First Christmas Craft of 2009

I got the idea from one of those little pull-off flyers I found at Joann's. I bought some paper mache letters from Hobby Lobby and painted them a brown red. I chose my photos and printed them in a Sepia one. Then I used Modge Podge to decoupage them along with Chrismas scrapbook paper. It turned out much better than I thought it would!

A Consumer Culture

Some stats from Mark Driscoll's The Radical Reformission:

In ninety nations, people spend less each year than we in the United States spend on our garbage bags.

Each year more Americans declare bankruptcy than graduate from college.

We have twice as many malls as high schools.

We spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches than on higher education.

Our supermarkets have 250 percent more items than they did twenty years ago.

Parents spend six hours shopping each week, and forty minutes playing with their children.

Seventy percent of Americans visit a mall each week; that's more than visit houses of worship.

Something to Think About

From the annual Status of Global Mission, Presence, and Activities report:

The number of Christian martyrs in 2008 was 175,000. That's 479 Christians every day who lost their lives as a result of being a Christian.

May we be encouraged to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who suffer for the gospel, be prepared to suffer ourselves, and be evermore crying out, "Come, Lord Jesus, come!"

Optimism vs. Hope

Some reflections in this essay on the difference and why hope is the better alternative.

Little Boys and Mud

A Magnetic Attraction

Report Back to Me

Sometimes it is the little things...

If your kids are like mine and you have a number of things you would like them to do, it is most beneficial to tell them one at a time. And if your kids are like mine and they sense that you might have more than that first thing you tell them to do, they are really good at disappearing after that first thing. Granted that could just be my imagination, but it probably isn't. I could make lists and sometimes do especially for the day to day things, but nothing works better than the spoken word.

Thus the institution of "Report Back to Me." It works like this. When given an instruction or a school assignment you must always, and I mean always report back to the instructor(usually known as "Mom" who wishes she were still "Mommy" but that is another post). If I only have the one task for them to do then I let them know from the get-go that it is the only thing I need them to do. This saves us a lot of time doing what I call "the regathering of the peoples" and saves on the frustration of the peoples starting something new and fun and exciting only to be told they need to put their clothes away. "Report Back to Me" gets us through the school/chore part of our day at a better pace and gets things done a bit more effeciently making all the peoples including mom a lot happier!

What is a Missional Church?

From a paper by Tim Keller, he lists five elements of a missional church.

1. Discourse in the vernacular.
2. Enter and re-tell the culture's stories with the gospel.
3. Theologically train lay people for public life and vocation.
4. Create Christian community that is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.
5. Practice Christian unity as much as possible on the local level.