Back from Labor Day Retreat, managing to keep from being sunburned and bowled over by Hurricane Gustav, I am enjoying a quiet evening relaxing and mulling over some of the happenings and ways that God had been speaking to me over the weekend. This weekend has been great in that regard... God has used Brennan Manning (our speaker, author of The Ragamuffin Gospel) to really speak into my life and has obviously left me with a lot to noodle over. I'll share with you one of those things... something that I thought was really interesting. In one of his talks, Brennan turned around and talked about Jesus's famous parable of the prodigal son as if when He was talking about the character of the prodigal, think about it as if Jesus was characterizing himself as the "prodigal." This is, in my mind, very scandalous... considering that Jesus IS the perfect Son of God and I'm not really thinking at all that the parable's character was necessarily intended to be Jesus.....
I picked up this book early this year as I was getting involved in Student Ministry at my church in Atlanta - and a lot of conversations among us leaders revolved around the impact of cell phone usage with our students... and quite honestly with us. I expected to be a little convicted, because I am engaged on social media, but not to the extent that I was. Tony Reinke (look him up - this is a smart dude) is a writer at Desiring God and John Piper put together the forward. Uniqely - Reinke combines a theological rigor with the normal statistical "phones are screwing us up" research out there, and uniquely in my mind delivers the "so what" when it comes to the most important thing in our lives, namely our connection with Jesus Christ. He doesn't approach this topic as one outside of social media, but as one who is a digital native that understands the benefits of technology and the dangers that our "glowing rectangles" that demand our attention ha...
I've had this on the brain for a while... I need a mental candy break though. For myself, or for any of my friends who are members of one of the NorthPoint Ministries campuses (that means Buckhead, Browns Bridge... you know who you are), there are (admit it) signs that you've been going to this church for way too long. And now, like any person that needs to get out of their denial, I'm going to point out a few :-) Top Ten Signs You've Been at NorthPoint for Quite Some Time 1.) You commonly use any of the following words in your daily conversation: Margin Life-giving Give, Save, Spend Environment CG Big Idea Virtue Bottom Line Safe 2.) Something that Andy Stanley said in a sermon inevitably makes it into your Bible study discussion. 3.) You don't see anything wrong with wearing the same T-shirt every Sunday for 30 Sundays in a row (a shout out to all of us UpStreeters!), and in case you haven't washed "this year's" shirt, you have...
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