Deconstruction

Brazos Pointe Fellowship is moving. From the beginning we have met at Lake Jackson Intermediate and that ended last Sunday. Right now we are a church on the move. But soon we will be a church that will settle down, at least as far as the location of our meetings on the weekend is concerned. Starting in July we will meet in a semi-permanent location but first we have to get the space ready.

Part of that has included destruction or deconstruction (whichever you prefer). Tearing stuff down has been hard work, fun, exhausting (in a good way), tedious, and productive. Walls have been torn down; flooring, ceiling and insulation removed. Wiring is being cut and lighting taken out. We’ve torn things apart so that we can build them back up.

That’s life. We tear down not just to be destructive but so that we can build up. As a church we constantly have to tear down our misconceptions about what it means to be the church so that we can build ourselves as a people who seek hard after the movement of God.

Personally I have to tear down what I know about life so I can build it back. What does it mean to follower of Jesus? Beyond some abstract idea, how does that look in my every day life?

Tearing stuff up can be fun, but it can be painful as well. Sometimes it is necessary.

We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5

God is in the space

As I read Running the Spiritual Path yesterday I stared thinking:

The mind-set I’ve had made me think God could only be found in stuff. God is in the Bible. God is in me. God is in productivity and busyness. God is in the trees and the mountains. And He is in all of those places.

But lately I see that God can also be found in the spaces. In fact sometimes God is seen more clearly in the spaces.

When my mind is cluttered with the activity of the day God can barely be heard. But when I set aside everything my mind would otherwise ponder, I am engulfed by God in that space.

God is heard more clearly in the space of silence between footfalls when I run. I see God in the space between two trees when the sun comes up behind them.

I connect with God more deeply in space created by the rest of a Sabbath. More there than any activity of a busy day. I feel God in the space of a day of silence and solitude.

Pascal said we were all created with a God-shaped hole in our lives that can only be filled with Him. Even though I became a Christ-follower twenty years ago I still try to fill that hole with other things sometimes. But I am only right; I am only who Tommy was meant to be when I let God fill that hole – when I let God fill my space.

God is in the space.

Comfort and potential

Today is the first day of the thirty-ninth year of my life.

The older I become the more comfortable I am with who I am. As I get older I care less about what people think of me. I care less about the things the world tells me I should see as important. I realize that it is okay to slow down. I see God more clearly when there are fewer distractions. And I generally feel good about who God has made me to be.

The older I become the less satisfied I am with who I am. There is so much potential inside of me. But that potential is no good if I never let it out … like a disconnected battery with voltage that is waiting to be turned into current. I’ve got to live it.

All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Put a little soul in your living …

Influence

I’ve heard that I cannot change another person. People are who people are (profound huh?) and they will only change when they have an inclination do so. I can’t change a person but I can live a life of influence that in some way may cause a person to desire change.

I think about the concept of influence as it applies to my kids. I can exercise authority over them and they will submit. But when the authority is gone, so is the behavior it forced. From experience it is way more effective to influence my kids rather than force them to act a certain way and hope it forms a habit.

I can try to change Andrea but that is a waste of time. She can try to change me but that is an even larger amount of time wasted. There is this relational dance that must happen in marriage so that we can compliment one another rather than try to force change.

I think about influence and the role it plays in telling the gospel (the good news). For far to long the church has believed that it can force people into heaven with scare tactics or moral bullying; but the role of influence is even more important when pointing people toward God. Pointing people towards God requires conversation and influence. People move closer to God as they watch others live what they believe. They take the first step toward God and then He effects the change.

I think about the effect of influence on me. I am who I am because of experience and emotion and information. But I also am who I am because of the influence of people. I am influenced by my parents. I am influenced by my wife and my kids. I am influenced by those older than me who are farther along the path of life than I am. I am influenced by those who are my age and are traveling at the same pace. I am influenced by those younger than me who are coming up the path a little farther behind. I am influenced by people who are brilliant and complex and I am influenced by those who are simple. I am influence by those who lived long before me and those who live today because of what they have written down and published in book form or because of their art. I am influenced by people who live on the other side of the country as I listen to them teach and preach and report and sing on the internet and radio. I am influenced by bloggers who my only contact is through a computer screen. I have the finger prints of others all over me.

How about you? Show me your influence.

BTW – I’m listening to an iTune radio live stream and they are giving me the current weather for the Cayman Islands. Like that makes me feel good about sitting in my office.

Creativity - Part 3

This week Ronnie and I went to an experience for church leaders called Origins, hosted by Mosaic in Los Angeles. It was an incredible couple of days. I may post more about it later.

During one of the sessions Erwin McManus said, “Everyone is creative. Not everyone is artistic. Every human being has a mystic creative aspect of godliness to be pulled from their core.”

Most of the time when creativity is mentioned we think of the arts. Even though it includes the artist, the scope of creativity is far broader than just art.

Our Administrative Pastor Kirk is one of the most creative people I know. I would not call him an artist – his secular trade was that of an accountant. But Brazos Pointe Fellowship could not have church the way we do without the creative genius Kirk brings in all that he does.

Whoever you are and in whatever you do there is creativity inside of you that is a reflection of God. Ask God to bring that creativity to the surface.

"Creativity is the natural result of spirituality."
A Mosiac value.

Blog Free

This will be a blog free week - not that I've been all that consistent at posting lately anyway. I'll post some stuff next week.

Be real ...

Guitar

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Or get better? … Link

Creativity - Part 2

I said I would follow up the creativity post from Monday with some stuff I have learned from others.

In the image of God—the Creator—we are made. First, a myth dispelled: there's no such thing as creative people and NON-creative people. It would be nice if it were that simple. No, we are all actively or inactively creative throughout every single day.
- C. McNair Wilson

Wilson says to be actively creative we should pursue these four traits:
- Taking Risks, proceeding without control over outcome. (didn't Jenny already say that?)
- Challenging Assumptions, ignoring all unwritten rules…
- Seeing Differently, trying everything in a new way, "Behold! All things have become new."
- Pursuing Curiosity, a great place to start: "What if …"

You can read the whole article here: Link

Dewitt Jones says “Creativity is the ability to look at what everyone else is looking at and see something different - the ability to look at the ordinary and see the extraordinary.”

To cultivate creativity Jones says:

- Make life your art
- Celebrate what is right with the world
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes
- Pay attention
- Be a good listener
- Lighten up
- Learn to play

Again from Jones: “Use your intellect to train your technique and put yourself in the place of most potential to find the creative solution.”

I am encouraged to know that I can bring my creativity to the surface by cultivating what God has already placed inside of me.

Creativity

From Madeleine L’Engle’s book Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art:

Finley Eversole, in The Politics of Creativity writes,

In our society, at the age of five, 90 percent of the population measures “high creativity”. By the age of seven, the figure has dropped to 10 percent. And the percentage of adults with high creativity is only two percent! Our creativity is destroyed not through the use of outside force, but through criticism, innuendo …

by the dirty devices of this world. So we are diminished, and we forget that we are more than we know. The child is aware of unlimited potential, and this munificence is one of the joys of creativity.

Those of us who struggle in our own ways, small or great, trickles or rivers, to create, are constantly having to unlearn what the world would teach us; it is not easy to keep a child’s high creativity in these late years of the twentieth century.

This is from a book I mentioned in yesterday's post and have added to my sidebar. It was written in 1980.

To become a better communicator I have to be increasingly creative. Much of what I have listened to and read lately has pointed to the fact that we are all creative, but creativity must be cultivated and unleashed and rediscovered.

Some say “I am just not a creative person". According to Finley Eversole (and Madeleine L’Engle) most of us are creative as children but our creativity has been pushed back.

If you see yourself as creative, or if people tell you that you are creative, or you know creative people; how does one nourish, develop and unleash that creativity; be it in art, music, the written word, speech, media, drama, dance or otherwise?

I may post later some of what I have learned, but first I’d like to learn from you.

Diaries and Short Family Vacations

Someone came to me as I stood outside after a worship service this morning and said, “You haven’t been writing much in your online diary.”

Online diary?!? A diary is a little book a fourth grade girl keeps under her bed with a cheap locking latch so that her little brother will not read about the boys she likes.

At least call it a journal. That sounds legitimate. And if there is anything I want to be in life it is legit. The problem is I write stuff in my journal far too personal and far too random to publish here.

It truth, it’s a web log and to be trendy we’ll just call it a “blog” for short. “Blog” is such a new word that Microsoft Word doesn’t have it in its spell check dictionary yet (unless of course I right-click and click “Add”).

There has been more than enough going on in my life to write about. Holding me back though is that life has been getting in the way of the discipline of writing.

Thursday and Friday the family went to New Braunfels and spent two full days on the banks of the Guadalupe River. We had the river to ourselves. It was fun to spend a couple of days playing with the kids. Tori, Jakeb, and I swam in the cold fast water of the river. Anna swam with us a bit closer to shore. Andrea got her legs wet - the water was too cold. Anna and I floated in a raft. We skipped rocks across the river together. We went to Gruene together. Jakeb and I took a morning run down River Road and later that day shot pool together in Gruene Hall (long before the band started playing and the craziness started). Andrea and I sat on the balcony in the morning and drank coffee together. We all ate at Schlotzsky’s – man I miss Schlotzsky’s.

On Friday afternoon the kids wanted me to go with them as they swam in the river one last time. I was beat but agreed to go. Instead of swimming I sat on a rock in the middle of the river with water swirling around me and read from a book I got week before last. It is written by Madeleine L’Engle and called Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art. It is an incredible book on art and the creativity that rest inside of us all - creativity that is a reflection of our Creator.

Jakeb summed our short vacation up as he walked through the house on the river and said, “This is just what I needed.”

Thanks for letting me ramble on in my “diary”.