Shaped by God's Heart

I just finished reading Shaped by God's Heart. If you haven't read this book, go buy it today! Minatrea does a wonderful job of describing the passions and priorities of the missional church.

A couple of critiques:

1) I loved the centripetal vs. centrifugal force diagram...this has taken me to places in which my mind is still spinning (Ask about my black hole theory-*thanks dad*)

2) Minatrea asserts that it is possible for a mission-minded church to become a missional church. (Meat's a little tough - I'm still chewing on it)

I'll go into much more detail in the coming days...to much to do...it would be great to get paid just to blog--wouldn't it!?!

Easter Sunday (I wore a tie!)

Notice the pink stripe in my tie matching Lindsey's dress!
(now that's what I call sty-yle)

Prayer-Journal.com

Another interesting effort @ going ALL DIGITAL. A friend from the Ooze told me check out his online prayer journal. This is an interesting way of logging and sharing prayers with your more intimate friends. You can keep the prayer journal private or invite certain people into your journal. I guess this could become gossip-central if abused...but it could be a good way to fight prayer A.D.D.

Here's comes Easter

Here comes Easter...and with it means another weird feeling motivated by the awkwardness of knowing that we should be celebrating Christ, but not sure what that means, b/c we so seldom experience holy celebration. Does that make sense?

Either go buy Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster; or borrow it from a friend and read the last chapter on the discipline of Celebration. Here the Kevin's Notes version if you can't get it:


Celebration is @ the heart of the way of Christ.

He entered the world on a high note of jubilation: “I bring you good news of a great joy,” cried the angel, “which shall come to all the people” (Luke 2:10).
He left the world bequeathing his joy to the disciples: “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

The carefree spirit of joyous festivity is absent in contemporary society. Apathy, even melancholy, dominates the times. We’ve been so pressed towards useful work and rational understanding that we have forgotten how to celebrate.

*Celebration brings joy into life, and joy makes us strong.
-Scripture tells us that the joy of the Lord is our
strength (Neh. 8:10)!

-“joy is the motor that keeps everything else going” -R.F.

*The path to Joy is obedience:
Blessed are those who hear the word and keep it! (Luke 11:28)

Hollow and shallow v. Deep and fulfilling joy!


Here is my way of celebrating this Easter:
Lindsey and I went to Home Depot together and bought materials to build a planter for our porch. She picked out some spices, herbs, and flowers to plant in it. Last night, I built a 4'X18" planter and stained it. Today, we will plant our baby plants. I don't know what this has to do with Easter exactly...I guess I could make up some kind of connection between new life and the new life promised through the death and resurrection of Christ. But, really for me...it is just intentionally doing something that I normally do not do. I guess it could be like building an alter: throughout the year, whenever I see the plants growing, maybe I'll remember that I built that planter at Easter...I guess I'm creating memorable moments. Maybe I should do more, like paint a mural of Christ's open grave on it...nah, I'm just enjoying recognizing and celebrating the Easter season by doing something different.

church that connects

Two-way arrows can be used to describe the relationships between God and believers, and believers and believers. It is important to recognize the first relationship as two-way because our connection with God involves His giving and providing to us and our response of giving and providing to Him. (Our giving and providing would be considered “worship”, and it involves our receiving His initiation.) This relationship desires two-way communication and two-way commitment.

In a similar way, our relationship with other believers is two-way, in that is desires participation and sharing on all parts. To experience true, biblical, fellowship, believers must be willing to give and receive in sharing their lives, needs, hopes, dreams, failures, and successes. True fellowship cannot occur when believers live with a one-way arrow between them.

A one-way arrow is appropriate in describing the spiritual relationship of believers with non-believers. Non-believers have not accepted Christ as the rescuer and leader of their lives and hence, have not received the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit is the means through which believers are able to have spiritual connection with God and with others, we can assume that not having the Holy Spirit would result in not having the ability to have the same complete connection.

This is the call of God’s mission. His desire is that in result of an authentic relationship with Him, believers would be compelled to share this relationship with others. Then, they might be reconciled to God and find themselves in a two-way relationship with God and other believers.

Sadly, many of today's churches do not show that they understand the relationship of worship and of fellowship as the beginning of mission. The biblical purposes of the church often seem more like functions than purposes. As a result, Christianity can seem much less fluid than I believe it was intended to be. We create our worship program, and later we create our outreach program; and nowhere do we recognize how closely a passion for God relates to a passion for people.

Fairwell to Nelly

I became a Dallas Mavericks fan in the fall of 1990. I sat on the front row of the folding chairs, on the court. I actually had an ESPN cameraman sitting on the floor @ my feet. My dad had scored these tickets FREE from work. I remember getting James Donaldsons autograph and thinking how big these guys really were. Rolando Blackman was honored that night for breaking a team record.

The mid to late 90s were a tough time for the mavs...we had some great players, but they just didn't gel, then...Don Nelson:

Nelson guided the Mavericks to four straight playoff berths and four straight 50-win seasons highlighted by the 2002-03 season where the team finished tied for the best record in the NBA at 60-22 and advanced to the Western Conference Finals. On February 13, 2005, he won his 330th game with Dallas surpassing Dick Motta for most wins in franchise history. He finishes with a Mavericks record of 339-251 (.575) in eight seasons.Nelson owns 42 years of NBA experience as a player, coach and general manager. He is the second winningest coach in NBA history with a record of 1,190-880 (.575) in 27 years trailing just Lenny Wilkens. Nelson, who has also coached Milwaukee, Golden State and New York in addition to Dallas, has led his teams to 50-win seasons 13 times, which ranks tied for second in NBA history with Phil Jackson, and trails Pat Riley's 17 50-win seasons. He became just the second coach, along with Wilkens, to win at least 250 games with three different teams last season (Milwaukee 1976-87, Golden State 1988-95 and Dallas 1997-2005). A future Hall of Famer, Nelson, along with Riley, are the only two coaches ever to be named NBA Coach of the Year three times (1983, 1985 and 1992).

But the thing I will always remember about Don Nelson is how he would sip that Budweiser during press conferences!

They saw and looked...part 2

:They looked and saw that the pond that they were swimming in was an ocean.:


Okay, once I saw yesterday's post really up, I realized how much I sound like a nerd...but I am not (a nerd). What's more, I have never been. I have been a dork, a jerk, and occasionally weird, but never a nerd. But, think on this:

Charles Darwin was studying biology. He thought that the smallest organism was what you could see in a microscope.

During the "Atomic Age", they looked again, and saw that the pond that they were swimming in was an ocean. Life is a little more complex than our surest concepts.

Here's another one: Stephen Hawking, who I know best as the guy in the wheelchair on the episode of The Simpsons where Lisa joins the genius association, seriously (but theoretically) tinks time travel is possible. (This guy is known as the most genius of all the geniuses in all of genius land.) :Here's an interesting fact: there actually is a neutron (or something)...some kind of particle that is actually moving backwards in time!


God's creation is more complex than we can ever understand. The more I learn, the less I realize I know. I love the last chapter in Brian McLaren's book, A Generous Orthodoxy. It is called "Why I am Unfinished". I am so unfinished.

They saw and looked...

:They looked and saw that the pond that they were swimming in was an ocean.:


Albert Einstein was working in a post office to make a living, but of course, his real career was being a student of physics. He noticed some inconsistencies that Newtonian Law couldn't explain. This led to his theory of General Relativity. To get there (to his theory) he began with an intuitive leap, and then backed it up with mathematical reasoning. G.R. deals with warped space, wrinkle in time kind of stuff...but that's not what I'm interested in right now. The thing that sticks out to me is that the definition of reason itself began to change. Einstein changed from linear to intuitive leaps of thought!

Whoa now...are you telling me that he didn't have everything figured out and understood before he started his journey into general relativity!?! ...that for Einstein, maybe intuitive truth is a starting point for the journey...and not necessarily an end?

My own blog...NO WAY!

I have been involved with the unique communicative technique, known as "blogging" for some time now, but never in my limited understanding (as is a characteristic in most of my activities) did I imagine that I could have my very own blog. Thanks to Chris Merritt (who's been good friend for over a decade!) I learned about blogger, and now I can communicate on my own page (instead of those mega-blog pages).

So...welcome to kboydlive.blogspot.com (this was the closest name available to my own name)!