This is my last post before Christmas – and I won’t be doing any more posts till after New Years unless something really hits me – so I’m reposting this “classic” for you!

I bet we’ve all had more than our share of embarrassing Christmas moments haven’t we? I know I have!

My all favorite Christmas movie is the classic A Christmas Story. Yes I realize it has no real spiritual content, but man it’s funny! It just cracks me up and I enjoy taking a brief trip back to a simpler and in many ways better world as well.

One of my favorite scenes is Ralphie’s Christmas Day humiliation. If you’ve seen the movie – and you have seen it haven’t you?? – you know what I’m talking about.

Poor old Ralphie has to put on the worst outfit a boy could possibily imagine! There he is below just exuding shame and degradation!

So I’ve decided to bear my soul here – and share with you one of my worst ever Christmas humilitions! It was done as a ministry to my church – and I don’t know if I’ve ever been the same since!

Warning – these pictures are BRUTAL! So you might not want to let your kids see them! If you are brave and prepared – click the link below and experience my Christmas Shame!

OH – THE HUMANITY!!!!

Yes, I played Psalty in a church Christmas play – years ago now! You can see back then I didn’t have any grey hair!! I was also 70 some pounds heavier but you can’t see that.

Here’s one more for the sadists among you!

Can you top this???

If I asked you the question, “What is the essence of Christmas?” What would you say?

If your answer was giving, you’d be right on the money! “For God so loved the world that he gave…” (John 3:16) From a theological perspective you can’t take the giving out of Christmas and have anything worth having still there. God giving us His grace in the Person of His Son, that’s what Christmas is about.

But today I’ve been thinking about the human side of Christmas. What’s the essence of Christmas in the human experience? You could say giving and be completely correct – and all the merchants out there are hoping you will! Buy and give – that’s what makes the economy hum!

You could give many other answers also. But the one I’ve been pondering of late is waiting.

As a child Christmas is all about the waiting. That long, seemingly endless wait for the year to crawl by to bring you to another Christmas. I remember thinking it would never come! In my young life a year seemed to take forever to pass. You waited and waited and waited, and then finally it was Fall and time to cook up the Christmas list! Wait another eternity and my parents were ready to see it, and then yet another dreary wait for the big day to arrive – and all those presents that would await me under the tree!

Well, that was then and this – this is now!

A year no longer seems to take all that long at all. In fact as I age I experience what nearly everyone does, time seems to speed up every single year. And I no longer feel that incredible anxiety about what’s waiting for me either.

But waiting is still a part of the season. I wait to see who’s going to still be here to do the work of the ministry. I wait for those two weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years for the down time it brings. Down time I want and need. I wait for gifts I’ve purchased to arrive so I can give them on time.

This year there’s all that and more flavoring the season. And I’m beginning to think that all waiting, is eventually and ultimately waiting on the Lord. He is soverign, and even if He doesn’t make the person in front of me drive so slowly, He’s still the Lord of all.

So this year Christmas to me is a parable of trust, faith and hope in the Lord.

Maybe that’s what it ought to be every year?

You’ll find news posts today and tomorrow, but past that I’m not planning on anything until after the new year. That doesn’t mean I won’t post something because I never know when something might strike me.

Just no promises!

So enjoy your Christmas and New Years, and I’ll be giving my little brain a break and be back with new stuff in the new year!

I found the following quote here, it’s typical of the late Dr. Peale.

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
~Norman Vincent Peale

Perhaps that’s what happened for Dr. Peale at Christmas time, but it’s sure not true of everyone else.  In fact it’s not true at all. However the sentiments expressed above are the perfect example of the kind of romanticized nonsense that has surrounded Christmas.  Everyone talks about “the Christmas Spirit” as if it’s something real, when it obviously is not.

Like everything else, Christmas is what you make of it, and for years our culture made it a time to be nice, give gifts, and express all sorts of noble sentiments you knew you’d be ignoring the other eleven months of the year!

Now to tell you the truth, I really don’t care if people in general think this way or not.  It’s not exactly a bad thing to be nice, gather together as a family, give to the poor, etc.  That’s all good.

But what I am concerned about is when I hear Christians express this kind of nonsense! Then it becomes dangerous, because when we talk like this, we are separating Christ from Christmas.

And without Christ Christmas is a big fat ZERO!

Joy was expressed on that first Christmas because Christ the Savior was born! Nobody thought about getting together with their family and overeating!  Not one of the citizens of Bethlehem had maxed out their credit cards in preparation for that day. The original Christmas was a huge surprise, and was about one thing and one thing only – the Son of God and Savior of the world had arrived!

And that’s all folks!

So have a blast this Christmas season.  Enjoy whatever traditions you or your family has.  Be merry and happy and enjoy the love!  Just do me one favor if you would please -

DON’T SEPARATE CHRISTMAS FROM CHRIST!

Put him in the center of your heart and mind, and let him use you this Christmas season to touch a change a a few lives. Now that would be real cause for joy!

It’s one week before Christmas, and I’ve got lots of good stuff here for you – enjoy!

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When the Pastor Suffers

Success.  We’ve heard all about it for the last 30 years or so. You can read books on it, go to seminars that “guarantee  ” it, and of course you can pay out big bucks and hire a personal or life coach who will walk you through all your problems and help to make sure you’re successful.

The trick with success of course is trying to come up with a definition that makes sense to most people. Good luck on that one! How do you know when are successful? Are you successful when you think you are, when others say you are, when you’ve reached the apex of your chosen field, or is it something else?

What I’m talking about today isn’t about succeeding in a particular field of endeavor however.  Because when we reach the end of our lives, and when we stand before God, I don’t think either He or we will, in that moment, care much about how professionally successful we were.

However we will care about how “successful” of a person we were.  Yes, we’ll care a great deal about that.

Let me give you an example.  Have you ever known someone who’s been outstanding in his or her field, is held in high esteem by many, but who is, in the final analysis, just not a good person.  Not only are they unhappy, but most of the people closest to them are unhappy as well.

Examples of this abound, from Elvis to Howard Hughes to O.J. Simpson and perhaps Tiger Woods as well.  Successful, thought of highly by the public, but in their personal lives, huge, colossal failures of the first order.

Like almost all Pastors, I’ve struggled with the whole concept of success in the ministry. (Unlike most of them, I’ll admit it!) Because let’s face it, if the Mega Church Pastors are what success in ministry really is, then the vast, overwhelming majority of Pastors are doomed to failure.

After all, how many Mega Churches (churches that average over 2000 on a Sunday) will your average small and medium town support?

Oh yes, that has bothered me quite a bit through out my ministry.  But lately I’ve come to think that God’s a lot more concerned with who I really am than he is with a lot of other things.  After all, in a few years I’ll be dead and gone, and it won’t be long after that that no one living will even know I lived, much less who I was or what I did.

The real issue is being  faithful to Christ’s command to become his disciple and to become like Him!

If I can make real progress towards that – then I’ve been successful as a person, regardless of whether or not I was considered successful in this life.

This is supposed one of those ironic posts, that tries to be kind yet poke fun at something that I’ve come to find increasingly annoying.  Just a warning for those of you who don’t do irony well.

Why wouldn’t a blogger write a book?  Obviously if you are writing a blog on any kind of regular basis then you have some interest in writing and you probably have something to say as well,  right? It would seem a very natural extension then to write in a longer form and produce a book.

Of course it’s natural, and it’s not all that unusual either.  Quite a few bloggers have published books, several seem to have become regular authors now.  I imagine that most of the rest of us who haven’t published a book yet, dream about it incessantly.  And I suppose that a few of us have gone over the edge into obsession about it all.

I’ve read and reviewed several books written by well known bloggers here on my blog. Most of them were good, some were outstanding and I’m glad I read them because I’ve learned from all of them.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that bloggers shouldn’t write books, and I groan a little every time one of the blogs I follow regularly announces a new book is coming.

Why?  Simply this.  For most of them publishing a book ruins their blog. Instead of writing pithy, interesting and insightful posts like they used too, they now spend most of the time pushing the book!  Here’s where you can get a sample chapter, here’s where you can buy in bulk for a discount, here’s where I’ll be signing the book.  Etc., etc.  Blah, blah, blah!

It’s not that I mind them using their blog as a tool to promote the book. That’s fine.  But when that’s just about all they do with the blog anymore, then I have a problem. I started reading their blogs because they spoke to me and helped me.  Now they are just trying to sell me most of the time, and I don’t need that.

Just today I dropped several bloggers from my RSS feed, two of them were dropped for just that reason.

I hope they keep writing and that their books do well.  Heck, I might even read and review them here.  But the truth is that I don’t need to be checking my RSS feed several times a day only to find a glorified sale pitch!  Sorry guys, but that’s how I feel.

Oh well, I guess reading fewer blogs is one way to save some time and make my life simpler isn’t it?

This review in Two Words:  Instant Classic!

Now for the slightly longer version!

Simple Church by Thom S. Rainer & Eric Geiger has been out for about three years now.  I hadn’t heard about it till this year, and have just finished reading it last month.  Yesterday the Staff and I finished going through the book as a group as well.

I called it an instant classic because of the impact it’s had and is having on my thinking.  I can’t even count the number of church leadership/growth/whatever books that I’ve read.  Most of them have their good points, but are quickly forgotten. A few however stand out and really shake up the way you think about things.

Simple Church is one of the latter.  I haven’t read a book that excited me so much since reading The Purpose Driven Church so many years ago.  In fact, although Simple Church has nothing to do with PDC or Rick Warren or Saddleback, I kept on finding a lot in it that reminded me of the Purpose Driven Church.

To my mind it’s almost (not quite, but almost!) a new way to apply many of the underlying ideas in PDC.

The authors began with the idea that modern American churches are incredibly complex.  So they did a huge research project to see if complexity had anything to do with how dynamic a church is and how successful they are at disciple making.

The results of this survey won’t surprise many in the ministry, but probably will many church members.  The more complex a church is, the worse job it does at disciple making!  It should also be noted that often spills over into evangelism as well.

After studying many churches, the authors go on to share a process that they saw in many of those churches.  Their study found four key elements that are needed to make the process really work.

Churches need clarity, alignment, movement, and focus. Clarity is being crystal clear about the church’s purpose, so clear it can be stated in a single simple  phrase. Movement is making sure there’s a clearly defined process of spiritual development that runs through the ministries of the church that fulfills that purpose. Alignment is the process of making sure that all the ministries and programs are actually contributing to that, and that  people move  through them smoothly. Finally there’s  focus, which is saying “no” to everything that distracts the church from its purpose.

Needless to say, it’s that last one that’s the real kicker in all of this.

In a culture that is constantly pushing us to be busier and busier, and to complicate our lives more and more, this book is a much need push for us to stand against the tide.  I believe it’s so counter cultural that it will be seen as  seditious by the majority of American Christians who have been taken captive by the culture on this point.

I hope you read it, I’m giving it my highest recommendation!

I’m betting it’s more of the latter than the former, but then again I could be wrong!!

What am I talking about?  Just this:

Sure, she’s made some mistakes. But now Ashley Dupre, the former escort who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer, is sharing what she’s learned in her new sex, love and relationship column — exclusively in the New York Post.

Yes, that’s right!  Now you too can become a paid, professional news paper columnist!  All you have to do is take money in exchange for sex, do it long enough and be good enough at it to reach the higher ranks of your “profession,” and only say your sorry and quit after you’ve been caught!

The heck with all those pesky journalism degrees and training!  Now you can be a published writer, and give all sorts of dangerous, damaging advice about things you know know nothing about, by making sure the guys who pay you for sex is both rich, powerful, well known and not too bright!

Of course, this really doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me, and probably not to you either. We’ve seen it before, and no doubt we’ll see it again.  After all, we mustn’t be judgemental!

So you now have a young woman who no doubt needs counseling herself, giving advice based on what?  Not education, but sin.  If you sin enough, you too can tell others how they ought to live their lives.

If we’re going to be consistent about this then in about three years plan on seeing Tiger Woods start his new career and replace Dr. Phil on TV!

You also might want to remember this the next time you hear newspaper people whining about how their circulation is declining! When the internet started journalists complained about how anyone could say anything on the net, and it wasn’t professional or edited or reviewed like their newspapers were.

Yeah right.

Just so you’ll know I won’t be reading Ashley’s column, because if there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s advice on how to sin more successfully!  I can do that all on my own thank you very much.

Merry Christmas everyone!  Just consider this story as proof positive that our world desperately needs a Savior, and tell a few people about Jesus!

Hey there!  I’ve got an extra long version of Short Rounds since I didn’t do one last week.  Enjoy – and don’t miss the Beatles 3000 video or the “Christian Side Hug” video at the end either!

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