GraceWorks.ca

Check it out here.  I’m not sure what I’m more happy about, that we came in second or that we beat Regina…oh and Winnipeg.  Boy did we ever beat Winnipeg.

One of themes going around the interwebs these days is this article: The dirt on organic.  It is the reflections of someone who started organic churches but ended up going back to being a pastor in a regular church.  Some of his points are:

• The project wasn’t a smashing success because it didn’t continually multiply disciples and churches
• It is impossible for someone to to lead a house church without getting paid
• Smaller churches are often a bigger mess
• Outreach can get ahead of leadership development, scaling back out reach doesn’t seem organic

Neil Cole has responded here. 

I have a few thoughts myself. 

Success in church life, even organic church life, isn’t the continual reproduction of new churches.  The call is to make disciples.  There will be an ebb and flow to this.  Sometimes you are spending a lot of your resources on binding the wounded or equipping the immature and less on finding more people to do the same thing with.  The idol of organizational success leads us to think that we are successful when we have lots of numbers to talk about.  Our first church in the SeedLife network went from 5 to around 20 in the first year, but has grown much slower since.  The reason?  We had all we could handle at the time.  I’ve needed time to learn and grow as a leader.  As things grow we have to figure out how to do things with more people involved.

I’m not a big fan of the pie in the sky rapid church multiplication goal.  It is too narrow and it isn’t consistent with even the best examples of sustainable church growth.  The early church and the church in China probably grew about 10% a year. 

Real ministry happens one person at a time, because we don’t have the capacity to love and deeply invest in 10 new people a year.  What really matters is God and His kids.  If have a group of 20 people and 5 of them are in real rough shape you have an opportunity to make a real difference.  If you skip over these people to find more you are skipping love and discipleship for organization success.

It is possible to lead a church a not get paid if you don’t overwhelm yourself with too many people or less effective complicated mediums of ministry.

I doubt smaller churches aren’t a bigger mess, they are often safe enough for people to let their mess show.  I must admit I am surprised at how broken church people can be and how much we are tempted to cover up that brokenness for the sake of appearances.

If you are looking for a very simple way to speed up your  browsing and avoid some of the garbage online check out OpenDNS.  DNS is the system where by names like graceworks.ca or cbc.ca get mapped in to internet addresses.  Without DNS browsing the web using names would be impossible.  Most of the time your computer will use your ISP’s dns servers but you can opt for another option.  OpenDNS works much like your ISP, except it offers filtering and other features that you can configure.  The basic account is free.

The money quote here is "The dirty little secret is the world has no money and the emperor has no clothes." While that statement is a bit of an exaggeration the truth is a lot of the money being spent right now is borrowed or printed out of thin air. Much of it has flowed to the big US investment banks which in turn have bid up the stock market. It is my impression that there is now so much corruption and fraud and games being played that it is impossible to make sense of what is going on. People really don’t understand how much debt the industrialized countries of the world have.

If we look at Greece, the current flash point for financial troubles it owes $400 billion dollars and all the economic activity in the whole country adds up to $350 billion.  The government collects about $110 billion a year in taxes.  To put this all in to perspective let me translate what these numbers would mean for a household.

Say Mr and Mrs Greece earned $65000 a year and they spent $85000 this year.  They on track to add another $20000 on top of the  the $236 000 they owe.   In the last year their employer cut their pay by 2%.   That $236 000 isn’t a mortgage borrowed against a house they can sell.  Loaning out that much money to someone who already has a lot debt is risky business so people naturally want a higher interest rate.  Right now the rate on Greek 10 year bonds is well over 10 percent.  If all that money was paid back over 25 years that would be like making a $2100 monthly payment on $5400 of income. 

Greece isn’t the only problem country, if we were to apply the same analogy to other countries it would like this:

See any other problem countries in this list?  Any glaring problems with debt spending? 

This analogy doesn’t capture the whole story because some countries like Spain have high levels of privately held debt which isn’t counted here.  The numbers here are government revenue and government debt.  It doesn’t take in to account the total revenue of a nation.  If the United States government made $65000 then the entire revenue of the whole country would be $441000.  There is no way the US Government can pay back their debts without raising taxes. 

It has been 4 years so I updated my company’s website at PrairieFusion.com.  If you are looking for IT support in Saskatoon you can find my contact info on my website.

Many years ago I used to entertain some LDS (mormon) missionaries.  The guys were cool.  We were sure to the change the channel to basketball while they were trying to convert my roommates and I.  Sadly they rotate their missionaries out after a few months.  You get comfortable hanging out with a bunch of guys and then they are gone.  One time they rotated in some “sisters.”  One of them was quite pretty, so much so we nicknamed her “sister hottie.” 

Before she was rotated out she wanted to share a passage from the book of Mormon with me that was important to her.  I think everything was fine until she hit verse 28.  After I heard the phrase “swelling motions” it became that much more difficult to stay composed.

The Book of Alma 32

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than ^adesire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

  28 Now, we will compare the word unto a ^aseed. Now, if ye give place, that a ^bseed may be planted in your ^cheart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your ^dunbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to ^eenlighten my ^funderstanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

  29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.

  30 But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.

  31 And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own ^alikeness.

  32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.

  33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.

I actually kept my composure until they left and then I laughed for about 10 minutes straight.