you’re in the area, and able to go, it’s free and looks to be both entertaining and encouraging.  See you there!

My friend, Tom DeZarn, on his sneak preview of the movie, Despicable Me:

We recently saw a sneak preview of the movie, “Despicable Me.” Much to our surprise (because the trailers did not hint at this), it is a movie about adoption.  It is, in fact, a powerful and positive movie about adoption.  The content is appropriate for all ages and we strongly recommend it for the entire family.  It hits the theatres on July 9.  For those of you who are Steve Carell fans–he is the voice of the lead character, and with a Russian accent!

Looks like a great movie for the whole family coming soon.  Check it out here.

Brent Thomas:

In the end, LOST owed no one any clear answers because life gives us no clear answers. God often gives us no clear answers (at least from our perspective). Why should we expect a piece of fiction to do what life does not? Is that part of the role of fiction? Do we expect fiction to do what life does not and we’re upset when it somehow doesn’t? Isn’t part of the role of art actually to hold up a mirror to life? If LOST got us, even for a moment, wrapped up in a story greater than ourselves and thinking of deeper things, isn’t that enough? You may not like the way it ended, but it owed us no more answers that it gave. It was never about the answers but about the questions.  (Read the whole thing …)

I’ve been crazy busy lately, so this little video brought a much needed laugh!

Read about it here.  My twin brother is a missionary in Japan and teaches science to young kids.