I saw a news report on TV yesterday about the decline in the baseball card industry. It’s way down and almost gone. You can read about here if you’d like too, meanwhile I have a few comments to share on this.

I remember when I was a kid that we all had at least a few sports cards. There were baseball and football, later they put out cards of Superheros, etc. I had a few, as did most of my buddies. No one I knew ever really caught the collecting bug when it came to cards though. I did catch the collecting bug for comics, and yes, I still have a lot of the early Marvel comics of my youth (in very bad condition most of ‘em!).

So now let me make it perfectly clear (to quote an old President!) that I couldn’t care less if the entire baseball card collecting hobby dries up and blows away tomorrow!  I’ll feel bad for those who lose money in it, but otherwise I just don’t care – not one bit!

In spite of that I still believe this is a story that we as Christians, and especially those of us who are church leaders, need to take note of and pay attention too.

Why?

Because of the reasons behind the card industry decline. Aside from the usual suspects of greed, incompetence and our current recession, there lies the real reason – and it’s the technology buddy!

Today you can  check anyone’s stats on the internet in a second, download and print out (if you wanted too, though I don’t know why you would!) thousands of pictures of just about any player, as well as watch video clips of them!

Who needs cards when you have all that?  Thus an industry and a hobby fades into history.

Is the Church in America ready for these kind of radical changes?  Changes that are happening right now and who’s full effect will be seen in ten to fifteen years at most?  Have we restructured our churches and ministries and practices so that they will appear relevant to a younger, tech savvy, generation?

Sad to say that the answer for most of us is a big fat NO! What most churches have done is to rename their old stuff, as if a fresh coat of pain and a new name is going to change things.

I assure you it won’t – at least not for long.

What’s really needed is a rethinking of how we do church in America, from top to bottom!  Many churches are doing this, but more to get on board.  At KCC we are in the process of reevaluating everything, and I expect this process to continue for quite a while.

I don’t know how it’ll end, or what we’ll need to do (or stop doing) in order to become a vibrant church for the 21st century. But I do know that God already knows, and has all the creativity we’ll need to make the change!

In a way, our SNL campaign ( which starts this Sunday!!!) is a part of this. New type of ministries and new ways to focus for the new world we find ourselves in.

Be there Sunday, and be sure to check out the SNL page on our site, it’s going to have just about everything there you’ll need!

I believe in the sun even if it isn’t shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even when He is silent. – Unknown

I like that quote because it points to the fact that Christianity is about truth, not feelings or perceptions. We are called to be people of truth, who live, love and speak the truth, and always do so in love.

We are called to be people who look at our universe, our world and everything in it from God’s perspective, not our own. Christians should be among the most discerning of people. Not blindly following the crowd, or doing something because “everyone else is doing it.”

Christians are called to test all things and hold onto what is true. (1 Thess. 5:21)  God wants us to be skeptical yet open minded, eager to research the facts so that once discovered we may believe in and live the truth (Acts 17:11)

Therefore we more than any other group of people ought to be driven to see into the core of things, to find out what’s really happening and then to deal with it. Instead of our churches being happy havens for those in denial, they ought to be places where we see the truth, hear the truth, and are lovingly urged to follow the truth, no matter what the cost.

Have you seen the old bumper sticker that says, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?” I love that one, but today I want to change it up a bit. Not that the original isn’t true, it is, but there’s more to it than that.

For a Christian who claims to believe in the Word of God and to be following Jesus, there’s at least one more way to look at that issue. Here’s my new version:

If you feel far from God – so what?

Jesus promised that he’d never leave or forsake us, so in this matter our feelings don’t matter! The truth is God is right there with you, whether you feel him or not!

So today, don’t worry about feeling close to God, just believe he’s there and get on with serving him in Jesus Name!

Yesterday I talked about getting ourselves ready for a real shaking by God.  God wants to shake us up, and some of use just aren’t ready for it!  But we’d better get ready, because ready or not Salt ‘N Light starts this coming Sunday!

SNL is all about letting God move you into being Salt and Light in your world, whether or not that world is work or school or where ever, God wants you to shine there!

So you know what that means right?  It means we are in for the spiritual fight of our lives! In that regard I found a great post on Blackfive yesterday. It’s written by Major Pain, former Marine. It’s perfect for all of us at KCC right now! Read what he had to say, follow the link to read it all (it’s short) and them I’ve got a few things I want to add as well.

There will be road blocks, you will need a plan “B”, you will succeed. Keep Moving Forward & Win the Fight! It’s not always going to be easy or popular; you may often question your own ability, or those around you. Keep Moving Forward & Win the Fight!…

One person can make a difference, you can make a difference. It’s the little things that matter, the individual that takes charge or the one that takes charge of others and Keeps Moving Forward & Wins the Fight! Expect friction, expect roadblocks, expecting them is half the battle to Keep Moving Forward & Winning the Fight!…

Do not get discouraged, have the will to find the opportunity hidden that awaits to be exploited, focus, concentrate and always no matter what, regardless of what your “fight” is, Keep Moving Forward & Win the Fight!

I couldn’t agree more. I learned a long time ago that if you will hang in there, be faithful, do your best, trust God and not quit – God will do amazing things through you! If nothing else you’ll outlast the enemy and accomplish what God has called you do to!

KCC is moving forward! We must remember that our fight is not against flesh and blood (Eph. 6). This is a spiritual battle, and must be fought and won in spiritual ways!

Are you ready?

Well ready or not, here it comes!

Okay, another Friday and here’s more Short Rounds for you. I’ve got some news and blog posts, plus the return of one of my favorite Christian musicians!

Exposing Oprah!

Finally, now that her rating are dropping, some of the media are finding the courage to admit what most of us already know – Oprah’s a kook! A nice lady to be sure, but a kook!

News of Interest

Why I Am Not A Republican, Reason # 5,379

Why I Am Not A Democrat, Reason # 5,463,875

Use The Force, Fluke!

Seeking A Better God - how the younger generations are thinking about God.

Shiite Luck - Good news for us, bad news for the poor crews!

An Organization Worthy of Your Support

The Warrior Legacy Foundation

The Return of Jennifer Knapp!

Jennifer Knapp Returns

Her Home Page

Blog Posts You Need To Read

Conflict At Coral Gables – James Kennedy’s broken legacy.

Gentlemen, We’ve Lost the Moon – moving account of caring for a ailing parent – I can relate.

Does Your Pastor Wear A Tie? – I don’t – here’s more reasons why.

For the first time ever I’m writing a post in response to FaceBook of all places!  Once I was talked into signing up for FaceBook and Twitter, I slowly began to see that they can be worth while. I know they are also a huge waste of time for many people, but that’s another story.

Every post I make here shows up on my FaceBook account, and of course on the walls of everyone who follows me. Yesterday I had some very interesting responses to what I wrote, and one in particular sparked quite a discussion. It’s that’s discussion to which I’m responding.

It all started when someone talked about not needing the church, and of just having a relationship with Jesus, because of being let down by Christians in churches, and someone else agreed.  I’m not responding to their personal situations per se, since I don’t know the details. I do know the ladies in question, they were both kids here at KCC when I was here the first time, now they are Moms!  Just goes to show how old I’m getting!

So, here’s the issue:  Can you faithfully follow Jesus while eschewing and avoiding fellowship and participation in a Christian Community?

The Short Answer:  No!

The Slightly Longer Answer: I think it’s very American to think that we can go it alone, since American culture is built on individualism. I have nothing against that by the way, but like everything else, it needs to be tempered if it is to be true. This is  a huge topic, so below are a few things I hope you’ll think about.

• God Created & Commands Us To Be In Community. In fact, God is, all by Himself, a community! That’s the doctrine of the Trinity. God created us in His image, and created us to need community. He commanded it in both Testaments, and everyone needs it whether we like it or not.
• You Can’t Live An Obedient Life Outside of Community. There are at least 56 commands in the Bible about helping one another, loving one another etc.  Read some of them here, and then explain to me how on earth you can say you believe and follow the Bible, while ignoring all that!
• Our Witness Depends On How Live In Community. As you may have read above in John 13:34-35, Jesus said the world would know us by how well we love each other!  You cannot do that in isolation from the Christian Community.

I think I know as well as anyone else and better than most, how awful churches can be, especially if you are caught in a church fight.  I’ve been lied to, swore at, stabbed in the back, lied about, accused of just about everything short of murder, and let down literally thousands of times.  All by Christians who were in church and often in leadership positions.

I’ll stack my history with the church up against any horror story anyone might have. Yours might be worse, but not by much I’ll wager.  Those of you who’ve known me a long time know what I’m talking about.

So here’s my last point for today: You’ll notice I’m still in the church, still plugging away, still trying to make a difference, now how poorly I do it.  Ever wonder why?  Well it’s not just because it’s my career, though at times that has played a role in it.  And it’s not just because I want to obey God and feel called to do this, although that plays a major role in it.

One reason I’m still here is that I refuse to let the hypocrites and losers and liars win. I refuse to let them control me! I get into enough trouble controlling my self, I’m not about to let them do it!

If I give up and walk away, that’s exactly what I’d be doing! So I’m here to stay, no matter who likes it or not, until God moves me elsewhere!

Just something for you to consider.

ARRRRRGH!!!

I opened my laptop here at the office this morning only to discover it’s crawling with those little tiny ants. In the time it took me to write that sentence I killed about 5 of them!!

I’ve had some trouble with them at home – but this is gross (just got another one!)!!!!!

In a very real way, I believe He is!

I believe that God wants to move in all our lives, and in all our churches more than we want him too.

I say this in the face of the fact that there is in fact precious little evidence in most churches of God doing anything! Oh, we are doing plenty that’s for sure! Tons of programs, special events, meetings, plans, etc. But the truth is that there are very few churches in America that are really growing.

Most churches grow by stealing (taking, receiving, whatever!) from other churches.  So while that particular congregation might get bigger, the Kingdom of God isn’t growing at all!

So you might be wondering what the deal is.  If God wants to move, and every church in America desperately needs him to move – why isn’t he moving?

My Short Answer: We don’t really want him too!

Oh sure, we say we want the church grow, most church members think they want their church to grow, but they don’t really.  You can see this is true by watching how churches react to change. They not only oppose it, but they oppose it vigorously!

This is done in spite of the clear fact that if a church is going to grow, then it not only has to change, but to keep on changing! The church was never met to be a static place where everything stays the way “it’s always been.” Instead the church of Jesus is all about change and the process that leads to that change happening in people’s lives.

Because the culture changes, our methods must change, otherwise we’ll become ineffective.  Witness the American church (and what’s left of the church in Europe) as proof positive.

When a person or group refuses to change, then whether they know it or not, they are choosing to die!

So choose life today, open up your heart to God and ask him to change it, and at the same time ask him to bring change to your church, that it too might live and live dynamically!

Like a lot of other people I find the fine art of people watching to be endlessly fascinating.  Our minds are endlessly complicated and amazing, able to do things that are hard to believe. But at the same time we find ourselves trapped into certain behavior patterns that hurt us, yet we just keep doing them.

Which is one of the reasons it’s so darn hard to be forward looking.

To keep your eyes focused on where you are going is so difficult that it’s nearly impossible. You have to make a choice to do that, and then keep on making a whole bunch of other choices to choose the choice you made eariler when you decided to be forward looking!

Whew – did that make sense?

Something happens or someone does something that hurts me. So I struggle to understand it and let it go and forgive as our Lord commands us.  I know this is the right thing to do. I know it’s the healthy thing to do, and I know it’s the smart thing to do.

But I can’t do it without God’s help!

Otherwise I just stay locked into looking at my past, reliving it, resenting it and reviling those who hurt me. And the worst part is – I really enjoy it!  It feels great!

For a while anyway.  We all know where that road ends however, with bitterness, hardness of heart and an all around ruined life.

As we move into the Fall here at KCC, and our SNL Spiritual Growth Campaign, we must choose to be forward looking. It’s been a tough year here at KCC, but so what?  God is still with us, Jesus is alive, and He’s calling us to move forward and impact Kingman for His sake!

That’s what SNL is all about, but it won’t happen if we don’t do a few things:

1. Make a choice to look ahead, and to get involved with all the major components of SNL!
2. Decide NOW to sign up as a Small Group Host
3. Work on setting aside enough time to volunteer at La Senita School, and show them what Jesus can do in the life of an individual.
4. Step up to the next level, choose to attend our Leadership Seminar on October 10th, and see what God can do in your life.
   
5. Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray for the leadership, members,and friends of KCC, pray for our community, and pray, pray, pray, pray for La Senita!
   

I’m asking all of you to step up, step forward and let God use you!

Will you do it?

I had an interesting discussion with someone after church yesterday morning. He was wondering who gave the dictionary makers the “right” to change the definitions of words. He was upset that some guy in an office in New York (or where ever), or even worse a committee in said office, gets to decide that a certain word’s meaning has changed.

Well there’s no doubt that certain words are loaded with meaning. Now days the word marriage is a loaded term our culture, as are other words and phrases like “death panels,” “single payer,” and “sorry.” (I’d love to rant about how we don’t apologize for anything now days, but that’ll have to wait till later!)

As I thought about this my mind was drawn to the word revelation.  Now’s there’s a loaded word! All sorts of people everywhere have revelations.  Well, at least they think they do!

When someone comes up to me and say that they have had a revelation do you know how I respond? My immediate response is negative, really, really negative! You know, the roll your eyes, deeply sighing, “Why me God?” kind of negative.

Far too often that response is more than justified. Why?  Because far too often the so-called revelation is just plain kooky! Which means the person giving it is about one step shy of being a kook themselves!

Want an example?  How about the guy who, several years ago during a very wet winter, decided that God has revealed to him that this was a sign!  Yes, and what did it mean?  According to him, and he said this on the local Christian Radio Station in the town where I then lived, it meant that God was going to pour out his Spirit on every one very soon!  Revival would break forth, blah, blah, blah.

Needless to say it didn’t happen.  Neither did that huge missile attack from Russia that some guy told me about last year!

So, I have to admit, I really hate it when people say they’ve had a revelation.

Which is too bad, because the word in and of itself, isn’t a bad word at all! The root meaning in the Greek is to uncover something that was previously hidden.  It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the second coming, prophecy, rain or nukes either!

It simply means something hidden to my sight is now uncovered.

In that sense we all ought to having little revelations from God on a regular basis.  Some new insight into scripture, some new understanding of myself, or perhaps a new realization of how I can do things (or maybe not do things!) that will help improve a relationship.

All of those are quite properly revelations.  It’s just too bad that we can’t call them that because the word itself has been high jacked by kooks!

Oh well…a rose by any other name right?

So get out there this week and have some solid, Bible based, rational rev…et … insights!

Yeah insights!  That’s the ticket!

I’ve got some good stuff for you this week – so enjoy!!

Little Known News

The Ghost Fleet of the Recession - amazing pictures of unused cargo ships sitting off the coast near Singapore.

New Rick Warren book in November – Get ready to rumble! It’s based on the Lord’s Prayer – beyond that who knows?

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers - new movie coming out – follow the link to see the trailer. It looks great to me!

Great Blog Posts:

Leadership is Lonely - This is always true!

Why I Believe The Churches BEST Days Are Ahead of Us – Interesting take from Perry Noble.

What Killed the Charismatic Movement - Very interesting thoughts here – I commented on it it was so good!

The Western Church – Not EVEN Virtual – good follow up to my post on the Virtual church!