The Most Embarrasing Thing My Wife's Ever Seen Me Do...

As my Aunt Mary so perfectly put, God has a sense of humor.

As the older of two in my family, I have the supreme honor of being able to tell embarrassing stores about my younger brother without any fear of retribution. I often share, when the subject comes up, how terrified my little bro is of any kind of flying bug. Flies, bees, even mosquitoes. I stretch out and then demonstrate the "Andrew Flail." I'm sure you've seen me do it before, and if not, just ask.

After telling the story and doing the move for my Aunt & Uncle, I headed home after a long day. As is our routine, I let the dogs out the back door to relieve themselves. When I opened the door, several moths were startled and flew around our exterior floodlights. I didn't want to have to round them up later, so I reached for the screen door, and then it happened.

Have you ever seen a cicada killer? If the hairs on your neck aren't standing up right now, you definitely haven't. They look like this. Bugs are definitely biggest in the south. Well as I was closing the screen door, one buzzed past my head and into my house.

As it turns out, I am not scared of flying insects. Instead, I am mortally terrified of huge flying insects. That is the only explanation I can offer for the reactions that followed.

I started screaming. I might have swore a few times. Rachel, who was changing in the bedroom asked what happened. I screamed back at her to stay in the bedroom. She asked why. I yelled "A Cicada Killer just flew in our house!". So she came out to investigate. Did I ever mention my wife is fearless? She grew up in Indiana, so it figures...

I had lost sight of the monster and immediately found the biggest magazine I could and rolled it up to defend myself. This, as it turns out, was a terrible, terrible mistake.

So we moved slowly around the living room trying to find it before it found us. And then it took flight. It flew from the couch, up to the ceiling and over the fan. I backed up against the wall and immediately started to panic and scream. Rachel asked "Where is it" and I immediately shouted back "ARE YOU SERIOUS? IT'S ENORMOUS!!!"

Well it flew down between the blades of the ceiling fan, hovered about a foot off the ground, and then made a B-Line (no pun intended) for me. I swatted as hard as I could ... One ... Two ... Three times, never connecting once. And then it landed. On me. More specifically, on my ... zipper area.

I backed up into the wall and shouted at the top of my lungs, tried to brush it off, and then I swung again ... One ... Two ... Three times (breaking the standing lamp next to me in the process), never connecting with the insect once. I did, however, connect all three times ... with my zipper area. The pain caused me to drop the unfortunately heavy magazine on the ground. The wasp flew down to the carpet and landed. My fearless wife ran over, grabbed the magazine, and then pounded the critter into the carpet. She then dropped the magazine, picked up her sandal and continued to beat the bug until she was sure it was dead.

I hope that you, the reader, take the following lessons away from this tragic and painful story:

1) Be nice to your siblings.
2) Don't make fun of the fears of others.
3) Only grab the lightest periodical available when dispatching household insects.

What Disc Golf Taught Me About Christianity this Week...

I play disc golf. Yes, it's a sport. No, you may not judge me.

There are some pretty amazing courses here in Charlotte, so I get to play without having to travel too far. This year, I decided I wanted to get more distance out of my drives, so I practiced a different grip. Yes, there are different grips. Shut up.

Ever since I started playing, I have used a control grip for everything ... drives, mid-range and putts. That resulted in more control, but less distance. So this year, I'm changing to a power grip. As the name implies, there is more power, but less control.

So I went out to Killborne Park here in Charlotte, and I made the decision to switch to the power grip. And something odd happened...

The third time I went to drive off the tee, mid throw, MY HAND switched from a power grip to the control grip. At first I was surprised, then confused, and then angry. How dare my own hand disobey ME! It's MY hand!

The problem is, that's what I trained it to do. Out of sheer muscle memory, my hand simply did what it has always done. Regardless what I wanted it to do, it was going to try to go on auto-pilot and throw the way I learned to throw. Unlearning is a frustrating process.

I'm convinced the soul has a "muscle memory" too. It's in this place that Christian disciplines like prayer, personal worship and devotional time become essential. If you teach your soul to live with them, eventually they will become auto-pilot. But if you teach your soul to live without them, don't be surprised when your soul argues with you to do something different. And the thing of it is, you can't even really get mad, because it's just doing what you trained it to do...

A Bit of Honesty

I don't blog very often. It's for a variety of reasons, but it's something I want to change. I happen to like blogging. I've run into a few roadblocks, so this post is an attempt to clear the air and move right past them.

First of all, I spend too much time deliberating about how I should come across in each post. "What do I want these readers to think about me?" Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but despite how I try, I'm not a philosopher. I'm not a political analyst. I'm not a successful businessman.

What I am is a 30 year old pastor and husband who went through some very trying times (including a church split), lost all interest in the church as a whole, went through a period of depression, and then came out of it with the help of an amazing wife and a loving, gracious, and patient church. So when I write, that's what you're going to get. That's my filter. That's my history. And if I live as though it never happened, then the lessons I learned during that time would be wasted. So no more denial. I hope that's cool with you.

Moving on.

Also, because I'm a perfectionist, long blogs are exhausting. Revising. Linking. Fact-checking. I have 10 great blog ideas, but the thought of them is completely debilitating, because I feel like I have to get them perfect. Well I don't. So my blogs are going to be shorter and to the point.

So here's to short & to the point...

Love may Win, but "Love Wins" does not...

I know it's been a while since I chimed in about Rob Bell's most recent book, "Love Wins." Well I've read it, and it's already been passed around to people who were also curious and wanted to see for themselves what it was all about.

I've also had plenty of time to talk to friends, family and mentors about it, and it's comforting to know that after reading the book, we're coming to a lot of the same conclusions.

I went into reading the book with a high degree of optimism, because I remember just how much controversy surrounded "Velvet Elvis" when it came out, and how disappointed I was with the fundamentalists' grasp of what Mr. Bell was actually saying with that book. It seemed to me that so much of what he said was taken out of context that I gained a level of respect for his musings.

Final Conclusion: I both recommend "Love Wins" and warn against it. I recommend the first 2 chapters, and I caution the reader to be careful with everything following. Here's why...

The first two chapters are like an inoculation for the Church to remember that we believe in a more Biblical understanding of the kingdom and the people of God as both present and future. We're not supposed to simply occupy our time with churchy things until we get to really let loose after death. We're supposed to be, as a church, a bastion of God's love here on the earth, reaching out to people, because that's what God cares about above everything else: reaching hurting people. The first two chapters inspire a refreshing amount of hope, regardless of the background of the reader.

Beyond those two wonderful chapters, proceed with caution. First of all, because the method of Mr Bell's writing is very ambiguous and asks a great many more questions than he dares to answer or even attempt to lead the reader to answers. Socrates was a master at this ... he asked questions that led his students to answers. Mr Bell's questions seem to only lead to an agnostic void ...

Yes, ask questions; Yes feverishly pursue answers as well.

My second and most important caution has been echoed by every single Bible scholar and pastor whose opinion I've solicited: Rob Bell's logic, reasoning and exegetical conclusions take ENORMOUS leaps from question "A" to his own conclusion "B" that simply can't be made without a great deal more support. This is manageable for someone who is mature, but for someone who is perhaps more impressionable, it's just downright dangerous.

Starting Over

I absolutely hate putting together furniture. I'm pretty awful at it. Ask my wife, she's seen me in action. You know that place on instruction manuals that tell you the approximate assembly time? I've begun to simply add 50% extra time for myself to know how long it's actually going to take.

At our home, Rachel has a room that is dedicated as her photography studio/office. I also have a space of my own. Right now it's the catch-all room of the house, but before that, it was my study. I have a love of books, and coming from 3-too-many years of college, I have plenty of books to love. That also means that I have plenty of books to find shelves for. So in our second year of marriage, we invested in 3 identical bookshelves from Target.

When I set out to put together the first one, I was confronted with something I hadn't ever handled before ... cam bolts and locks, paired with wooden dowels. Now I'm sure you have some experience with these if you've ever put together office furniture. I have come to appreciate them and loathe their design all at the same time. I felt like I was making extremely good time (for me) and was ready to put the backing on the bookshelf, and then I saw it. The framing on the back of the bookshelf was backward, and because of that I couldn't complete it properly. The backing of the shelf was step #26. The framing was step #4. The cam bolts and locks had lied to me, and I didn't notice it until I was almost done.

Hence my hatred of office furniture.

As a perfectionist, I couldn't just Jerry-rig it to work as it was, so I was left with 2 options: Scrap it for firewood or work my way backward and start over. So I began the arduous process of taking it apart, lock by lock ... dowel by dowel. And no, I didn't whistle while I worked. I mostly grumbled incoherently, throwing in a profanity or two ... or twenty. In any case, I wasn't happy. Eventually I got it together properly, and then was careful not to repeat my error in the other bookshelves. They look marvelous.

On May 3rd, I will celebrate my 15th year of being a redeemed man, sold-out for Jesus and serving Him with everything I have. I'm a Life Pacific College Graduate, as well as a Life East alumnus. I've served several pastors in several churches in a variety of ways, but I find myself in an odd place at this major adult benchmark... You see, a little over a year ago, I discovered that in all of my effort and work at being a Christian man, somewhere along the way I skipped a step. I missed a detail. There was no way around it. I could not continue forward to embracing the destiny that the Lord had for me because something was off. Something in my framework was backward, and it couldn't be ignored. And for the last year, I've kicked and grumbled and swore under my breath (and at the top of my lungs), because I was working my backward rather than forward. I was undoing everything just to get back to step #4. It's been a painful process, but one I think was absolutely vital to my future as a man after God's heart.

Today at church, while listening to Pastor Dale speak, something settled in me that hadn't been settled until today: "If I am being undone so that I can be a healthy member of the body of Christ for the next 15 years, it's absolutely worth it." Being disassembled is infinitely better than being discarded and used for firewood. So tonight, after the blog post, dinner and some family time, I think I'm going to go upstairs to those bookshelves, grab two of my first Bibles (A blue pocket sized full Bible and a red leather bound New Spirit Filled Life Bible), and pick back up at step #4.

To Pastor Larry and Pastor Dave "Andre Agassi" Barndt, thank you for giving me those Bibles as a teenager and insisting that I mark them up as much as I wanted to. Without your love, starting over would be much more difficult. And to Pastor Dale Jenkins, thank you for fanning the flame and being like Jesus; "a smoldering wick He will not snuff out, and a bruised reed He will not break."

Here is the New There

I love tuning forks.

I seriously do.

During my brief time at Radford University, I belonged to A Cappella groups that would perform in public places, most of which didn't warrant the use of a full size pianos to get our starting notes. So we brought tuning forks. If you don't know what they are, google it. Go ahead ... I'll wait.

In the movie Tin Cup, Kevin Costner's character says that a well-hit golf shot is like a tuning fork going off in your loins. And it's a funny way to think of golfing, but I know what he means. I've only had 1 or 2 golf shots where I felt the "That's what it's supposed to feel like" after the swing. I've felt it more playing disc golf, where when the driver releases out of your grip off the tee, holds that tight line down the fairway and makes the turn at the perfect moment. It's not a technical moment. It's something you just feel.

You know that feeling?

Reading Chapter 2 of "Love Wins" by Rob Bell, I had one of those moments, but it was the first time I can remember that was a spiritual tuning fork moment. To summarize, if you haven't read the book yet, Chapter 1 deals with the not-so-simple nature of salvation/faith. By the way, this was what I read last time that wouldn't allow me to continue reading. Chapter 1 asks a lot of questions. Chapter 2, on the other hand, begins answering them , starting with the nature of Heaven and how we relate to it.

Rather than paraphrasing, here is a trail of quotations that led to my moment...

"How we think about heaven, then, directly affects how we understand what we do with our days and energies now, in this age." ~p44

"Taking heaven seriously, then, means taking suffering seriously, now. Not because we've bought into the myth that we can create a utopia given enough time, technology, and good voting choices, but because we have great confidence that God has not abandoned human history and is actively at work within it, taking it somewhere." ~p45

"Jesus teaches us to pursue the life of heaven now and also then, anticipating the day when earth and heaven are one.

Honest business,
redemptive art,
honorable law,
sustainable living,
medicine,
education,
making a home,
tending a garden --
they're all sacred tasks to be done in partnership with God now, because they will all go on in the age to come. In heaven, on earth. Our eschatology shapes our ethics. Eschatology is about last things, ethics are about how you live." ~p46

"A proper view of heaven leads not to escape from the world, but to full engagement with it, all with the anticipation of a coming day when things are on earth as they currently are in heaven." ~p47

When I got to the words "They're all sacred tasks", I had to stop reading, because I started sobbing uncontrollably. It wasn't crying. It was deeper than that. It was like a tuning fork being struck in the deepest part of my spirit and resonating "I knew it. Thank God someone said it."

Rachel loves photography, not because of the prestige, but because of the deep belief that she is helping to shape this age (aion) and will change the world using that medium. For her, it is a sacred work with sacred purpose. Because of her perspective, she probably will change the world...

I love tending to people and anything that is alive. When I care for my wife, our dogs, the rose bushes and the lawn, there is a part of me that knows that I'm "about my Father's business." They're each a sacred work; which I sense that I'm partnering with Him every time I do them.

There is something intensely freeing about seeing seemingly secular, mundane, ordinary tasks as sacred tasks. It's a feeling and a heart understanding that I hope I never lose.

For those that can remember the movie Chariots of Fire, it's saying the same thing as what the character Eric Liddell is known for saying: "I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure..."

For all the skeptics, Rob Bell is not saying that Heaven doesn't exist. What he is saying is that Heaven is much more expansive than the current popular tradition of it, which is simply a place away from here that we'll eventually go if we're good enough.

"Love Wins" by Rob Bell, First Impression

Yes, I know, it's been a while since I posted a blog. Please forgive me for springing this new post on you so suddenly.

If you follow me on twitter or are a friend on Facebook, you know that I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived" by Rob Bell. It took me a few days and a few trips, but Barnes & Noble came through today.

I sat down to start reading, and I stopped 20 minutes later. But it wasn't because I was offended or offput by anything that was said. I was so astounded at the preface to this very controversial book that I had to stop. I'll read it 2 or 3 more times before I make my way through the remaining 190 pages, because it's worthy of the attention.

Rather than quoting text or citing specific examples, I'll leave you with a brief first impression, in the form of a series of statements. Guess what that means... you're going to have to read it your darn self (that is, if you want to agree or argue with me).

I believe that Rob Bell has a greater grasp of the complexity of scripture than his most skeptical theologians and/or scholars.

I think that the reason this book has so enraged the Evangelical community is that the author asks questions that have been largely tossed aside by others. The preface is 80% questions and 20% research or statements. The danger with tossing aside questions about Jesus and the nature of salvation is that we can also toss aside the people sincerely asking them as well.

Most of the quotations that I've read in blogs, tweets and articles that are in opposition to the orthodoxy of this book are found in the first 10 pages. I wonder how many of those critics didn't actually make it throught the rest of the book...