Project- Keeping The Faith

Faith is not easily. It is a deliberate choice, a daily choice, and at times a very difficult choice. There are a lot of forces that attempt to tug, tear and trash our faith. Some of these forces are intellectual, some are emotional, some are spiritual but none can be overcome alone. We need each other.

If you have been following this blog for any length of time you have likely started to get a sense of my story. You know where I have struggled and where I am still struggling. You also know the issues that make me passionate.

But at my very core I want to help people grow in their faith, I want to help people keep their faith. And I need your help.

Over the next few weeks and months I want to share as many stories of faith I can find. Because I believe as we share our stories of how we have chosen and continue to choose faith, 'iron will sharpen iron'. If we share our stories more people will be able to proclaim with Paul; 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.'

Now here comes the ask. I need people, and I need stories. If you are a person who would like to share your story I want to hear from you. Or if you know someone who's story needs to be told, I want to hear from you. Connect with me via the comments section in this blog, or track me down on Twitter or Facebook.

Let me be clear on one thing. Your story does not need to be an epic spiritual battle, a major health crisis, or a time of near insurmountable loss to count. Faith struggles can come on red hot, or they can burn quietly under there surface unnoticed by anyone except yourself. If you have a story of faith struggle that you want to share, I want to hear from you.

Let's help people keep the faith together!

A Remembered Love

I had a wonderful time last night.

That is what I kept thinking to myself once I got home. Ok maybe not always in those words, I subbed in 'great', 'fun' and a few other synonyms for good measure but you get the idea. Last night I had a great time. Now before you ask no my wife and I did not get to enjoy a date last night. Nor did I have a night with 'the boys' (whoever they are) or some well earned time with one of my many gaming devices.

No last night I helped out a friend with his youth ministry, and it felt great.

Holy Week-Palm Sunday 2012

Every time I think of Palm Sunday I have Sunday School felt board flash backs. I remember little felt Jesus, wearing his little felt blue sash riding on his little felt donkey, past the group of 5 or so little felt men. The picture is so vivid that I sometimes have difficultly remembering that this is not just a "children's story."

Holy Week 2012

I've decided.

I have been more or less absent from my blog since the end of November. Since then I have only managed a few sporadic posts. Far less then the once every Monday and Wednesday I had been blogging. I have made no secrete that some things have changed for me lately, and that it has been somewhat difficult sorting through how I feel about them.

Act's Of God

How do I know that God really acted?

That has been a question bouncing around my mind for the past few months. I suppose it started after I completed two personal discovery projects. One was the Disc personality survey (I am a dominant, creative type if you where curious) and the other was the NCD spiritual gifts test. As I was filling out the latter my mind wondered to the question, what would happen if an atheist or some other non-Christian were to fill out the NCD spiritual gifts test? Given the way it was written I was led to conclude that if a non-Christian took the test it would indicate that they had some spiritual gifts.

Which lead to to wonder;

How do I know if my desire to do something is God's prompting or if it is my own personality?

How do I know what I felt, or saw, or experienced was God and not something else?

Have you ever wondered the same?

Sometimes I wonder if I am a Christian sceptic.

Voices

I have a confession to make; I hear voices. Now before you round me up as nuts or write me off as a little to 'religious' let me explain. I don't hear the audible voice of God (though there are days I sure wish I did) nor do I hear distant whispers of ghosts, aliens, or spies trying to steal my thoughts. Instead I hear past conversations, or during some advanced moments potential conversations.

I hear the voices of people in my head that over the years have been critical, harsh, and otherwise unpleasant. And I am wondering if perhaps you do to.

The 100th! My Potential Big Idea

First let me say I am excited to have made it to 100 posts. I am grateful for everyone who has read even one word of this blog. I know I am still learning how to do this. I still am working on catching all my typos and grammatical errors. I am still figuring out backgrounds and fonts and all the other things that come with working on a blog. Generally speaking this has been a joy. I love your comments, and feedback. Please keep them coming.

But on to business.

I started this blog for a reason. I am trying to sort out an idea that I have. It may well be THE idea that I have. You know what I mean, that one or two really good ideas that person gets in their lifetime. I think I may have had mine. Right now I am trying to figure it all out.

Let me tell you the story thus far.

Too Busy For Discipleship

I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada. Right now we are dealing with an issue the news here has deemed #scandalpalooza on twitter. The long and short of it has to to with the Mayor trying to run concerts off of the city coffers. A few months ago the concert promotion group, 'Power Promotions' went bankrupt, taking with it some 400k in loans from the city. The city council was shocked. The public was shocked. The media was shocked. And now we are trying to figure out what happened.

As I was listening to the news I heard an interesting commentary. They were comparing the goals of the city council verses the goals of a private concert promoter. The city wants to create lots of excitement and make people happy to live in Halifax. The business' goal on the other hand is to make money, the method to do so just happens to be the concert. The commentator's point was that these goals are not exclusive of each other, but that it was better to private business to run concerts because they will figure out how to do so without losing money.

This conversation quickly lead me to think about the church.

A Tame Spiritual World

The other day I had a conversation that made me a little uneasy. We were talking about ghosts, demons and devils. In of itself that is not unusual. If one spends anytime in the gospels they inviability need to talk about demons and the devil. Jesus simply spends to much time dealing with them to ignore them completely.

But that was not the kind of conversation I was having. Instead we were talking about this individuals supposed real experience with a demonic attack. This person while living and working in Canada now, originally comes from India. Which holds to a pattern I have gotten used to. I only tend to have this kind of conversation with people if that are not from the so called Western World.

It seems that for the most part here in the West we like our spiritual world nice and tame.

Your Right Arm

Have you ever heard the expression, 'I'd give my right arm for X'? A teen in my youth group accidently discovered what he would give his right arm for the other day. He quite literally gave (at least temporarily) his right arm to do a cool skateboarding trick. He tried to tackle a rather difficult 360 turn, only to fall, fracture his arm and give himself a mild concussion.. He OK, but he will be in a cast for at least 4 weeks.

In that spirit let me ask you, what would you give your right arm for? Or to phrase it more Christianly; what would cause you to cut off your right hand?

All Fun And Games

Some of you may be wondering why I rarely blog about youth ministry. Which is fair given that 80ish% of my current ministry role is youth related. The truth is I don’t have a lot of advice to offer. I am far more a learner then an instructor. I have to study hard and reflect long to figure out things that some of my peers seem to know intuitively.

So most of what I could pass along you will find in these books.

However there is one youth ministry issue I would like to weigh in on. The age old debate between 'fun and games' and spiritual growth.

Drive Or Devotion

A few things have been on my mind of late. I have been thinking about goal setting, and what projects I want to tackle both in the short and long term. I have even pondered putting together a 101 in 1001 goal list, something my unofficial blog coach has done.

As I pondered what my list might hold, some items came easily to mind. Some were health related, some were family related, and some were finance related. But than I started to consider other more substantial goals. I started to think about my career, some further education, and a few other dreams. I thought about what steps I would take to try and achieve some of these goals. but the more I thought about it, the more I delved deeper into my own ambitions I became conflicted.

An Apology To No One In Particular

I admittedly don't remember if I ever talked disparagingly about 1, 5, or 10 minute devotionals or not. I suspect I have because I certainly have thought disparaging thoughts about said devotions. Since most thoughts that stomp through my mind inevitably find their way to my mouth I am almost certain that I have. I suspect somewhere along the lines I said something like 'they are a waste of time, and money.  Any Christian worth their salt would not make use of such surface level materials'.

I have changed my mind.

Resolutions

Happy New Year! Well almost anyway. Today I am finding myself a little taken back that we are well into the second decade of the 21st century. 00-09 went by rather quick and here we are about to wrap up 2010. If you are like most people the flipping over of the calendar can make you feel both reflective of the previous year and hopeful for the year to come.

Additional Disciplines, For When You've Prayed Enough

A great suggestion was given to me on Tuesday after I posted my last blog. Pastor John, from the other West End Baptist thought that I ought to post some of the many non-prayer type disciplines. Which I shall now do.

When I think of spiritual disciplines I tend to think first of the prayer type ones that I posted. Which is an error on my part. It probably shows that I am beginning to limit my thinking about how to be spiritual much in the same way many of us have limited our thinking of worship to mean music. Like music is part of worship, prayer is part of the spiritual disciplines not the other way around.

Discipline Is Not A Four Letter Word

On Thursday I posted about the Lectio Divina . In that post I also mentioned that I would post up a list of other spiritual disciplines. This is that post.

I had originally planned on simply linking an existing database of spiritual disciplines. When I tried looking for one on Thursday I was not successful. I am sure somewhere out in the Google universe one exists, but after thirty minutes I grew tired of looking.

Rest Your Soul

Well it is December, and since November 1st Christmas as been in the air in most shopping malls. It seems where ever I go these days I am inundated with holiday cheer. Even my coffee cups have taken on a more festive theme of late. I guess Christmas really is a coming to town.

Worship Wars 1

What do you think about when you read the phrase worship war? I suspect you think of what might be better call Christianities battle of the bands. There is a music style war going on in many churches. Some like the classic old hymns other prefer chorus' while others like whatever the new song is produced by Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Hillsong, or their clones. That worship war is not what I am talking about. I would like to suggest that the music style wars are not really a worship war at all, instead it is a front, a battle, in a much large, much more serious war.