So it looks like my suspisions were correct,,,I am not Roman Catholic. I’m a guy that has reformed theology, loves some wesley everynow and occassionly digs candles in worship (emergent). Really though I disagree a little with the tag line up top. The most important thing a church can do is teach how to live all of life for the glory of God. God is most glorfied when we point to him and him alone as our source for salvation in life and death, people need to know that. And for those of you who were worried I had some emergent sympathies, I am only emergent 54% of the worship service. That means I only watch half of the Nooma videos! So what are you? Gotta love those labels…lol!

I was at a Passion conferance a few years back and at that time I was on the road preaching full-time, and proud of it. One night at the conferance Louie was talking about how throughout the ages God had used normal people to change the world and then he said, ” Preachers probobaly will not change the world.” I was like OUCH…come on dude, show a fellow preacher some love. When I thought about it more his comment made sense. Sure we know about alot of “ministers” that have done some cool things. But what about all the people that have normal jobs, but use that job as thier opportunity to be missional and live for the glory of God in the marketplaces of the world. A freind of mine that I work with has a quote at the end of each e-mail he sends as part of his signature. Check it out and let me know what you think….

“The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.”
– Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity

So Rach was reading my blog on our recent sickness and noticed that one of my sentences sounds like Yoda from Star wars wrote it. You know how he always talk all backwards and stuff. Well here ya go, make sure to insert your best Yoda voice….

…causing me to cough alot and just have in general mucus alot.

I’ll try and hold back on the yoda-ness in future blogs. Sorry!

So it seems like sickness was delivered to my house with the effiecency of UPS, (that is a shout out to Brian Simmons and Micheal Listi although I am pretty sure they do not read this). Yes, Ava has strep throat and I have sometthing that is causing me to cough alot and just have in general mucus alot (sorry). Rachel, is not sick yet, just sick of our sickness. We are traveling to TN later this week to see some freinds and family so hopefully we get better soon! Peace!

So like many of you I have one of those cool maps of the world so I can see how influential my blog is around the world. I clicked on it today and found it interseting that I have a small red dot in the ocean just below Africa? What could this be? I believe the dot represents like 50 views or people from that location in the ocean. Is some random dude on a boat with satellite internet reading my blog? The thought popped in my head that possibly it is charlie from lost. What if he is not dead and the underwater station did not really blow up. What if he is down there surfin’ the internet, bidding on e-bay items, and listening to the lost podcast. If so I have one message for charlie….” Ya gonna die Chalie (insert best australian accent).”

If you are my ocean reader…please identify yourself.

Peace out all!

Today was just that…adoption day! As many of you know due to things going south in the ElSalvador program we have switched our adoption to Ethiopia. Along with that we have also moved and I started a new job at the beginning of the year with Innovative. All of this change adds up to MORE adoption paperwork, just when we thought we were done.

So today we dropped Ava of at her Babaw and Popeye’s(what she calls them), and we spent the day writing letters, calling people, and signing endless paperwork. I am glad to say we made a MAJOR dent today in bringing Jane home from Ethiopia. Just a few more small things to do and then we can mail of what we need to. The only thing after that is one or two visits with a social worker to update our homestudy. Please pray because we are trying to get all of this done before I go on the road for the summer. I am leading three trips and speaking at 3 student events this summer. So needless to say I will not be around much for June and July. The next month is the calm before the traveling storm and we are trying to be good stewards of the time we have. As many of you know much of “paperchasing” in adoptions is out of your control. So pray that everything falls into place. Thanks!

I love people who are proactive. I was recently reading an excerpt from a book by the guys who created/founded International Justice Mission. He said something that really made me think. He said that injustice continues not because a lack of good people, but because of good people that will do nothing. When it comes to the needs of others living in poverty it is not the thought that counts. We as the people of God must do something now, anything. I love this campaign that Louie Giglio and Passion has been on called Do Something Now. At a recent conferance college students raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Union University that was recently destroyed by a hurricane. Just normal people being used by God to do amazing things.

Well a few weeks ago my freind Bush posted a picture of a village we visited in Ethiopia that has no source of clean drinking water. When we rode into this village there was a large puddle of rain water run-off that had gathered at the bottom of a hill. Afework told us that this village only has this little water when it rains. When I looked at where the water had flowed from and through, I almost vomited. It was a mound of trash and human waste. But there were a ton of people drinking this water and even using it to cook with because it is all that they had, it is all they have ever had. As we drove into the village and I saw this I was holding a bottle of water. I thought there is something morally wrong if I do nothing…as a Christ follower I have been given knowledge of this and now I must somehow do something NOW.

Well a husband and wife ran across Bush’s blog on the village and asked what they could do. After a series of e-mails they have taken it upon themselves to go to thier church in Johnson City and see what could be done. These people that I have never met and have never been to Ethiopia are starting a campaign at thier church to raise the $5000 or so needed to dig a well for this village and hopefully others like it. i have been blown away by this, It took me going there. Not them, they heard about a need and now they are planning an all-out money raising campaign. What if more of us were like this? Normal people making a difference…I can’t wait for the day we dedicate that well and Jessica and her husband can go and rejoice with this village that they have been used by God to change. If you want to be a part of bringing clean water to this village in the Name of Jesus, through the ministry of Innovative e-mail me at matts@tamh.net and I will let you know how you can give and/or go.

Anytime I travel outside the country and come back it gets a little harder. It gets harder because I am faced with how drunk I am on materialism and the love of possessions. How I get upset over small things like not getting to eat at the restraunt of my choice or not getting a good parking spot. I hate materialism and being with people that seem to only care about earthly possessions…but what I hate more is that the very thing I hate in others I find in myself.

I am awestruck by the apathy of Americans towards what others are going through in the world. I have had many Christians tell me in the past few months that they do not really have a heart for missions or mission work. Is it possible to love God and his glory and not have a heart for missions?

I think we are all so drunk on materialism that we have become indifferent to others in the world because we are so busy keepin up with the jonses. I’m not saying having stuff is bad. I know alot of people who are monetarily blessed and use that to be a blessing to others. What I am talking about is how Americans seemed to be enamored with having stuff…and Christians many times are not much different. I wonder if the desire for churches to have multi-million dollar buildings is an adoption of materialism in the local church, that is disguised by some Bible verses that are taken way out of context? We are so drunk that we cannot care about others, all we can think about is when we can take our next drink. The following clip from Hotel Rwanda says it all. When faced with the suffering of others around the world…we simply keep eating and say, “that is too bad”.

What do you think…how can we be so indifferent?

I am in Addis Abebe, Ethiopia and we are visiting our freind and pastor Afework. Many of you may know that Afework was in a horrible wreck about a month ago and for all purposes should not have survived. The driver of the car was killed and Afework along with His two brothers ( Robel and Yehulashut) were both injured pretty badly. The first report we got was that he may not make it. After a few weeks they were all tranfered to a Korean hospital here in Addis, which is much better care.

Myself and Jerry visited him today and he is much better than we could have ever hoped for. He had pretty major surgery placing rods in both his legs and has some nasty battle scars from the whoe ordeal. His brother Yehualshet is set to have another surgery today. Afework’s spirits were amazing… we looked at pics Steven Bush had taken from our last trip in January and those seem to even brighten his day more! Afework is ready to get back at ministry and chrch planting here in Ethiopia, but he has a long road opf recovery as he will undergo rehabilitation to walk properly again. Afework’s medical bills are between $7000-$8000. If you would like to help with his medical costs you can e-mail me at matts@tamh.net and I will let you know how you can donate to this cause. Otherwise continue to pray for Afework and the continued ministry here in Ethiopia. We have many things in the works that include starting a school in the fall and digging wells in villages that have no clean drinking water. I will be here the rest of the week and we will be meeting with other leaders who will fill in the gaps while Afework is recovering…pray for wisdom in these meetings as we plan for at least 4-5 more teams that will come to Ethiopia this year! If you would like to be a part of one of these teams let me know as well.

(note: sorry for no pic of Afework, this Ethiopian internet could not handle that)

I am currently reading a book that was given to me by my good freind Rusty. The book is entitled “Jim and Casper go to Church”….basically the premise of the book is that this former pastor named Jim pays Matt Casper (an atheist) to visit multiple churches with him. They then wrote a book about thier experiences and more specifically what Casper thought about each church, since he has not been exposed as much to our little subculture. They go to everything from megachurch Willow, emerging church Imago, and a house church of 15 folks. So right now I am in the middle and it may be unfair to make a call now but here we go…

 First of all I think the concept is brilliant, I love that throughout the book these visits seem to be serving as the context by which Jim and Casper can get into some honest conversation. I also find the book very funny because of many of Casper’s thoughts on church, things like why there are so many “overly happy” people in vests wanting to talk to him and hand him stuff when he walks in., are simply hilarious. I have often wondered what it would be like to go to church, ecspecially a big megachurch, as someone with no prior church history?? I think sometimes in church we have our own language that no one coming in would understand. I am not talking about biblical words like atonement and justification. There are some that in order to be more relevant want to discard these words….stupid. We should explain the richness of these words, but not discard them. I am talking about churchy words such as “Blended service”…in fact one church I know of has a service called “the blend”. As a non-church person I have no clue  what a blended service is. I probably do not even understand why you would need to have one or the ridiculous debate over music in the church. So I see blended and think…’are we all getting frappucinos or something?” So that part of the book is entertaining!

One reoccuring them that I seem to have some trouble with is that both Jim and Casper seem to have swung the pendulum and are putting alot of focus on actions over belief. The critique in the book is that churches talk alot about belief but do nothing, which I agree with to an extent. Jim (the Christian) talks about how the church is steeped in beliefism and the worship of beliefs. At one point in the book he says that belief should come after action. He literally says that we should major on the majors (action) and minor on the minors (belief). I could not disagree more on this point. I belief action is vital to a strong believer and community of faith, but I believe action must always be driven by belief.  I recall A.W. Tozer saying in his book called Knowledge of the Holy that, ” the most important thing about us is what we think about God.” He goes on to say that it will shape all that we do in life, money, relationships, and social action. He is basically saying your theology or thoughts of God matter. This is why the role of teaching is so important in the church, theology and doctrine matter alot. But doctrine and action are not mutually exclusive, you need both and a good church needs a healthy balance of both. As our buddy James would say we need faith with works!!!

One thing that did bother me a whole lot is when Jim makes a comment that sounds as though he is saying Mark Driscoll has a sexual promiscuity problem, based on the fact he talks about sex alot in sermons. Low blow guys…could it be that he ministers in one of the most sexually promiscuous cities in America and that is where people are living??

So overall the book is entertaining and the idea is great…I will let you know what I think as it wraps up. Have you read this….what are your thoughts???