Avatar ROCKS!

Ok. It's been a LONG time since I've reviewed a movie on my blog... mainly because I haven't seen too many movies worth reviewing. James Cameron's Avatar is well worth some of my time to blog about! This movie was just plain awesome!

First off, I gotta say. I have 3D movies. Whenever a kiddie movie comes out in 3D I always make us go to the non-3D version of it. Within 20 minutes of the 3D movie I start a killer headache and just find that it does absolutely nothing to make the movie any more enjoyable.

Avatar has COMPLETELY changed my viewpoint on this technology! The entire movie is just breath-taking! In fact, in some scenes I actually felt vertigo and clutched to my armrests. It felt like we were a part of the story! This really sets the bar incredibly high for any other fantasy or sci-fi movies. Cameron has brought movies to the next level again! He did it with Terminator 2's liquid terminator, the T-1000. He's done it again with Avatar!

I've read a bunch of reviews that said that the story was the weakest point of the movie. Sure, it's a simple story and obviously predictable... but I JUST LOVED IT! It had action, humour, love, tears, and just about everything else that makes a great story! I love stories about the underdog overcoming a larger power. This definitely has that. I also really loved the flat out idea that we are destroying our planet. I'm not normally a political tree-hugger... but the truth is, our planet isn't doing well. We've been given a responsibility to care for it... and we're doing a pretty bad job of it. Avatar paints a bleak future that we've screwed up our world so bad that we have become the locusts of the universe and just consume everything we can get our hands on.

The characters were great. I just loved the journey of the main character, Jake Sully. Going from spy to saviour of the Navi People. Each of the characters really carried the story along. In a movie like this, it would be easy to just get lost in the effects, but the actors were just as great. I even forgot that I was looking at computer generated characters at one point! It just looked like actors in makeup.

Avatar is a MUST see movie in my opinion! It just doesn't get much better than that for your money buck. I'll definitely be going again during this Christmas holiday! Now... gotta find a nearby IMAX screen for my next outing.

Love Praying in my Chair!

I'm sitting in my favorite chair, admiring my Christmas tree, enjoying an herbal tea, and ignoring my sermon notes on the floor. I'm doing the most important work I can think of instead - praying!

I'm so thankful that I can sit in this chair and just relax and pray! It's such a joy for me to pray for friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers! This year my prayer life has been a little more up and down then I would like... but it has gotten much more specific in how I pray for people. God has really been doing a number on my heart. I go from feelings of incredible joy to deep sorrow as I pray for specific needs.

Just today I spent time in this chair praying for old friends, new friends and people I have never met. Life is just happening all around me. Blessings, joys, laughs, sadness, hurts, lost. God knows all this and wants us to be coming to him with this.

If ever you want someone to pray for you I consider it an honor and a privilege to do so. Just send me a quick note and I'll be praying for you! Praise or request. Big or little. God wants us to pray about it all!

I'm a firm believer that prayer is the most important thing I do as a Pastor! I just love praying for everyone at LifeSpring. Even if God were to grow the congregation to 2000, I would be praying for every single person there!

Iron Man 2 Trailer!

I SOOOO can't wait to see this movie!!

Beauty in Diversity

This past summer I did a research paper for the Hermeneutics course I was taking at Heritage Seminary. The goal of the paper was to show that I had learned concepts taught in the course on interpreting a difficult text from Scripture. One of the best things that I learned in that course and during my research paper was just how AWESOME God is!

How did a course on interpreting ancient, biblical texts and a research paper on 1 Timothy 2:12 (yes, I like stirring up hornets nests!) do that??? It was just an awesome and beautiful reminder to me on the work that God is doing all around the world through his church. And he is doing this through SO many different types of churches! I just find that there is a beauty to this diversity in the churches!

Over the past year I've had the wonderful and humbling privileged to meet so many different church and ministry leaders from so many varied backgrounds, theological viewpoints and church models! And what is SOOOO cool about all of them is the work that God is doing. God is moving in all of them! I just LOVE learning from each of them and hearing their stories about all that God is doing in their ministries.

I think that's why I so pumped about seeing different types of church models to learn how to partner with each other. The goal is not to point out who is right and who is wrong, but rather to have a hermeneutical humility (a term I learned in my course) when we deal with people that do church different then we do.

In my research paper I read a great article by Craig L. Bloomberg where he said this:

There is no legitimate place in this debate to impugn fellow evangelicals who differ from one another by using pejorative labels “liberal” or “fundamentalist,” simply because of their views on this topic. All of us who speak and write on gender roles would do well to begin and end every address with the caveats, “I could be wrong” and, “I respect the right of fellow evangelicals and evangelical churches to come to different conclusions, and I will cooperate with them rather than combat them for the larger cause of Christ and his kingdom, which so desperately needs such unity".

I work real hard to keep that attitude when meeting anyone different than myself. I make myself available to cooperate with churches who come to a different conclusion then me. I think that's what unity is all about. We can disagree on how the details but be united in who we are in Christ!

Diversity in types of churches, for me, is just how God is reaching very different types of people! And that's what it should be all about.

Celebration Pastor

I'm pretty excited about all that God is doing at LifeSpring these days! There have been a number of ups and downs (and sometimes feeling like it's a pretty crazy roller coaster!) but it's been just great to see how God is working through all of this.

I'm really excited about the idea of bringing on a new, part-time staff member at LifeSpring! We're beginning the process of looking for a Celebration Pastor. The goal is that this pastor would be equipping and building up people to bring the Sunday Celebration service to the next level. This would then greatly free me up to focus more on our LifeGroups (our home groups) and outreach to the community.

We're praying a lot that we're on God's page. The last thing we want is for God to bless our plans. We only want to do what he's called us to do and to do the things he's called us to do!

If you know of anyone who might be interested in this 20 hour a week position, have them contact me and I'll send them the full description of what we're looking for.

'Tis the Season!

'Tis the season to be incredibly busy!

WOW! I'm always amazed at just how crazy this time of year gets. Family activities start ramping up. Christmas shopping and planning start causing sleepless nights. Seminary papers are becoming due. Ministry work seems to start hitting about 100mph.

And in all of this... we're supposed to hear that still quiet voice of God telling us how much he loves us.

So... in this very busy time of year I'm being VERY purposeful on spending that quiet time with God. Everything else can wait. The key to hope, peace, joy and love is a good, healthy walk with God. Without that everything else that I try to do is useless! Without that quiet time with God I'm useless as a husband, father, friend, brother and pastor. Without God's love pouring into me and flowing out of me this time of year can easily turn me into a Scrooge or a Grinch :) Not very good role models!

How about you? How are you ensuring that the busyness of this time of year doesn't wear you down?