Near and Far Faith

Signed up for the Whiteboard Sessions yesterday! This is a unique 1-day conference that is bringing some of the most spiritually influential voices in my life into one room for a day. The one I'm really pumped about hearing and meeting? Perry Noble.

Frankly, I'm looking forward to the refueling. I don't want to rely on refueling activities for growth, but the last conference I was at was at Granger last September. It's time.

So I'm still trekking through the scriptures in an effort to finish the Old Testament for the first time. While Romans is continually challenging me, I'm enjoying the comfort of the minor prophets. I closed out Zephania today and the theme remains: pride drives you from God and without repentance God gets angry. The love is incomprehensible at times - how God could pursue us and pursue us and, even after punishing us, reminds us that we are His.

It's easy for me to have great vision that's inspired by people like Perry Noble and Steven Furtick, however I see the danger in myself to let pride creep in and and I begin to think that it's my vision. I defend my vision - "God gave ME this vision!" and would even challenge people on it. But it's God's vision and we are just to be his vessels. Like it says in Zephaniah 3:12, only those who are humble will be spared God's wrath and judgment. If I really am God's to do with as He wishes, there should be no arguing from me when things change and turn to uncomfortable.

I'm overwhelmed lately by the whole concept of balance that I see happening around me, specifically in ministry. Cher and I are just constantly amazed by how the criticism is many times balanced out with overwhelming encouragement. Literally, for every random 1st timer at Carpenter's who feels the need to walk in and break me down, there's 3 or four who remind me to keep using my gifts and that I'm on the right track. I don't deserve this, and I know it won't always be steady. Just thankful right now.

So I've been tinkering with the Ignite logo. It used to be this...

It's great. It's cool. But it wasn't ours. I stole it (along with some sweet banners) from Tally. After about a month of feeling a need for freshness and rolling it out to my top two critics (Cherie - of course - and Jill - one of our secretaries) over and over, and going over this list of top 20 church logos, I finished it this week. Got a lot of inspiration from Elevation. Simple and able to simply, I believe, is the best criteria for a logo. here you go...

It was nice to get a rest from everything last night at Ignite and have worship and the message taken care of. I haven't rested like that in a while. Micah Woodard was our guest and brought his own worship band in from Parker Hill in Scranton. It was a good time.

Our new small groups are getting off the ground. Last night I was discussing with some of our High School guys how, for some, music is not the best way to worship. I was challenged to get out of my box. I like to think that I don't even have one... but I do.

Rest helps us see the the danger we pose to ourselves sometimes like that. I don't take enough of a step back and it's something that God's really been putting on my heart. I'm looking forward to a few conferences over the next few months that I hope will aid in the stepping back mainly Ben's Whiteboard Sessions and Unleash, but I'm looking at Hillsong's conference with a friend for the summer as well (that one would be a once in a life time thing). However... I know that I can't rely on these things to sustain the big-picture-resting times that are a necessity. God's given us everything we need here and now to take a deep breath, gather some inspiration and wisdom, and just listen.

So I know that one of the issues I will face with a personality like mine is to latch on to something with all that I have. The issue comes either when that thing is irrelevant to most others, or when I later lose interest after sinking tons of resources into it. I'm always looking for ways to correct this. For example, I try to do things right away so that I'm not distracted from them when more exciting things come along as I wait. Call it impatience... I call it wisdom. So when something sticks with me for a long time, I know it's important - that God is keeping it on my heart and mind for a reason (never underestimate that).

That thing over the past year or so has been the thought process of continued growth. I've stopped using the idea of Christian Maturity in conversation, not because I don't believe in it (Paul's blatant about it, but it's clearly an on-going process), but because too many Christians have used it in today's church circles to create a way point... if not a stopping point altogether... for their spiritual growth. There's no plateau of spiritual maturity. I would challenge whether or not there are as many specific criteria as we think - as we're all different (on purpose by the way).

As this thought's been on my mind, I came across this quote from this website:
When an old olive tree is about to die, new trunks spring up out of the old roots, so the Arabs say, "An olive tree never dies."

An Olive tree never stops growing. I love this symbolism of unceasing movement forward. So today I got it tattooed on my arm.