Born Sinners or raised sinners?

I thought this might start a interesting conversation.

Starlit Platoon

A side project from one of the members of super chic. It’s fresh, not amazing, but worth a listen. they do have one song you can download for free that’s awesome. It’s called “Ocean View”. I can’t stop listing to it. Plus they have half a dozen other songs you can listen at their Pure Volume site.

Emily

This is a old piece I found when I was consolidating some old zip disk.

Inspire Me 2

Here’s another one of my “inspire me” pics I made. You can click on the picture to take you to my Flickr page.

Book Review

It’s kind of a old book, but it was a great description of who Jesus really was. He makes one great point that I couldn’t get over. He said ” Christians still can’t get over the fact that the founder of their faith  was Jewish, and he never converted.”

If the only Jesus you know is “American”, you need to read this book.

Why Do You Believe In God?

I watch Boston Legal, It’s a terribly brilliant show. Allen shore one of the lawyers who is crude and callus. Was dealing with the question “Why do you believe in God”? It got me thinking about myself.
How many times have you heard the response “well because..”We have no good reason. I wonder as Americans, do we really believe in God because we are convinced without doubt, the evidence is overwhelming, that he has to exist. Or Do we fall victim to the “law of first mention”.

Most people who love ford cars, had a ford as their first car. Most Coke lovers drank Coke before Pepsi. Most people have only a yahoo email, because it was the first email they were introduced to. People fall into a pattern of being faithful to anything that is first in it’s category. I can’t help but wonder if this holds true for which religion you believe too. As Americans we are introduced to “Christianity” at a young age, before we learn about Buddha, or Islam, or any other religion. So are we creatures of predictable habit? You hardly ever meet Muslims, or Buddhist, or Jews who convert to Christianity. They hold tight to their “first” religion.

Whats really interesting is Jesus’ disciples converted from Judaism to Christianity. And the Bible say it was because of what they “saw and heard”. They believed because of what they physically saw with their eyes, and heard with their ears.

How many Christians today can say the same thing?

Church of the consumer

Down load article here

I read this great article about how Americans consume God like a product. The same way we consume Starbucks. We buy it because it makes us cool, it lets other people know we’re cool. But when we’re done with it we throw it away. God becomes just another product Americans consume. For social reasons, it lets your friends, and co-works know your a good trust worthy person. We go to church to  network, to take a break, to feel better about ourselves. But when we wake up Monday morning nothings has changed. Very little of what we hear in church gets past our internal filters. Because if it did we would be forces to make a decision about whether we believe that or not. It’s much easier to take what we want, apply it how we want, and discard the rest.

But it’s not just people who go to church who do this, it’s the churches too. Churches are guilty or consuming the people who attend them. They find someone who knows a skill, ask them to volunteer, so they don’t have to hire someone. Then they suck them dry until the point that person can’t even stand the thought of going to Church. It’s even worse for people who work in a church. 90% of full-time pastors leave the church after 10 years and never come back. They have been consumed.

The church disconnect

The numbers don’t lie. Half of people who call them selves “Christian” don’t even go to church weekly. There is a huge disconnect between people and church attendance. Which raises the questions. Why arn’t christian going to church? How do you get Christian to stay in church? Can you be a real “Christian” and not go to church?

In my younger years I thought missing church was a sin, it took top priority in my life. The older I get the more I realize “church” is what happens off of church property. Sunday morning becomes more like taking your car to the gas station when it’s empty, your filling up. But the real driving comes on the freeways. For my it was just realizing missing church doesn’t mean you turn in your ‘Christian Licence”.

But that doesn’t answer the question of why arn’t christian going to church?

Inspire me

Every once in a while I put together something like this, just to keep me motivated.

I’m a maven

:One who seeks to pass his or her knowledge on to others.

You might be familiar with this word from Malcolm Gladwells book “Tipping Point”. Mavens are people who collect information. Then they store it away until they find themselves in a position where someone else can use it. A lot of teachers tend to be mavens. These are people who are always gathering news clip, videos, blogging, reading, researching for no real reason other then to store it away. You have friends who are maven, think have you ever asked a certain friend about a new band. Because he’s in to music, goes to concerts, buys CD’s weekly, works in the music industry, he’s a music maven.

I collect “God” information,  about churches, faith, Christians, etc.. I’m a maven.