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.

Season of Reason

Christmas is over. Well it's mostly over, we still have all the clean up to deal with. On a superficial level we let some chores slide over the past few days, so there is a bit of a back log of laundry and dishes to work through. But there is also the dreaded cleaning up of the Christmas decorations. Oh well they need to come down sooner or later.

When Your Christmas Is Neither White Nor Merry

We all have some idea of what Christmas ought to look like. On a basic level there needs to be a fresh batch of flawless white snow, a well cooked meal prepared, eggnog, rosy red cheeks, (either because of the snow or eggnog this one has really have been clear to me) and lots of nicely wrapped presents under a well decorated tree. On a more personal level Christmas is also supposed to be a time of family togetherness, good cheer and a lot of joy. We all know this is what Christmas is supposed to look like. If your Christmas will look like this I have nothing left to say to you; other than Merry Christmas!

My Christmas will not look like this, and if yours will not either we have more to talk about.

The Christmas Videos Are Upon Us

Over the past few weeks I have watched a few really good Christmas videos. I thought about writing up little comments after each one, but I'll let the videos speak for themselves. They either made me laugh, or made me think. Either way I think they are worth sharing. And here they are;

1) The Digital Story of Nativity

2) Retooning the Nativity 

 

3) A Social Network Christmas

4) Jesus and Santa

5) Santa Went Down to Georgia

See you tomorrow for my normal blog update.

Helpless In Hospitals

There are a number of things that come with the vocation of being a pastor that I think I am good at. There are also a number of things that come with the vocation of being pastor that I am not good at. I am not very good at hospital visits. As a child hospitals frightened me. As an adult I am not frightened by them but I still rather not be in them.

The Problem With Greed: Goodbye Auntie, Hello Money

So I am a bit late in posting today. I have two reasons really. 1 I was working on this Sunday's sermon most of the day, and 2 I wanted to wait until after an event this afternoon to post.

We had a funeral today. An older congregation member passed away Saturday night and the service was today. Our senior pastor took care of the details. So when I saw him on Tuesday I asked what type of help I could be.

The Baptism I Wish I Had Given

On Sunday we had two baptism's at church. Both teen boys. I baptized the first and the second was baptized by his grandfather, a retired pastor and member of our church. It was a good day.  After all it is always great to see people, especially teens make this decision.

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.

Shadow Mission

My memory is fuzzy right now. I am trying to remember when something I heard something significant and what its source was. This is the part I do remember, it was at Bayside Camp, and Ben Trites the camp director said it.

The Christian Theories

So just how can a Christian respond to evolution, and other like things? As it turns out we can respond in a number of ways that fall well within the Christian faith. But before that we need to outline what makes a good Christian response.

On the Origin of the Argument

November 24th 1859, changed the world. Charles Darwin finished his trip, collected his thoughts and published his findings in a book called "On the Origin of Species" Some 151 years later we are still grappling with the idea of evolution.

Comfort and Truth

On Sunday my wife's grandfather passed away. He was 72, and for a few months he battled with cancer; which has now ended. In a lot of ways his passing was quite sudden. 6 months ago I expected he would be around for years to come. But sickness took him quickly.

Verbal Typo's

It's no secret spelling is not my strong point. Ask my mother to spell any word you can think of and in a minute she'll rattle it off to you. Ask me and there is a good chance I'll fire up a word document or a Google search browser to figure it out.

Reflections From Bayside 3/3

Saturday Night- The night was taken up with a night game; which are always fun. This was a sort of find the item, avoid the bad guys kind of stealth game. My role was to hide with an item.

Reflections From Bayside 2/3

Saturday Afternoon/Evening- The afternoon was great, as all of my afternoon have been here. It was a mixture of relaxation, preparation and socialization. I got to know some of the teens, and I got to connect with some I already knew and got to know them better.

Reflections From Bayside 1/3

So this is a little off my 'well established' Tuesday & Thursday posting schedule. But I wanted to keep a running log of my weekend here.

Friday Night- There is always something about traveling down Bayside Camp's long road that forces me to focus more. It's probably because of the dark hilly road with lots of pot holes and big rocks. I am always nervous that I will either miss a veer or that a pot hole will swallow up my car. That is more or less how I feel when I am speaking there too.

Re: Updated Style Is Not The Same As Redefined

A little less than two weeks ago I blogged about One Halifax: Church Re-Defined. Well they have a website that is more than their poster now if you want to check them out.

Their Not All From Our Imagination

Now I am what would be considered a Conservative Baptist. I believe that the Bible is true, that Jesus lived, died and rose again, I believe in the virgin birth and miracles and so on.Yet I've been carrying around a deep dark secret for years now and I think I am finally ready to talk about it.

Going to Church

I am still in love with looking at my blog stats. I am not sure what I find more exciting, the number of people visiting on any given day, or the location they come from. There is just something exciting about someone from Slovakia taking a peek and something I've written.

There's a hole in my church dear Liza

There is a big hole in my front yard. Hole may well be an understatement. What I really have is the making of an excellent moat, or perhaps a good fox hole if WWIII breaks out soon, and in Bedford. Apparently there has been a long standing problem with the sewer pipes that they have decided to fix. I'm happy they decided to fix it now, because we have not yet had a problem with the pipes backing up; I gather the last few tenants have not been so lucky.

Updated Style Is Not The Same As Redefined

As I was heading out to the bank on Monday a poster at KFC caught my eye. It was about a new church that has just launched here in Halifax. They are called One, and they have set themselves up in Neptune Theater. Their tag line was that they are church re-defined, and for all their readers benefit they had a definition of re-defined on the poster.

Apologetic or Apologetics

A few months ago I had a run in with a youth pastor peer that made me a little queasy. In no uncertain terms he went on to explain how in 30 seconds he could prove the existence of God. That's right, in a mere 30 seconds he was going to do what most if not all of us have failed to do, provide an air tight case, proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is in fact a God in Heaven. He then went on to explain (in a little under 30 seconds I might add) a watered down version of a First Cause argument for the existence of God.

God Numbered The Hairs On Your Head, But Will He Whiten Your Teeth?

Now I will be the first to admit that my Baptist upbringing makes me a little uneasy with the charismatic spiritual gifts, and experiences. While I readily admit their historical presence in scripture I find myself as much of a skeptic about modern day 'outpourings' as your average atheist.

But How Do We Know We Are Right?

Last year after a gurgling Fall giving devotions at youth group that amounted to little more than 'Jesus loves you, Be good' I decided we needed to go deeper. So we did. I started from square one asking the question 'Is there any reason to think there is any sort of god out there?' We took 10 weeks or so and went from there until we finally arrived to talking about who Jesus is, who he claimed to be, what he did to back up those claims and finally we talked about Jesus raising from the dead.

You Are What You Eat

There is a little piece of advice I remember getting from time to time as a child; 'you are what you eat'. The advice as far as I have come to understand it was a warning against eating really fatty food because you would become a fatty person. Given the national obesity rates I would suspect that this advice was never really taken seriously. After all the aim of the advice was to get to people eat their vegetables, and skimp on the junk food. From my vantage point I count 5 fast food restaurants on the street I work.

A Strange Conversation

I already posted my Thursday blog but I just had a conversation too odd to wait and too long for a status update so I had to make another.

While I was working at Starbucks a woman stopped and noticed I was reading a book titled 'The Reason for God'. She talked briefly to me about how great it was that I was reading a book titled as such and what the Lord was putting on her heart. Apparently God has been putting on her heart to do outreach and teach. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I went back to work and she sat elsewhere to enjoy her coffee.

It Is Easier To Give Birth Then Raise The Dead

I work at what would be rightly called a small historic church. We are coming up on our 120th year as a church and without some significant changes our best years are well behind us. This is a truth that weighs on me. Like so many evangelical churches in the western world our heyday was decades ago. Reading the history of the church I find a church that was once full of people, full of life, innovative, and sought to make a difference in people's lives and impact the community.

Chain 'Letters' for God Must Stop

One of the things that I am grateful for Facebook and other social networking sites for is my 'chain mail' e-mails have all but disappeared. In the last two years or so I have virtually received no e-mails that needed to be sent to 100 of my friends within the next 5 minutes. Which is great because as it stands I must have about a million years worth of bad luck coming, I should die 'tomorrow' for the next ten years and I clearly hate God, Jesus and all my friends and family. I just can't bring myself to forwarding such nonsense to people.

Ordained

It's been a few years in coming now but in 10 days (October 17th 2010) I will become an ordained minister. I will in some sense cease to be Mr Christopher D Drew and become Rev Christopher D Drew. I think I should be more excited about that than I am at this moment. Truthfully I find myself a little introspective about the process. I am trying to sort out how I feel about everything that is going on here at my church, at the youth group and in life in general.

Science and Moral Relativism

I found myself thinking yesterday as I was putting groceries in my car that the 'New Atheists' have been somewhat quiet of late. What was a red hot debate between New Atheists and Christian Thinkers had cooled some and it had been a while since I found myself engaged in a conversation or debate that really hinged on 'New Atheist' arguments. I joked, really to myself, that everyone must be busily writing their next book and are too busy to argue right now.

Table Flipping

For the next little while at Quest (youth group) we are looking at the Gospel of John. We have been at this for three weeks or so now, and we just looked at the story where Jesus clears out the temple. You know the story; Jesus comes into town at Passover, takes a look around at the temple, he sees the money changers and the offering sellers have set up shop in the courtyard. Jesus gets mad, very mad, he flips tables, and drives the livestock out of the area with a home made whip shutting down operations at least for a little while.

War on Christmas

September always seems to go by fast. Before I really know what is going on it is October. Now it may seem early but the talk in my house has begun about Christmas. We are trying to sort out who is buying for who, where Christmas dinner will be held and who we expect to attend. Just the other day my wife arrived home with the first Christmas gift of the year, a book for my son.

Investing

It has only been relatively recently that I started working at a 'real' job. One that could be rightly called my career, that pays me a wage I can live on. So my wife and I decided we needed to do two things; one we needed to start an RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan) for ourselves and two we needed to start an RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) for our son. In short we got into the investment market. I am putting money aside, the bank is doing something with it with the goal to make more money. That is probably not the most intelligent description of investment that you have seen but that is more or less my understanding of what is going on.

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.

Believers and Practitioners

Do you remember the first Mac vs. PC ads that came out? I thought they were fresh, kind of clever, and really gave that feeling that somehow only nerds used PC’s. They caught on and become an instant hit. They became just the sort of thing that Christian culture likes to emulate... badly.

And If Necessary, Use Words

Perhaps because I am still new blogging I find myself doing two things. One checking my stats like a mad man, just wondering if someone might have stumbled on my blog, and two I try to convince my wife to read whatever I have written. The first is easy, I just click a button. The second task has proved a little harder.

Just Words?

"Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me". Who hasn't said this at least once on the play ground? Saying words will never hurt me is the premier way to tell someone the mean things they are saying does not matter to you. Of course if I had to guess I would say 8/10 times this rhyme is rattled off the words are in fact hurting you. They are cutting right down to the bone and you yelp out this little mantra to keep from crying as you run off. We all learned by the time we were 10 that words matter, and there is little comfort in the phrase 'they were just words'.

Setting fires for God?

This is not what I had planned to write about today. But it caught my eye in the news and I just needed to comment. The whole concept of a church having an annual tradition of Koran burning is just unbelievable. The audacity of Pastor Terry Jones is even more mind-boggling. His statement here says it all to me "Once in awhile, you see that in the Bible, there are instances where enough is enough and you stand up." This is true of course. Well maybe it is better to say there is a half truth in this statement. I just wish Pastor Terry here went on to give an example of one of those times so I could better understand how he saw the actions of his church fitting into the redemption story.

Stop Going to Church and Be The Church

I might as well be upfront about this, I have a number of pet peeves word usage-wise. I am sure if I ever sat down and made an all inclusive list of my communication pet peeves I would realize I really have earned the affectionate nickname my wife's steps siblings gave me; GP i.e.Grammar police. That being said here is my top 5 list;

In The Beginning

I had wondered for sometime what my first real post would be once I finally finished creating the draft pages. As it turns out I just could not get the idea of 'beginnings' out of my mind, perhaps for obvious reasons. This is in some sense my beginning as a 'blogger' and as a person who puts the written word out for some kind of public consumption. I certainly wouldn't be so bold as to say writer, but still this is the first kind of public writing I have ever done.